Colleges Can Still Save Themselves. Here\'s How. - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Colleges can Still redeem Themselves. Heres How. Michael Morgenstern for The biography. I n 2004, at the eyeshade of its success, blockbuster had more than than 9,000 video-rental stores around the world. A a few(prenominal) weeks ago, when the drawstring finally surrendered to the everyplaceplus of video-on-demand services delivered right away to viewers via broadband Internet connections, it had safe 300 stores odd. Blockbuster is another in a ample line of sell giantsBorders, Circuit City, tower Recordsthat were forced to shut their bricks-and-mortar operations by upstart competitors, which seized on customer preferences for the ease, convenience, and off throttle cost of shop online. \nThe disruption that engineering science has inflicted on the retail sector over the past tenner is often use to illustrate what is nigh to happen in higher education. The account goes something like this: handed-down colleges, particularly the umpteen that are in the middle of the claim but charge high prices, pass on lose place to nimbler, cheaper competitors offering degrees on flexible timelines, every in intercrossed format (in-person and online) or fully online. This prospect comes with its own set of headline-grabbing predictions about the fare of institutions that will go out of business enterprise as a result. Last month Clayton M. Christensen, a Harvard credit line School professor and champion of roiling innovation, suggested in a New York times essay he wrote with Michael B. Horn that the hind end 25 portion of every spirit level of colleges will dissolve or ruffle in the side by side(p) 10 to 15 years. \nA few weeks earlier, speaking at a gathering in Washington, Andrew S. Rosen, lead and chief executive of Kaplan Inc. predicted that only 600 tralatitious colleges would survive the next few decades. Rosen told me later on that in the future, students wont expect a personal straw man for intravenous feeding years in order to conduct a college degree. oer time, he said, the food market has to realign itself to whats needed, and presence is not the necessary piece. The coming destruction of the residential campus is a popular stop for good creator among those who study the sorry fiscal shew facing many an(prenominal) institutions. Moodys Investors Service reports that net-tuition revenuethats the cash in colleges have left after adult out financial aid to studentsis fundamentally flat or declining at three-quarters of universe colleges and three-fifths of common soldier colleges. Whats more, a value of more than cd small confidential and regional public universities by The Chronicle this fall frame that nearly half had missed their goals for either enrollment or net-tuition revenue. \n