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College students will spend more time brushing up on their writing and speaking skills as the business world places a greater demand on communication.

"There will a huge return and demand of all educational institutions for basic communication skills -- writing, speaking and thinking on their feet and learning to work with others," said JoAnne Boyle, president of Seton Hill University in Greensburg.

"In a business context," she said, "whether you make money or lose money depends on how effectively and well people communicate with one another."

Edward A. Nicholson, president of Robert Morris University in Moon Township, expects a greater emphasis on writing.

"Ivy Leagues and other selective institutions have discovered the fact that Johnny can't write," he said. "What I'm seeing is other schools are discovering the way to write is to write and to critique (students) often."

Nicholson expects colleges will adopt more rigorous communication programs such as the one at Robert Morris. It stresses speaking and writing skills.

"We've moved away from rigorous writing courses in high school and college," he said. "We've had at least one, maybe two, generations with less skills than the generations of the '50s and early '60s had."

Thirty percent of all college and university students are not ready for freshman English or math without additional help, said former Roy Flores, president of Community College of Allegheny County.

"It's a national crisis," he said. "It's a continuing problem that needs to be addressed. It's not just an inner-city problem. To some degree or another, it's a problem in every school district."

Trying to improve basic skills will help drive colleges' costs up, Flores said. With state budgets tightening, tuition will rise between 7 and 10 percent a year at public universities and possibly private colleges, said Curtiss E. Porter, campus executive officer at Penn State-McKeesport.

Technology will continue to influence the landscape of higher education. Porter said wireless technology and hand-held computers will proliferate on campuses.

"Students can be seamlessly connected to the information backbone, which is the Internet, and can therefore do their work in any location," he said.

Colleges expect more students to learn foreign languages and study cultures from abroad.

Boyle said many schools language courses dwindled to Spanish before Sept. 11, 2001, rekindled interest in international education.

"There will be a gap," she said, "because there's not a lot of people prepared to teach the languages like Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. But there will be more urgency expressed at the national level to do this."

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