While plans for a huge hike in US research spending face a tough hearing in Congress, Joe Biden¡¯s $2.3?trillion (?1.3?trillion) infrastructure investment plan promises a surge in demand for higher education, experts said.

The 10-year programme aims to reshape America¡¯s economy by spending big on transport projects, advanced manufacturing and clean energy, and is likely to make significant demands on universities to meet massive training needs.

At a White House briefing, Mr Biden promised US campuses that they were ¡°going to see more change in the next 10?years than we¡¯ve seen in the last 50?years¡±.

And the Business-Higher Education Forum, a grouping of top corporate and university presidents, predicted that even a robust estimate of the plan¡¯s implications for boosting post-secondary enrolment might be selling the idea short.

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An initial analysis by Georgetown University¡¯s Center on Education and the Workforce that the Biden infrastructure bill would create 7?million new jobs requiring at least some level of college-level training.

But the real effect could prove far more robust when counting the long-term multiplier effects on job demand of the technological gains likely from the Biden plan, said Brian Fitzgerald, chief executive of the Business-Higher Education Forum.

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The Georgetown assessment anticipates the Biden bill creating 15?million jobs, with 8?million requiring no qualification above a high school diploma. Almost 5?million other jobs will require more than a high school diploma but less than a bachelor¡¯s degree, and more than 2?million other positions will demand a bachelor¡¯s degree or higher, it said.

¡°These are first-order estimates,¡± Dr Fitzgerald said of the Georgetown figures, ¡°and we think there are significant second-order effects that will be accelerated by these infrastructure investments.¡±

The Biden bill could fuel enrolment gains by campuses at all levels ¨C from community colleges to private liberal arts institutions ¨C that partner with businesses to expand non-degree credentials and apprentice-style relationships, Dr Fitzgerald said.

And that transformation would be in not just scientific and technical fields but across a variety of majors including communications and critical thinking, he said.

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Examples of the need include the arrival of 5G internet technologies, which demand ¡°very sophisticated¡± knowledge even among those stringing the wires to telephone poles, Dr Fitzgerald said.

¡°Those installers are going to have to have a very, very different set of skills than, as the utilities used to say, the installers of sticks and wires,¡± he said. ¡°This is an opportunity to break down the silos between education and training.¡±

Along with job training implications, US colleges and universities would benefit from $250?billion in federal research spending in the 10-year Biden plan. That amount includes $5?billion a?year for the National Science Foundation, representing a nearly 60?per cent increase in its annual budget.

The optimism within US higher education over such numbers is tempered by the fact that Mr Biden¡¯s party holds only a narrow majority in both houses of Congress. No Republicans support the plan, and some Democrats already are baulking over major elements including the plan¡¯s provisions for higher corporate taxes.

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¡°At best for Biden, the bill will undergo an intermediate operation before passage,¡± said Larry Sabato, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia. ¡°What will be kept, what will be dropped, what the price tag will be? Let¡¯s try to find Nostradamus.¡±

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com