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| Seal of the United States Department of Education (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
In June 2009, the U.S.
Department of Education reported that 114 private, non-profit colleges had
failed the department’s financial-responsibility test at the close of fiscal
2008-09. Although ostensibly not designed as a death knell, failing the test can be
an indicator that a college is on life support. When and if
the shakeout is complete, higher education will not be populated exclusively by
e-educators. Nor will the landscape of higher education boast only the largest
and wealthiest brick-and-mortar institutions. Rather, as in the past, we should
anticipate a mix of liberal arts colleges, land-grant universities, and wealthy
private universities, including megaversities, coexisting in rationalized
competition with the e-educators and other for-profit entrants of this 21st
century wave of institution building.
Small, under-funded sectarian colleges and many historically
black institutions are in dire straits in 2013. On June 30, 2013, Saint Paul’s College, an historically
black school founded in 1888 in Lawrenceville (VA), closed its doors for good,
a proposed merger with another school having fallen through.
American higher education is in the midst of a profound transformation.
Some leaders in higher education contend that it is a mature
industry, which must co-exist and compete in the global marketplace, while others argue that its
primary role remains as ever a
public responsibility to
create good citizens.
For some, notably Harvard Business School’s Clayton Christensen,
the Saint Paul’s College closure is merely the tip of the iceberg… or the crest
of the fifth wave. Christensen has
predicted that in 15 years (i.e., by 2028 or so), as many as 50% of all
American colleges and universities could be in bankruptcy. How can this possibly be true? The Harvard messiah of disruptive innovation
explains that for all its past centuries, higher education has had no
“technological core.”
Consequently, the industry has been strapped to its physical
locations. Disruption was extremely
difficult.
For
instance, an Ivy League wannabe could follow only one route: intensive
investment in facilities, faculty and the other indicia of a first-tier
university. By contract,
Christensen contends, today online learning is that missing core technology. Almost any one now can capture, stream
and distribute Ivy League-level content over the Internet. And this will blow the walls off
traditional higher education.
[http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2013/03/03/in-15-years-from-now-half-of-us-universities-may-be-in-bankruptcy-my-surprise-discussion-with-claychristensen/] Put another way, why should a student
borrow money, pay exorbitant tuition, and sit in a traditional classroom listening
to a mediocre professor, when she can learn the same material from the top
expert in the world in a MOOC (Massive Online Open-enrollment Course), for
which her college will give her course credit?
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