An inventory is made of external factors potentially affecting schools, colleges, and departments of education (SCDEs) grouped into nine factor clusters: (1) income and expenditure; (2) personnel supply and demand; (3) competition from emerging alternative programs; (4) governance; (5) new and altered instructional programs; (6) status and influence; (7) formal control; (8) informal control; and (9) federal support. Near-future predictions foresee (1) a decrement in funds available to SCDEs, (2) a decline in SCDE fiscal support for knowledge production activities, (3) a slight increase in support for knowledge utilization activities, (4) stabilization of the preservice teacher enrollment decline but a decline in graduate enrollment, (5) SCDE program quality decline; (6) more dissatisfaction with SCDE performance in teacher training and knowledge production and utilization activity; (7) a loss of autonomy for SCDEs in teacher education programs; and (8) a shift from experimentation upon substance to experimentation on the form or structure of teacher education. Administrative response to this recession will be a focus on retrenchment: minimizing losses while maintaining standards; faculty response will be less turnover and mobility and more concern toward position and rights as employees; students will be courted in ways not increasing the expenditure levels of the institution, i.e., lower entrance and softened program requirements. Specific predictions for SCDEs are made for each of twelve representative categories, and issues for planners at the national, institutional, and SCDE levels are presented. (MB)