Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) -- What’s the largest university in the U.S., with twice as many students as the Universities of Texas, Michigan, Florida and Ohio State combined? The University of Phoenix Online, a private, for-profit institution.

That’s the type of topic that comes up when you talk to Dan McGinn, a business consultant who thinks outside the box. He tries to see patterns and trends that give a sense of where we’ll be tomorrow and a decade or a generation from now.

He has a penchant for understanding what these patterns and phenomena suggest.

McGinn, the chief executive officer of Arlington, Virginia- based TMG Strategies, doesn’t make any value judgments about for-profit educational institutions in general or the University of Phoenix, which is controversial.

What he does suggest is that, for all the legitimate debate about education, he says, Phoenix, with 420,700 students, “taps into the deeper aspirations of everyday Americans -- immigrants, part-time workers, moms, college dropouts and older students. An online school is a window of opportunity for these folks.” And he’s certain institutions such as Phoenix, a subsidiary of Apollo Group Inc., “will be an ever-growing part of the education landscape.”

It is one more reason he says he believes that immigration is so ingrained in the American experience, and why some of the current political debate over the issue is often irrelevant. “The only way to sustain our economy is through immigration.”

Sports as Metaphor

McGinn has been retained by many corporations to offer advice on political and societal questions, on what to anticipate in the market or polling booth. The numbers he effortlessly spews out usually tell a story.

The metaphor for politicians and business and society today are sports teams, he says; unlike in the past, when a Joe DiMaggio or Bill Russell spent an entire career with one team, superstars and routine players alike switch repeatedly to the highest bidders.

Change is part of our DNA. Three out of five college students transfer, 44 percent of Americans change religion in their lifetimes and this propensity is even altering what people want after they leave this life; by 2025, it’s estimated that more than half of Americans will expect to be cremated, compared with only 6 percent in 1975.

Companies need to understand, he goes on, that brand loyalties are relics. “I am fascinated by my Kindle,” he says, referring to Amazon.com Inc.’s device allowing consumers to download books wirelessly. “But I have absolutely no loyalty to it.”

Lesson for Obama

That is a lesson President Barack Obama’s supporters and aides underestimated, he says.

“Just because tens of millions of people joined social networks for him in the campaign doesn’t necessarily mean they will support him or stay involved with him as he governs,” McGinn says. “In an era of free agency, loyalty has to be re- earned constantly.”

The implication, McGinn argues, is politics will be more like the weather. “We will see more frequent, dramatic change than ever before.”

Successful businesses over the last generation have been created or run by those who appreciate and understand the ever- changing nature of American society, customers and consumers. Like politicians, corporate brand loyalties have to be earned and re-earned.

Women in Workplace

And a huge change McGinn sees for American business is a greater feminization (he doesn’t use that term) of the workplace. Although women still earn only 80 percent as much as men, soon, for the first time, there will be more women then men in the American workforce. Women now comprise more than half of U.S. college graduates and postgraduate students.

He says that’s going to produce seismic changes in the workforce and at the upper echelons of corporate America. Today only 15 of the chief executive officers of Fortune 500 companies are women. It was big news when a woman chairman retired at Xerox Corp. and was replaced by another woman, the first such change at the top of the U.S. corporate hierarchy. Within a generation, this will become commonplace; McGinn says a quarter to a third of all major CEOs will be women.

“The workforce is going to be more diverse, women-led and globally focused,” McGinn says. “No longer will it be automatic that a white American male will rise to the top.” (This is true of other institutions, too; the number of women top officers in the military has doubled over the last 15 years, though it’s still just a little over one-tenth).

Changing Family

Socially, the entire concept of the American family will continue to undergo dramatic change. The arguments that dominate the political vocabulary about values and traditional families are obsolete.

In America today, more than a quarter of households are headed by a single individual; in the Washington suburb of Alexandria, Virginia, it’s almost 50 percent. Forty percent of all U.S. children are born to a single mother, a figure that includes seven-tenths of African-American babies. At the same time, one in five children over the age of 25 is now living with his or her parents.

“Our concept of family is obliterating,” McGinn says. We’re both “aging younger,” marketing cell phones and other products to teenagers, and “maturing later.”

All of this, he believes, will accelerate in the years ahead. This may offer new opportunities and also more problems.

Dealing with Illness

An example: Employees are under more pressure not to miss any work. When they are also more likely to live alone, it is harder to deal with epidemic illnesses such as H1N1. Networking and family relations become more important when there is an illness.

In some of these areas we’re reaching “a boiling-point society,” McGinn says.

And there are some unusual offshoots of the altering family structure. Pets play a far more important role in our lives, as more people live alone. According to McGinnis data, today there are 570 veterinarians in America who are certified as animal chiropractors, and two-thirds of people say they wouldn’t date someone who didn’t like their pet. More than half of people know their neighbor’s pet, but not their neighbor.

(Albert R. Hunt is the executive editor for Washington at Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Albert R. Hunt in Washington at ahunt1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 15, 2009 14:00 EST