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Clayton Christensen: Half of U.S. colleges will be bankrupt in 10 to 15 years

149 points by uptown 8y ago

projectramo 8y ago
I wonder if there some other services that colleges provide that he misses out: 1. Space just to get away and think 2. meeting other people 3. meeting people to date 4. Physical scheduled deadlines to ensure that you complete the task When the online system provides those, I think it'll be game over. I can see a hybrid though: my underused hotel turns into a dorm with high bandwidth connection to Stanford's curriculum and the local professor will give coaching when necessary.
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  Just removing responsibility for accreditation from universities would be a start.
  - DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
    That's an interesting idea. Could you explain your reasoning a bit?
    - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
      At the moment you can't really compare the results from one university to another. This makes it a market for Lemons[1]. If they are all teaching to a common standard then it would open up some real competition. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
- pc86 8y ago
  Why are the deadlines at an online school any less real than those at a physical school?
  - throwawayjava 8y ago
    > Why are the deadlines at an online school any less real than those at a physical school? I'm not in education atm but have a lot of experience working with students. This is a real psychological effect even if it's maybe hard for tech types to understand. I think it has to do with the fact that social pressure is avoidable online (you don't have to show up and face the teacher whose work you didn't do). That perception has a strong effect on students; they feel shame for not doing their work even when teachers don't really give a damn about whether they did their homework/project. Maybe not impossible to overcome, but a real problem. Education disruptors ignore these sorts of strong psychological effects around education at their own peril...
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      It's the anonymity of a large university classroom that makes it possible to feel like it's acceptable to stop attending - my best attended classes were those where the professor knew my name. I imagine there would be worse absenteeism in online courses.
  - spyspy 8y ago
    It's not real until you're sprinting through the dark basement of an old building trying to find the right door to slip your essay under by the 7am cutoff. But seriously I agree, almost everything is handed in electronically now anyway.
  - projectramo 8y ago
    The deadlines are just as real, but the adherence to those deadlines is quite different. From my personal experience the difference is night and day. And not just for college courses vs online courses, but even for casual offline courses vs online courses. The data apparently reflects my personal experience. I can't find any of the (numerous) studies I had seen before, but this link alludes to them: https://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2015/01/30/experts-debate-graduation-rates-for-online-students https://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2...
- sevensor 8y ago
  Let's not forget where big public universities have really been spending their (and their donors') money lately: 5. Luxury student dorms. 6. High-end gym facilities. 7. Junior professional sports (Bonus: pay and benefits for the athletes is peanuts.) The things I don't like about universities are the hardest to replace.
  - mrguyorama 8y ago
    >5. Luxury student dorms. Having slept in many of those dorms, I would not call them luxurious.
  - sdinsn 8y ago
    Luxury dorms? Which schools have that?
    - stephenhuey 8y ago
      Some may not use the word luxury, but there are a few nicer ones out there. https://www.housebeautiful.com/promotions/g21086931/best-college-dorms/ https://www.housebeautiful.com/promotions/g21086931/best-col...
      - Woofles 8y ago
        I went to WashU (#1 on that list) and while the dorms were nice I wouldn't say they were "nicer than your apartment" or "luxury". The benefits that you would find that you wouldn't find at most other places are personal bathrooms (sort of... you're still sharing with other students but just not a full hall of them), tempurpedic mattresses (only in the older dorms when I was there), and maybe carpeted floors. Beyond that it's not like we got anything crazy. We had a common room that was basically a table and a few chairs to study at, one in the basement that had a few couches and a TV, and one tiny kitchen for the entire building. Just a little bit of context as far as "luxury dorms" go since I see WashU at the top of almost every list. Maybe luxury means your plumbing doesn't break when it gets cold and you don't get athlete's foot from the showers in the shared bathroom.
    - 8y ago
- longerthoughts 8y ago
  I didn't read his opinion as challenging the value of a true college experience, just suggesting that the cost savings of online education will make it a much more attractive option for a lot of people. Your points made me curious, though - it'll be interesting to see if there's a shift to favor a certain type of individual who thrives in an online education system vs traditional, as well as what implications that has for workplace performance.
  - vtange 8y ago
    The savings from the cost of traditional college helps very much if a MOOC student manages to find a way to network with people via Meetups or other ways - and with the money saved one no longer has to be stingy over paying membership fees for some organizations
- madrox 8y ago
  Let me see if I can give this a shot: 1. Nature...have you tried it? 2. Meetups and other social gatherings around various interests and trades 3. OkCupid, Tinder, etc. 4. ...a job? Jira? One of a number of existing mechanisms for accountability? There you go! I found game over for you! As someone who didn't go to college until their late 20s, I would've foregone the whole thing if I could've done it online. I think people overvalue the "go to college after high school" thing just because it's become such an accepted practice, but it's a normality fallacy.
  - umanwizard 8y ago
    It is dramatically harder to meet someone on OkCupid or Tinder than it is in real life, unless you're either (1) a woman, or (2) a significantly more attractive than average man.
  - HarryHirsch 8y ago
    There's a difference between "going to college" to take classes, and dedicating oneself to a subject in an environment with capable peers and professors. Here's what the latter looks like: http://cds.cern.ch/record/548966/files/0204295.pdf http://cds.cern.ch/record/548966/files/0204295.pdf Unfortunately, the great majority of young people only gets to experience the only former, and they are being cheated and don't even know it.
- theWheez 8y ago
  I dropped out after my sophomore year after I got an offer to move from an intern position to a JR developer position. I enjoyed my time greatly, but also do not regret my decision to leave partway through (yet). Would a 2-year, highly internship and industry focused program be able to offer the same social benefits while reducing cost?
  - sodafountan 8y ago
    I did something similar after one year, I dropped out to start an app development business that was growing for me pretty steadily, the business didn't do well long term and I took a job in the industry. I Haven't regretted it yet and I'm far ahead of my peers in just the debt load alone, that doesn't even include my higher salary, better resume and more years of experience. I'm not too upset that I missed a few years of binge drinking myself to death to get a head start on my life.
thdxr 8y ago
Premise makes sense and I want this to happen but have to keep in mind we are easily swayed by extrapolations that forecast doom. Probably won't be to the extent he predicts
Dowwie 8y ago
Bankruptcy isn't a bad idea for universities. They're not supposed to be for-profit corporations, although many have run them as such. Bankruptcy could help schools restructure their operations, but that requires that boards of directors haven't been captured by financial interests.
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  In practice, this is an extraordinarily delicate and dangerous process. Suppose you are a CS professor at the sort of no-name university that this article is talking about. Odds are, you're more than qualified for a lot of industry roles (and have former students who would hire you on without blinking). Also, those industry roles have much higher salaries than your teaching gig. However, you stay at No-Name U. because it's a pleasant life and you enjoy teaching. Then admin comes along and chops half your tenured colleagues. Suddenly, No Name U. is a hellish place to work. Time to leave. Now multiply that across all of the faculties that have private sector options. Now notice that those are exactly the majors that are difficult to recruit faculty for in the first place [1] and, moreover, are exactly majors that students are interested in these days. That's the risk. At universities, cutting back means firing people. And firing people means low morale. And low morale means losing exactly the people who were going to power your turn-around story. [1] https://cra.org/articles-addressing-shortage-of-cs-professors-across-many-institutions/ https://cra.org/articles-addressing-shortage-of-cs-professor...
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
  > They're not supposed to be for-profit corporations, although many have run them as such. Can you explain a bit about why you believe that? I could imagine different parties having different goals for the same institution.
- neuromantik8086 8y ago
  > Bankruptcy isn't a bad idea for universities. It's important to note that the way university finances / endowments are structured, as well as the demands of alumni make it so that bankruptcy isn't really that simple in higher ed. [0] > They're not supposed to be for-profit corporations I suspect that you don't totally grasp the non-profit vs for-profit distinction. The essential difference between a for-profit and a non-profit is simply that non-profits re-invest their profits into the organization rather than distributing those profits to shareholders. The original intent of this structure was to facilitate philanthropic endeavors (which have pretty much always been self-serving in some subtle way), but just because a non-profit corporation isn't associated with some obvious social benefit doesn't make it any less of a non-profit if it doesn't have shareholders. It's not always obvious, but Rolex and Ikea are both structured as non-profits (with some for-profit subsidiaries iirc). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Briar_College#2015_closure_attempt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Briar_College#2015_closu...
two2two 8y ago
> Fortunately, Christensen says that there is one thing that online education will not be able to replace. In his research, he found that most of the successful alumni who gave generous donations to their alma maters did so because a specific professor or coach inspired them. This is still my argument for in-person lectures. Online classes are okay, but the insights gained from the unexplainable passion presented through oration provides unparalleled value to one's motivation and internal framework.
- jedberg 8y ago
  That sounds like a technology problem. As in, as the technology gets better, you’d be able to have that same experience online.
- crispyambulance 8y ago
  Lectures from professors who are supremely skilled at pedagogy are great. Lucky students will have only a handful of those in their academic careers. These can, however, be recorded. It might not be as electrifying as the real thing, but the real thing is so rare. There are other activities that simply can't be done alone, however: laboratory classes, recitations and interactions where the students engage at a personal level with professors, TA's and other students. This is how students develop relationships that they carry with them past their time in academia. There is room, I think, for a hybrid approach. A combination of online learning with some kind of periodic on-site and in-person practicum. This drastically lowers the cost of the education, but still engages students on a personal level.
  - tdfx 8y ago
    One of my CS professors used the "flipped classroom" technique. He would assign the readings and expect them to be done by the time of the scheduled class. Then we would jointly do exercises and collaborate on the topics that were touched upon in the readings. He was ruthless if it was obvious you hadn't done the reading. It was effective. I think one or two days a week for 2 hours is the perfect amount of lab/in-person collaboration time. Combined with an online forum for questions and video lectures, that would be an ideal course of instruction for me.
ryandrake 8y ago
How does this make sense given the astronomical year-to-year increases in college costs with no end in sight? Where is all the money going? I assume ballooning administrations.
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
  I assume the logic is that eventually there will not be enough students willing to pay those higher prices, in part because they'll have online education as a (much cheaper) alternative.
- secabeen 8y ago
  > How does this make sense given the astronomical year-to-year increases in college costs with no end in sight? Do you have a citation for the above increases? There have been big increases at state schools as state governments have reduced funding, but that's mostly over (there's much less state funding to cut now.) Nameplate cost at private institutions has gone up, but net cost to students (actual amounts paid by students after grants and financial aid) has not gone up that much.
  - ashelmire 8y ago
    https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2017-09-20/see-20-years-of-tuition-growth-at-national-universities https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-co... >net cost to students (actual amounts paid by students after grants and financial aid) has not gone up that much. I'm skeptical of that claim and would request a citation as well. College Board says the opposite (tuition and fees increasing faster than aid): https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/10/25/tuition-and-fees-still-rising-faster-aid-college-board-report-shows https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/10/25/tuition-and-f... And another important set of expenses to track are non-tuition related expenses; it costs more than ever to rent an apartment and pay for other such expenses today.
    - secabeen 8y ago
      So the US News graphs don't adjust for inflation (as they note). If you perform that adjustment, it's a 50% increase over 20 years, which is something, but not astronomical. That pretty much matches this inflation-adjusted data: https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/tuition-fees-room-and-board-over-time https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tabl... Here's the net cost data, showing that the net real cost is only up about 10% over 5 years. Some sub-numbers are even lower. Net tuition for private non-profit schools is _flat_ across the last 15 years ($14,560 in 02-03, $14,540 in 17-18): https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/average-net-price-over-time-full-time-students-sector https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tabl... My argument is that college prices are up, but largely because of disinvestment by state legislatures, pushing up the perceived cost of college, which allows the private schools to increase their nameplate costs significantly, while using financial aid to keep the actual increases to students in-line with the increases in actual costs for state students. Another way of looking at it is this: If colleges have been raising tuition astronomically, what have they been doing with the additional money? Additional expenditures on students or facilities are not much changed over the past 10 years. Real expenses per-student are largely flat: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_334.10.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_334.10.a... If colleges were jacking prices through the roof to spend way more on unnecessary luxuries or administrators (as the common wisdom would have it), that would show up in the expenditures data, and it's just not there. I do agree that non-tuition related expenses are an issue, but that's not the university's fault, other than not building dorms fast enough (and dorms are usually pretty expensive, so it's just as likely that the issue is zoning and building restrictions by university town government, rather than university administrators).
IkmoIkmo 8y ago
Colleges will remain in business as long as businesses will use college degrees as a meaningful qualification to hire talent. Data has shown that companies have continued to use degrees beyond their relation to actual tasks for the job they're hiring for. We've seen decades of evidence that degree inflation is on the rise, signalled by vacancies requiring a bachelor degree while the tasks are high school level. You can see this either by doing a qualitative analysis, e.g. running surveys among employees and categorising their job complexity and linking it to an educational level. Here you find e.g. many administrative jobs which an 18 year old with 2 weeks of on the job training can do, require one to finish a 3 year bachelor in just about anything, first. But the more common methodology is a quantitative one that's a little less accurate, but easier to perform. Survey existing employees at a large firm about their educational credentials, then survey vacancies for people in similar positions at such firms. You'll find various occupations where 60% of vacancies require a certain credential that only 20% of the employees have, indicating that many companies require credentials that are apparently not necessary. And this is on the rise. Then you can wonder why, and the answer is because they can. If you can choose between a large pool of people who meet minimum qualifications, you have the luxury to select overqualified people. And that tendency by human resource managers isn't going to change anytime soon, especially not when there's no significant salary premium companies have to pay to get a person with a college graduate to do highschool level work, over hiring a high school graduate. And I don't see that changing anytime soon with increasing competitive pressure from technological advancement and globalisation. In the end, a college degree is moving more towards a signalling device that shows socioeconomic background and interpersonal aspects such as grit, stability, delayed gratification, and is less and less about signalling subject matter knowledge, academic competencies etc. HR focuses more and more on the former and not on the latter, when requiring a college degree. As online education is more accessible and easier (i.e., less financially straining, less psychologically straining, less socially challenging, but rather at-your-own-pace learning behind your computer from anywhere), it's typically viewed as not signalling the former aspects I just mentioned (grit, delayed gratification) but mostly signalling the latter (knowledge etc). That's why I don't necessarily think that online education is going to supplant colleges from the outside as fast as we think. Of course it'll take over eventually, but I think it'll be slow and will happen more from the inside, by existing colleges, not just through disruption of new startups which will bankrupt existing colleges. Precisely because of a growing number of companies which have stopped using college-degree requirements to hire for knowledge, and have started to require college degrees to select for 'the type of person who has the background and personal traits to be able to survive and complete college', which online education doesn't signal as well.
glangdale 8y ago
The standard criticism of Christensen's work on disruption is that it applies better to products sold to business than those sold to consumers. The perennial failure of Apple to die as per his predictions is a case in point. He seems to have jumped into the "online resources will cause the traditional university to fail" bandwagon a bit late. I haven't heard that much hype about MOOCs lately, presumably because the dire completion rates have cleared out the hype circa 2013. It wouldn't surprise me if he's right, but not for the right reasons. Half of US colleges could go bankrupt in 10-15 years simply because they don't really provide a good education. They won't be replaced by a disruptor, they will just no longer be able to crank out mediocre educational product to people who now realize that a Bachelor of Something Or Other from Podunk U isn't actually a ticket to the middle class.
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  > He seems to have jumped into the "online resources will cause the traditional university to fail" bandwagon a bit late. This consulting firm advertisement is a very useful mental model, and I think MOOCs are probably on their way up and out of the trough of disappointment into the plateau of productivity: https://blogs.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/files/2017/08/Emerging-Technology-Hype-Cycle-for-2017_Infographic_R6A-1024x866.jpg https://blogs.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/files/2017/08/E... > They won't be replaced by a disruptor, they will just no longer be able to crank out mediocre educational product to people who now realize that a Bachelor of Something Or Other from Podunk U isn't actually a ticket to the middle class. This seems likely. My model for predicting college bankruptcy has exactly one input, which is this dataset: https://ifap.ed.gov/DefaultManagement/DefaultManagement.html https://ifap.ed.gov/DefaultManagement/DefaultManagement.html
  - secabeen 8y ago
    > This seems likely. My model for predicting college bankruptcy has exactly one input, which is this dataset: https://ifap.ed.gov/DefaultManagement/DefaultManagement.html https://ifap.ed.gov/DefaultManagement/DefaultManagement.html This is a good dataset. It's important to remember that while the top 100 schools dominate the conversation around college, many many students go to smaller or non-selective schools that have a very different setup.
Kagerjay 8y ago
This doesn't really surprise me. There are so many terrible, and sometimes predatory for-profit tradeschool/colleges out there. State tuition scholarships are only getting worse over time, MOOC's are only getting better, and branching out into larger fields. Many for-profit colleges/tradeschools are using lynda.com and other partnerships with MOOCs anyhow. Grad schools are now offering online equivalents that are treated seriously (e.g. Georgia Tech especially) at affordable rates. Even when I had courses in university, sometimes there was an online version of every class. Why spend the effort of going to class, getting ready, when you can just watch everything at 2x playback speed? There are some classes that require hands on learning. But these are far and inbetween, and mostly are STEM related anyhow. You can't replace the collaborative experience, social connections of a college campus. And wisdom from an instructor, or those connections. But you don't need to go through that twice (grad school - unless for research) and tuition costs for online grad degrees are only lowering down for these
- ThrustVectoring 8y ago
  MOOCs aren't the competition for colleges: higher education largely sells credentials, not skills. The risk is a mix of a decline in credentialism (eg, no longer wanting a college degree for babysitting or firefighting jobs) and a rise in an independent credentialing bodies (like what actuaries have).
  - hak8or 8y ago
    Georgia tech is one of the best comp sci universities out there, and their online masters program is not only accredited, it's indistinguishable from the on site masters program. The peice of paper does not diffirentiate between the two. So the credentials are there for Georgia tech, I do not know about the others though.
pimmen 8y ago
MOOCs have a staggering drop-out rate though, which I think makes predictions about their disruption less clear cut. https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/dcs/people/research/csrmaj/daniel_onah_edulearn14.pdf https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/dcs/people/research/csrmaj/dan...
JackFr 8y ago
This is a pretty information light article. If we assume that college prices are unsustainably high, and online courses achieve results comparable with a large swath of universities, it's not clear whether he assumes theses schools are unwilling or unable to respond to the changing environment. He may well be right, but it would be foolish to think that these schools don't see the same data he does, and that they're not going to at least try to address it.
throwawayperson 8y ago
The same can be said to Boston housing market.
monster_group 8y ago
One thing I don't get about online schools and courses is their lack of laboratory facilities. How is a student supposed to do engineering or natural sciences without labs? When I was doing engineering we used to spend so much time in labs doing experiments on expensive machines (electron microscope, X-ray diffractor etc.) that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. For me the real learning happened in the lab. How do MOOC and online courses plan to fill this gap?
- dantheman 8y ago
  99% of course work students do doesn't actually involve labs. I could see dedicated lab facilities being provided to students taking a MOOC or some other class.
  - monster_group 8y ago
    Apparently even good universities like UT Austin don't care about labs anymore. They offer an online grad degree in Mechanical Engineering with no lab work! Imagine calling yourself a mechanical engineer without having set a foot in the lab. https://executive.engr.utexas.edu/pme/msme.php https://executive.engr.utexas.edu/pme/msme.php
    - btrettel 8y ago
      I am a PhD student at UT Austin in mechanical engineering right now. The MS does not require a lab class in either case. In my division, thermal/fluid systems, you can take either a class on experimental methods or a class on numerical methods (or both if you want) for a MS. Both are required for a PhD. http://www.me.utexas.edu/graduate/areas/tfs/courses http://www.me.utexas.edu/graduate/areas/tfs/courses Multiple lab courses are required for a BS in mechanical engineering at UT.
- hinkley 8y ago
  A primary draw of the engineering school at my university was an overabundance of hardware, especially in the CS program. I only had one class where there was a waiting list for hardware and that class was almost entirely grad students.
koolba 8y ago
Just wait and see what happens when they cut off federal student loans. That’d pull the rug out from under the higher ed house of cards much faster than 10-15 years.
aluminussoma 8y ago
He's been saying this since 2013, sticking the 15 year horizon (which would now leave 10 years): "Fifteen years from now more than half of the universities will be in bankruptcy, including the state schools. In the end, I am excited to see that happen." (source: https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/02/07/disruption-guru-christensen-why.html https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/02/07/disrupti...) Even if he is directionally correct, he could be way off on the timing.
leroy_masochist 8y ago
I think Christensen is generally right here. Colleges exist as physical institutions for largely obsolete reasons: 1. Libraries - pre-internet/digitization, a massive amount of human knowledge lived solely in university libraries. The size and contents of a given university's library was a very real driver of its value as an educational institution. That may be marginally true today, especially in the case of rare manuscripts and whatnot, but the competitive advantage of having an expansive library is basically gone. 2. Recruiting - Companies try to recruit new employees at universities for several reasons. First, they're outsourcing basic candidate diligence to admissions committees. Second, they see efficiency in putting the mouth of the candidate funnel where there are lots of smart motivated young people in one place. Third, alumni loyalty to alma mater is often very strong. However, technology (electronic background checks, being able to look at a candidate's repo, etc) has seriously degraded the AdCom's relative value in filtering for people who are smart, not criminals, and can get authority figures to say nice things about them. Similarly, technology has reduced to near-zero the necessity of having face-to-face interaction during the initial stages of the hiring process (employers will always want to do in-person final rounds, but the need for in-person funnel-mouth events like career fairs / company informational presentations / etc no longer exists as it did pre-internet). Alumni loyalty will be far more sticky, but its importance will diminish over time. 3. Professors - just as the competitive moat provided by libraries was largely destroyed by the internet, so too is professor access. You can talk shop with many big-name academics on Twitter; you can watch their lectures on Youtube; they will email you their papers if you email them to ask; etc. Is a Twitter argument the same as visiting someone during their office hours? No, but it's a big improvement on the previous status quo. I think it's going to be a very, very hard landing for colleges over the next couple decades as young people start making different decisions based on the options available to them.
- glup 8y ago
  Respectfully, I think analyses like this (there are many going back to the 90's at least) miss the -1st and 0th assets offered by elite universities: signaling power of the institution itself, and the opportunity to live among---and interact nearly continuously with--other full-time learners of diverse backgrounds but of generally similar ability. Elite universities do not exist to impart technical knowledge and skills (both can be obtained via many other routes), but to propagate and modulate the class system by 1) sorting individuals, 2) putting them in a warm fuzzy place where they can acculturate, form new relationships, and figure out how they (and w/e domain they choose to specialize in) relates to the broader array of institutions, and 3) providing a succinct, society-wide signaling mechanism (not that it's good/fair/accurate, just that it is widely accepted). So far as I am aware, these deeper assets of universities are not under threat. In my experience, people with strong technical skills from non-elite educational routes end up working for people with weak technical skills from elite universities, for a broad variety of reasons (esp. access to capital, comfort in managerial positions). That said, I think we are at risk of seeing the higher education system become increasingly bifurcated: winner-takes-all dynamics gradually centralize power in a tiny number of elite universities (there's a lot of work on this, that 2nd and 3rd tier colleges are under the most financial stress) and a larger 'commodity' higher education system focused on imparting skills (basically extended job training).
jedberg 8y ago
I'm of two minds on this. One the one hand, nothing can replicate the college experience of: - Living in a building with a bunch of other 18-22 year olds - Living in a town that is mostly populated by 18-22 year olds - Having to figure out how to take care of the laundry and dishes while having time to study and go to parties with said 18-22 year olds. That being said, I'm currently doing YCs startup school, which is run very similarly to the large lectures I had in college. There is a main weekly lecture or two that is viewable online, and then there is a small group discussion with 15 or so others, led by a "TA". The discussion happens online but is live at a scheduled time (conveniently for me at 7pm). As a 41 year old with kids, this system has a lot of advantages for me. I can watch the lectures at night after they go to bed, I can watch them in double speed so that I can done quicker and my mind doesn't get bored and wander, and I can do the discussion section from pretty much anywhere with internet. So I think overall this system is better for me now, but if I were 18, I don't think I'd prefer it.
- overcast 8y ago
  If we determined college wasn't necessary for my child to succeed in life. I think it would still be worth the one year tuition fee of having them experience freshmen year. It's just something like you said, that can not be replicated. It builds a skillset I think that is invaluable. Oh, and fun.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  I think you’re conflating an education (what you’re getting now) with a life experience (what you’re describing someone going to college is receiving). I would rather pay for my kids to travel the world for a year after high school, and then educate them separately (similar to the education you’re receiving now, internships, etc), so they can have a richer life experience and hopefully a better education. Disclaimer: Started working at 17, did not attend college.
  - jedberg 8y ago
    You're right, I am. However, that life experience is derived from the common experience of "being in college", so I think the two are necessarily intertwined. I don't think you'd get the same experience traveling the world (you'd get great experience, just not anything similar) or just living near other 18-22 year olds without the common goal of graduation.
cosmosa 8y ago
In my opinion moocs have a long way to go to be comparable to an in person experience. First of all the execution of the pre-recorded lectures is not nearly as good as in person. Writing on the board vs seeing slides and hearing a voice vs seeing someone talk in person is very different. The pacing of the pre-recorded lectures is very mechanical as I'm sure it's tough teaching a camera, whereas in person it is pretty natural. The ability to ask questions in class really helps too. Not meeting with other students/tas/professors in person really has a bad outcome on learning.
apo 8y ago
The interesting thing about the marketplace disruption model is how difficult it can be to distinguish disruptive from sustaining innovations in their early phases. Take electric cars, an example that Christensen has talked about in his books. He viewed electric cars as a disruptive innovation. However, few of the predictions about the electric car market from this perspective have held up. Tesla, the upstart, attacked the market from the top end, not the bottom end with luxury cars. The company now has formidable competitors in major auto makers including Mercades, and GM. Electric cars are still pricy and appeal to an upmarket customer base willing to sacrifice range for other factors. Christensen's blueprint for the electric car industry was attack from the bottom. Focus on markets where inexpensive, short range vehicles are an advantage. He offers parents buying a first car for their kids as an example. But that's not how things have played out. It turns out that replacing a combustion-based powertrain with an electric one allows established players to continue using the same business model that got them where they are. Petroleum companies may be disrupted in the changeover to EVs, but that has little to do with automakers who at the end of the day make a bug hunk of metal and plastic for moving people around and sell it on credit. It's tempting to think of online universities in much the same way as Christensen thought about electric cars: as a disruptive innovation. What if online universities are instead sustaining innovations that will allow incumbents to preserve their existing business models (selling prestige and a credential to families with college-age children) while proving hostile to startups hoping to break in?
- znpy 8y ago
  Meh. So far, on-line education hasn't disrupted that much. Just this year the University of London has launched a fully on-line BSc in CS, but the MOOC movement has started in 2011 that is seven or eight years ago. So far, the MOOC movement has basically failed to truly deliver. In the end Udacity is selling something called "micro-masters" which is a nicer term to indicate "industrial certifications". If this is how it proceeds, my opinion is that in ten years most universities will still be where they now are, safe and sound.
- wahern 8y ago
  However, few of the predictions about the electric car market from this perspective have held up Clayton Christensen making predictions throws me through a loop. I feel like he misunderstood his own thesis. My take away from Innovator's Dilemma was that (1) at every step of the game the most economically rational, profit maximizing strategy is to ride your successful business model all the way to the cliff and (2) you cannot predict what will become disruptive because success is context dependent, path dependent, and highly dynamic. If you could foresee all those interdependencies you could make a fortune in the stock market over night; but you can't. Something appears disruptive only in retrospect; beforehand it's just one among several competing alternatives, most or all of which will be forgotten. His big solution at the end of the Innovator's Dilemma was GE-style conglomerates that spun off small ventures to test new ideas free from parent companies' economic calculus. But look at where GE and similar corporations mentioned in the book are now. That strategy does nothing to overcome the fundamental impediments to perpetual business success. Failure is inevitable, period. The only real "solution" is a financial market that can quickly reallocate capital to the manifest winners. The more efficient that capital and labor markets become, the less of an advantage large conglomerates will enjoy. But it all comes down to allocation of resources subsequent to the emergence of identifiable market trends. I never bothered to read his other books because what was the point? He was right in the first-half of the Innovator's Dilemma; everything he wrote after that was a contradiction.
joaorico 8y ago
This is a bit of a strange article. First, "in his recent book" refers to his 2011 book [1]. And Christensen has been prophesying this general bankruptcy "in the next decade" since that time. [2] In any case it's interesting to think about the larger argument of the future of traditional higher education in general versus online education. Bryan Caplan's thesis that (the state should cut funding for higher education because) higher education is mostly about signalling 3 things is a good tool. He argues that higher education signals a combination of intelligence, conscientiousness and conformity. The combination of the 3 is crucial for the model. [3] Online education, and more generally self-education, fails on the conformity side. Companies do not want in general to risk such non-conformists, when they can hire from a stream of fresh graduates (smart, hard-working and relatively conformist). Also, I think the socialization, friendships and networking that happen in the university are extremely valuable and not easily replaced by online education (where and with who can a smart, driven 18 year old hang out while studying and learning for 4 years on MOOCs and textbooks?) And in addition, I hope, traditional universities are starting to improve their teaching methods (eg, flipped classroom, peer instruction) to multiply the pedagogical and motivational value they offer vs MOOCs. For online education to replace traditional higher ed, it might require taking into account these factors. Could something like workspaces for freelancers or remote workers - but for studying - replace the traditional institution and the above benefits? Such that, for example, you would not be seen as an extreme non-conformist by not enrolling in a university? Also, outside the US, tuition costs is often much lower. An online STEM degree, say a certified online masters in software engineering such as coursera or edx, could easily be more expensive than regular (or even the best) university. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Innovative-University-Changing-Higher-Education/dp/1118063481 https://www.amazon.com/Innovative-University-Changing-Higher... [2] https://www.economist.com/international/2012/12/22/learning-new-lessons https://www.economist.com/international/2012/12/22/learning-... [3] https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/dp/0691174652/ https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/d... (To be clear, he argues that from the individual's perspective, university is still net positive, if you have what it takes to finish the degree and don't get too much in debt. It's the state that should cut funding since it's inflating credentials.)
j45 8y ago
Education + colleges have been my full-time area of research and work for the past 12 months: - The funnel of how we access learning has changed, and colleges are further down on the bottom of the funnel. Many are already losing money each year. - Traditional education seems simply not able to keep up with the rate of change in society. - How the majority of people today learn something, or acquire knowledge/skill/competency seems to be distinctly changing: 1) Find something on Google/Youtube. Failing that, 2) Find a small e-course. Failing that, 3) Find a larger e-course. Failing that, 4) If there's a lot of courses we discover we need, we look for perhaps a micro-credential or small course. Failing that, 5) If our need is beyond what a micro-course can provide, we may look at a program in a community college, polytechnic, etc. - Academically speaking, the future of education is not solely online, or offline, or blended. These are dated academic concepts that don't cover the 70% of learning that is informal and occurs outside of the classroom. People just find a way to learn now, or share knowledge. - We can't replace instructors, or instruction, we need to better support the instructors who are willing to learn digital skills. Many refuse. We have a lot of educators trying to use technology but not competent with it's capabilities or possibilities. - The future of education is about creating better digital learning interactions that can evolve and update with the rate of change of best pracice in a domain. That domain will be digitally supported, whether it's digital classrooms, digital textbooks (of sorts), or digital learning, all powered through human connection. - Education can't keep up with speed. Lots of topics are emerging and changing faster than ever before. A 2000 year old model of higher education will need to evolve, because knowledge and how to apply it is evolving quicker than traditional education can. - Traditional colleges, while still very relevant, will have a diminished role in the most emergent or changing educational topics. This isn't new, but I think the change will come not from the top or the bottom of the pyramid, but from the side at all levels. There are many good pockets of activity occurring, and while they don't make a suit quite yet...
spsrich 8y ago
Excellent. Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch.
znpy 8y ago
The flaw is, imho, in the fact that we are talking about business models. If you look at thriving universities in Europe, in thriving countries (like Finland, Sweden and Norway) you might see that they are basically run at loss: this is because education is an investment, not an expense. Education is supposed to be an investment for nations, not individuals (or, more realistically, parents of individuals).
- TheBeardKing 8y ago
  The assumption being that it's the government's job to invest in individuals. I'm not here to argue either way, but at least half the country would disagree that it is.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - beat 8y ago
    The other half treats education as investing in society.
  - vkou 8y ago
    > The assumption being that it's the government's job to invest in individuals. I'm not here to argue either way, but at least half the country would disagree that it is. Why is the government involved in teaching children how to read, write, do arithmetic, and sit in a chair for 8 hours a day, then? Absolute ideological opposition to government involvement in education - period - is a fringe opinion, that is at best, shared by ~5% of the country - not 50%. (Much of the 50% disagrees about the curriculum, but that's another story.)
    - TheBeardKing 8y ago
      We're obviously talking about higher education here. We all agree basic functioning citizens need 12 years of education. Educational attainment beyond that varies depending on occupation requirements and personal interest.
naveen99 8y ago
well educational institutions are getting close to extracting most of their ROI from education. if education costs a million dollars, it might make sense for many to just invest the money, and skip the education and career, and go straight to retirement.
Zigurd 8y ago
The title is clickbait. Enough third tier schools will in fact fail to give it the aura of plausibility. And if the US becomes more hostile and closed to foreign students, we could totally screw this up. But rising economies around the world will produce a lot more high quality students than their home countries' elite universities can absorb, and that will provide enough customers for good quality universities in the US. There will also be a market for children of wealthy families who can't make it into very selective schools. Probably for 30 years+. Beyond that, US schools will face more competition, but a global middle class will continue to grow.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  I don't have any sources at my fingertips, but the US has some of the most lenient college admissions for "adult" students of any country on the planet. In some countries, if you haven't decided on a college track by, say, middle school, then you are going to a trade school, not college. And it's tough in many countries to get into school at all later if you didn't get all your ducks in a row for college right out of high school. In contrast, the US makes it easier to go back to school past a certain age. So a lot of foreigners go to school here because you basically need enough money to pull it off. There are a lot of fewer things that automatically slam the door shut in your face because you didn't do a thing at age 13 or whatever. Disclaimer: I haven't read the article. I'm just replying to what is in this comment and agreeing that the US will likely continue to educate the world for the foreseeable future.
jgamman 8y ago
If we unbundle the courses and/or make MOOCS minimally OK - what's to stop students hiring their own TA to help them through. So long as you pair this up with a nationally recognised micro-credential framework you could see the development of a "faculty" led small-school revival. Add in some sort of matchmaker service at critical mass, some sort of pedagogy credential (how to teach well, not what to teach) and education becomes a nice small business opportunity for PhD holders.
irrational 8y ago
Teenage pregnancy has been in a nose-dive because the teenagers are online instead of hanging out these days (at least that is what I've read). If young adults went to school online instead of getting together at college... no more sex? I'm reminded of some sci-fi stories I read in my youth about futuristic societies where nobody interacted in person and babies came from the lab. At the time the notion of people not having sex and babies anymore seemed far fetched. Now... maybe not so unlikely after all.
fiftyfifty 8y ago
People here seem to think Christensen is saying higher ed is dying, but I don't think that is the point he is making. Flagship state schools and the Stanfords, MITs and Princetons of the world will be just fine, but there are many small, private, liberal arts colleges (often with a religious affiliation) that are in a big trouble financially. Many of these schools are fairly expensive at 30k a year or more and they are having a really hard time attracting students. This article has a lot more details about this trend: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/13/spate-recent-college-closures-has-some-seeing-long-predicted-consolidation-taking https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/13/spate-recent-... Something like 30% of the colleges in the US have less than 1,000 students and those are the schools that are in trouble, a drop in enrollment for a school that size is a death knell: https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Real-Reason-Small-Colleges/236732 https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Real-Reason-Small-Coll... Many of these schools haven't changed their curriculum in decades, in fact they can't even give a reasonable definition to the term "Liberal Arts" and with costs so high parents and students are expecting a little bit more to justify the investment. https://hechingerreport.org/with-enrollment-sliding-liberal-arts-colleges-struggle-to-make-a-case-for-themselves/ https://hechingerreport.org/with-enrollment-sliding-liberal-... Personally I think the way we handle higher education in the US is totally backwards; get the degree and then try to figure out what to do for the rest of your life? What the heck kind of plan is that? If someone came to you with a business plan written like some of these kid's plans for the future would you invest $200,000 in their business? And yet somehow we loan kids money to pursue this plan and/or parents spend the money to fund it. It is absolutely insane that this has gone on as long as it has. Imagine if these kids had to submit a 10-20 year plan before they could take a out a student loan?
- wahern 8y ago
  Imagine if these kids had to submit a 10-20 year plan before they could take a out a student loan? Imagine if you had to pick a major when you were 6 years old. That would be insane. (Insane is a poor choice of words because this is effectively the case in many countries for cultural reasons, but in the context of U.S. culture would be considered imprudent and impractical.) In a society like the United States where employees are expendable and life-time employment will involve numerous different companies and positions, there's something to be said for a generalist education. If the U.S. had an industrial policy like Germany than a German-style educational model would make much more sense. But the U.S. has consistently rejected those policies, despite decades of economists of all stripes advising politicians to do so. (The same is true to a lesser extent in the rest of the Anglosphere, which not coincidentally also have higher education models more similar to the U.S. than continental Europe and much of the rest of the world.) Therefore, employers will value the more generalist approach. In the U.S. a 4-year biology degree matters not because of what it says about your knowledge in biology, but largely because it shows you persevered through 2+ years of writing, history, etc. In other words, you had the discipline to take up other subjects you didn't explicitly choose; not only pass their exams but to go to the classes (i.e. show-up!) and do the coursework (obey orders). And, ideally, it would show that you can integrate and apply those disciplines and methodologies to various tasks. (This is more aspirational.)
mrnobody_67 8y ago
Charlie Munger quotes-- “There’s a lot wrong [with American universities]. I’d remove 3/4 of the faculty — everything but the hard sciences. But nobody’s going to do that, so we’ll have to live with the defects. It’s amazing how wrongheaded [the teaching is]. There is fatal disconnectedness. You have these squirrelly people in each department who don’t see the big picture.” “I think liberal art faculties at major universities have views that are not very sound, at least on public policy issues — they may know a lot of French [however].” "Teaching people formulas that don’t really work in real life is a disaster for the world.”
ataturk 8y ago
This is the best thing that could happen. It's not even online education that is disrupting colleges, it is their own ridiculous bs--creating all these bs majors that nobody can viably do anything with after graduating at huge personal cost in time and money. It is the fact that jobs don't line up with anything colleges produce. Not even CS majors are well prepared for the working world, so what exactly is the point? If colleges exist only to create more academics, then all they have built is a self-licking ice cream cone. That means fewer people should be attending college, not more. Couple that with the ridiculous over-spending colleges have done in the area of real estate development, and figure out the huge carrying cost of all that new infrastructure, and it paints a very bleak picture for their future viability. They should not have taken the easy Wall Street $$. It was a sugar high.

149 points by uptown 8y ago

I wonder if there some other services that colleges provide that he misses out: 1. Space just to get away and think 2. meeting other people 3. meeting people to date 4. Physical scheduled deadlines to ensure that you complete the task When the online system provides those, I think it'll be game over. I can see a hybrid though: my underused hotel turns into a dorm with high bandwidth connection to Stanford's curriculum and the local professor will give coaching when necessary.

tonyedgecombe 8y ago
Just removing responsibility for accreditation from universities would be a start.
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
  That's an interesting idea. Could you explain your reasoning a bit?
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    At the moment you can't really compare the results from one university to another. This makes it a market for Lemons[1]. If they are all teaching to a common standard then it would open up some real competition. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
pc86 8y ago
Why are the deadlines at an online school any less real than those at a physical school?
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  > Why are the deadlines at an online school any less real than those at a physical school? I'm not in education atm but have a lot of experience working with students. This is a real psychological effect even if it's maybe hard for tech types to understand. I think it has to do with the fact that social pressure is avoidable online (you don't have to show up and face the teacher whose work you didn't do). That perception has a strong effect on students; they feel shame for not doing their work even when teachers don't really give a damn about whether they did their homework/project. Maybe not impossible to overcome, but a real problem. Education disruptors ignore these sorts of strong psychological effects around education at their own peril...
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    It's the anonymity of a large university classroom that makes it possible to feel like it's acceptable to stop attending - my best attended classes were those where the professor knew my name. I imagine there would be worse absenteeism in online courses.
- spyspy 8y ago
  It's not real until you're sprinting through the dark basement of an old building trying to find the right door to slip your essay under by the 7am cutoff. But seriously I agree, almost everything is handed in electronically now anyway.
- projectramo 8y ago
  The deadlines are just as real, but the adherence to those deadlines is quite different. From my personal experience the difference is night and day. And not just for college courses vs online courses, but even for casual offline courses vs online courses. The data apparently reflects my personal experience. I can't find any of the (numerous) studies I had seen before, but this link alludes to them: https://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2015/01/30/experts-debate-graduation-rates-for-online-students https://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2...
sevensor 8y ago
Let's not forget where big public universities have really been spending their (and their donors') money lately: 5. Luxury student dorms. 6. High-end gym facilities. 7. Junior professional sports (Bonus: pay and benefits for the athletes is peanuts.) The things I don't like about universities are the hardest to replace.
- mrguyorama 8y ago
  >5. Luxury student dorms. Having slept in many of those dorms, I would not call them luxurious.
- sdinsn 8y ago
  Luxury dorms? Which schools have that?
  - stephenhuey 8y ago
    Some may not use the word luxury, but there are a few nicer ones out there. https://www.housebeautiful.com/promotions/g21086931/best-college-dorms/ https://www.housebeautiful.com/promotions/g21086931/best-col...
    - Woofles 8y ago
      I went to WashU (#1 on that list) and while the dorms were nice I wouldn't say they were "nicer than your apartment" or "luxury". The benefits that you would find that you wouldn't find at most other places are personal bathrooms (sort of... you're still sharing with other students but just not a full hall of them), tempurpedic mattresses (only in the older dorms when I was there), and maybe carpeted floors. Beyond that it's not like we got anything crazy. We had a common room that was basically a table and a few chairs to study at, one in the basement that had a few couches and a TV, and one tiny kitchen for the entire building. Just a little bit of context as far as "luxury dorms" go since I see WashU at the top of almost every list. Maybe luxury means your plumbing doesn't break when it gets cold and you don't get athlete's foot from the showers in the shared bathroom.
  - 8y ago
longerthoughts 8y ago
I didn't read his opinion as challenging the value of a true college experience, just suggesting that the cost savings of online education will make it a much more attractive option for a lot of people. Your points made me curious, though - it'll be interesting to see if there's a shift to favor a certain type of individual who thrives in an online education system vs traditional, as well as what implications that has for workplace performance.
- vtange 8y ago
  The savings from the cost of traditional college helps very much if a MOOC student manages to find a way to network with people via Meetups or other ways - and with the money saved one no longer has to be stingy over paying membership fees for some organizations
madrox 8y ago
Let me see if I can give this a shot: 1. Nature...have you tried it? 2. Meetups and other social gatherings around various interests and trades 3. OkCupid, Tinder, etc. 4. ...a job? Jira? One of a number of existing mechanisms for accountability? There you go! I found game over for you! As someone who didn't go to college until their late 20s, I would've foregone the whole thing if I could've done it online. I think people overvalue the "go to college after high school" thing just because it's become such an accepted practice, but it's a normality fallacy.
- umanwizard 8y ago
  It is dramatically harder to meet someone on OkCupid or Tinder than it is in real life, unless you're either (1) a woman, or (2) a significantly more attractive than average man.
- HarryHirsch 8y ago
  There's a difference between "going to college" to take classes, and dedicating oneself to a subject in an environment with capable peers and professors. Here's what the latter looks like: http://cds.cern.ch/record/548966/files/0204295.pdf http://cds.cern.ch/record/548966/files/0204295.pdf Unfortunately, the great majority of young people only gets to experience the only former, and they are being cheated and don't even know it.
theWheez 8y ago
I dropped out after my sophomore year after I got an offer to move from an intern position to a JR developer position. I enjoyed my time greatly, but also do not regret my decision to leave partway through (yet). Would a 2-year, highly internship and industry focused program be able to offer the same social benefits while reducing cost?
- sodafountan 8y ago
  I did something similar after one year, I dropped out to start an app development business that was growing for me pretty steadily, the business didn't do well long term and I took a job in the industry. I Haven't regretted it yet and I'm far ahead of my peers in just the debt load alone, that doesn't even include my higher salary, better resume and more years of experience. I'm not too upset that I missed a few years of binge drinking myself to death to get a head start on my life.

thdxr 8y ago

Premise makes sense and I want this to happen but have to keep in mind we are easily swayed by extrapolations that forecast doom. Probably won't be to the extent he predicts

Dowwie 8y ago

Bankruptcy isn't a bad idea for universities. They're not supposed to be for-profit corporations, although many have run them as such. Bankruptcy could help schools restructure their operations, but that requires that boards of directors haven't been captured by financial interests.

throwawayjava 8y ago
In practice, this is an extraordinarily delicate and dangerous process. Suppose you are a CS professor at the sort of no-name university that this article is talking about. Odds are, you're more than qualified for a lot of industry roles (and have former students who would hire you on without blinking). Also, those industry roles have much higher salaries than your teaching gig. However, you stay at No-Name U. because it's a pleasant life and you enjoy teaching. Then admin comes along and chops half your tenured colleagues. Suddenly, No Name U. is a hellish place to work. Time to leave. Now multiply that across all of the faculties that have private sector options. Now notice that those are exactly the majors that are difficult to recruit faculty for in the first place [1] and, moreover, are exactly majors that students are interested in these days. That's the risk. At universities, cutting back means firing people. And firing people means low morale. And low morale means losing exactly the people who were going to power your turn-around story. [1] https://cra.org/articles-addressing-shortage-of-cs-professors-across-many-institutions/ https://cra.org/articles-addressing-shortage-of-cs-professor...
DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
> They're not supposed to be for-profit corporations, although many have run them as such. Can you explain a bit about why you believe that? I could imagine different parties having different goals for the same institution.
neuromantik8086 8y ago
> Bankruptcy isn't a bad idea for universities. It's important to note that the way university finances / endowments are structured, as well as the demands of alumni make it so that bankruptcy isn't really that simple in higher ed. [0] > They're not supposed to be for-profit corporations I suspect that you don't totally grasp the non-profit vs for-profit distinction. The essential difference between a for-profit and a non-profit is simply that non-profits re-invest their profits into the organization rather than distributing those profits to shareholders. The original intent of this structure was to facilitate philanthropic endeavors (which have pretty much always been self-serving in some subtle way), but just because a non-profit corporation isn't associated with some obvious social benefit doesn't make it any less of a non-profit if it doesn't have shareholders. It's not always obvious, but Rolex and Ikea are both structured as non-profits (with some for-profit subsidiaries iirc). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Briar_College#2015_closure_attempt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Briar_College#2015_closu...

two2two 8y ago

> Fortunately, Christensen says that there is one thing that online education will not be able to replace. In his research, he found that most of the successful alumni who gave generous donations to their alma maters did so because a specific professor or coach inspired them. This is still my argument for in-person lectures. Online classes are okay, but the insights gained from the unexplainable passion presented through oration provides unparalleled value to one's motivation and internal framework.

jedberg 8y ago
That sounds like a technology problem. As in, as the technology gets better, you’d be able to have that same experience online.
crispyambulance 8y ago
Lectures from professors who are supremely skilled at pedagogy are great. Lucky students will have only a handful of those in their academic careers. These can, however, be recorded. It might not be as electrifying as the real thing, but the real thing is so rare. There are other activities that simply can't be done alone, however: laboratory classes, recitations and interactions where the students engage at a personal level with professors, TA's and other students. This is how students develop relationships that they carry with them past their time in academia. There is room, I think, for a hybrid approach. A combination of online learning with some kind of periodic on-site and in-person practicum. This drastically lowers the cost of the education, but still engages students on a personal level.
- tdfx 8y ago
  One of my CS professors used the "flipped classroom" technique. He would assign the readings and expect them to be done by the time of the scheduled class. Then we would jointly do exercises and collaborate on the topics that were touched upon in the readings. He was ruthless if it was obvious you hadn't done the reading. It was effective. I think one or two days a week for 2 hours is the perfect amount of lab/in-person collaboration time. Combined with an online forum for questions and video lectures, that would be an ideal course of instruction for me.

ryandrake 8y ago

How does this make sense given the astronomical year-to-year increases in college costs with no end in sight? Where is all the money going? I assume ballooning administrations.

DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
I assume the logic is that eventually there will not be enough students willing to pay those higher prices, in part because they'll have online education as a (much cheaper) alternative.
secabeen 8y ago
> How does this make sense given the astronomical year-to-year increases in college costs with no end in sight? Do you have a citation for the above increases? There have been big increases at state schools as state governments have reduced funding, but that's mostly over (there's much less state funding to cut now.) Nameplate cost at private institutions has gone up, but net cost to students (actual amounts paid by students after grants and financial aid) has not gone up that much.
- ashelmire 8y ago
  https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2017-09-20/see-20-years-of-tuition-growth-at-national-universities https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-co... >net cost to students (actual amounts paid by students after grants and financial aid) has not gone up that much. I'm skeptical of that claim and would request a citation as well. College Board says the opposite (tuition and fees increasing faster than aid): https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/10/25/tuition-and-fees-still-rising-faster-aid-college-board-report-shows https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/10/25/tuition-and-f... And another important set of expenses to track are non-tuition related expenses; it costs more than ever to rent an apartment and pay for other such expenses today.
  - secabeen 8y ago
    So the US News graphs don't adjust for inflation (as they note). If you perform that adjustment, it's a 50% increase over 20 years, which is something, but not astronomical. That pretty much matches this inflation-adjusted data: https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/tuition-fees-room-and-board-over-time https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tabl... Here's the net cost data, showing that the net real cost is only up about 10% over 5 years. Some sub-numbers are even lower. Net tuition for private non-profit schools is _flat_ across the last 15 years ($14,560 in 02-03, $14,540 in 17-18): https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/average-net-price-over-time-full-time-students-sector https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tabl... My argument is that college prices are up, but largely because of disinvestment by state legislatures, pushing up the perceived cost of college, which allows the private schools to increase their nameplate costs significantly, while using financial aid to keep the actual increases to students in-line with the increases in actual costs for state students. Another way of looking at it is this: If colleges have been raising tuition astronomically, what have they been doing with the additional money? Additional expenditures on students or facilities are not much changed over the past 10 years. Real expenses per-student are largely flat: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_334.10.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_334.10.a... If colleges were jacking prices through the roof to spend way more on unnecessary luxuries or administrators (as the common wisdom would have it), that would show up in the expenditures data, and it's just not there. I do agree that non-tuition related expenses are an issue, but that's not the university's fault, other than not building dorms fast enough (and dorms are usually pretty expensive, so it's just as likely that the issue is zoning and building restrictions by university town government, rather than university administrators).

IkmoIkmo 8y ago

Colleges will remain in business as long as businesses will use college degrees as a meaningful qualification to hire talent. Data has shown that companies have continued to use degrees beyond their relation to actual tasks for the job they're hiring for. We've seen decades of evidence that degree inflation is on the rise, signalled by vacancies requiring a bachelor degree while the tasks are high school level. You can see this either by doing a qualitative analysis, e.g. running surveys among employees and categorising their job complexity and linking it to an educational level. Here you find e.g. many administrative jobs which an 18 year old with 2 weeks of on the job training can do, require one to finish a 3 year bachelor in just about anything, first. But the more common methodology is a quantitative one that's a little less accurate, but easier to perform. Survey existing employees at a large firm about their educational credentials, then survey vacancies for people in similar positions at such firms. You'll find various occupations where 60% of vacancies require a certain credential that only 20% of the employees have, indicating that many companies require credentials that are apparently not necessary. And this is on the rise. Then you can wonder why, and the answer is because they can. If you can choose between a large pool of people who meet minimum qualifications, you have the luxury to select overqualified people. And that tendency by human resource managers isn't going to change anytime soon, especially not when there's no significant salary premium companies have to pay to get a person with a college graduate to do highschool level work, over hiring a high school graduate. And I don't see that changing anytime soon with increasing competitive pressure from technological advancement and globalisation. In the end, a college degree is moving more towards a signalling device that shows socioeconomic background and interpersonal aspects such as grit, stability, delayed gratification, and is less and less about signalling subject matter knowledge, academic competencies etc. HR focuses more and more on the former and not on the latter, when requiring a college degree. As online education is more accessible and easier (i.e., less financially straining, less psychologically straining, less socially challenging, but rather at-your-own-pace learning behind your computer from anywhere), it's typically viewed as not signalling the former aspects I just mentioned (grit, delayed gratification) but mostly signalling the latter (knowledge etc). That's why I don't necessarily think that online education is going to supplant colleges from the outside as fast as we think. Of course it'll take over eventually, but I think it'll be slow and will happen more from the inside, by existing colleges, not just through disruption of new startups which will bankrupt existing colleges. Precisely because of a growing number of companies which have stopped using college-degree requirements to hire for knowledge, and have started to require college degrees to select for 'the type of person who has the background and personal traits to be able to survive and complete college', which online education doesn't signal as well.

glangdale 8y ago

The standard criticism of Christensen's work on disruption is that it applies better to products sold to business than those sold to consumers. The perennial failure of Apple to die as per his predictions is a case in point. He seems to have jumped into the "online resources will cause the traditional university to fail" bandwagon a bit late. I haven't heard that much hype about MOOCs lately, presumably because the dire completion rates have cleared out the hype circa 2013. It wouldn't surprise me if he's right, but not for the right reasons. Half of US colleges could go bankrupt in 10-15 years simply because they don't really provide a good education. They won't be replaced by a disruptor, they will just no longer be able to crank out mediocre educational product to people who now realize that a Bachelor of Something Or Other from Podunk U isn't actually a ticket to the middle class.

throwawayjava 8y ago
> He seems to have jumped into the "online resources will cause the traditional university to fail" bandwagon a bit late. This consulting firm advertisement is a very useful mental model, and I think MOOCs are probably on their way up and out of the trough of disappointment into the plateau of productivity: https://blogs.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/files/2017/08/Emerging-Technology-Hype-Cycle-for-2017_Infographic_R6A-1024x866.jpg https://blogs.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/files/2017/08/E... > They won't be replaced by a disruptor, they will just no longer be able to crank out mediocre educational product to people who now realize that a Bachelor of Something Or Other from Podunk U isn't actually a ticket to the middle class. This seems likely. My model for predicting college bankruptcy has exactly one input, which is this dataset: https://ifap.ed.gov/DefaultManagement/DefaultManagement.html https://ifap.ed.gov/DefaultManagement/DefaultManagement.html
- secabeen 8y ago
  > This seems likely. My model for predicting college bankruptcy has exactly one input, which is this dataset: https://ifap.ed.gov/DefaultManagement/DefaultManagement.html https://ifap.ed.gov/DefaultManagement/DefaultManagement.html This is a good dataset. It's important to remember that while the top 100 schools dominate the conversation around college, many many students go to smaller or non-selective schools that have a very different setup.

Kagerjay 8y ago

This doesn't really surprise me. There are so many terrible, and sometimes predatory for-profit tradeschool/colleges out there. State tuition scholarships are only getting worse over time, MOOC's are only getting better, and branching out into larger fields. Many for-profit colleges/tradeschools are using lynda.com and other partnerships with MOOCs anyhow. Grad schools are now offering online equivalents that are treated seriously (e.g. Georgia Tech especially) at affordable rates. Even when I had courses in university, sometimes there was an online version of every class. Why spend the effort of going to class, getting ready, when you can just watch everything at 2x playback speed? There are some classes that require hands on learning. But these are far and inbetween, and mostly are STEM related anyhow. You can't replace the collaborative experience, social connections of a college campus. And wisdom from an instructor, or those connections. But you don't need to go through that twice (grad school - unless for research) and tuition costs for online grad degrees are only lowering down for these

ThrustVectoring 8y ago
MOOCs aren't the competition for colleges: higher education largely sells credentials, not skills. The risk is a mix of a decline in credentialism (eg, no longer wanting a college degree for babysitting or firefighting jobs) and a rise in an independent credentialing bodies (like what actuaries have).
- hak8or 8y ago
  Georgia tech is one of the best comp sci universities out there, and their online masters program is not only accredited, it's indistinguishable from the on site masters program. The peice of paper does not diffirentiate between the two. So the credentials are there for Georgia tech, I do not know about the others though.

pimmen 8y ago

MOOCs have a staggering drop-out rate though, which I think makes predictions about their disruption less clear cut. https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/dcs/people/research/csrmaj/daniel_onah_edulearn14.pdf https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/dcs/people/research/csrmaj/dan...

JackFr 8y ago

This is a pretty information light article. If we assume that college prices are unsustainably high, and online courses achieve results comparable with a large swath of universities, it's not clear whether he assumes theses schools are unwilling or unable to respond to the changing environment. He may well be right, but it would be foolish to think that these schools don't see the same data he does, and that they're not going to at least try to address it.

throwawayperson 8y ago

The same can be said to Boston housing market.

monster_group 8y ago

One thing I don't get about online schools and courses is their lack of laboratory facilities. How is a student supposed to do engineering or natural sciences without labs? When I was doing engineering we used to spend so much time in labs doing experiments on expensive machines (electron microscope, X-ray diffractor etc.) that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. For me the real learning happened in the lab. How do MOOC and online courses plan to fill this gap?

dantheman 8y ago
99% of course work students do doesn't actually involve labs. I could see dedicated lab facilities being provided to students taking a MOOC or some other class.
- monster_group 8y ago
  Apparently even good universities like UT Austin don't care about labs anymore. They offer an online grad degree in Mechanical Engineering with no lab work! Imagine calling yourself a mechanical engineer without having set a foot in the lab. https://executive.engr.utexas.edu/pme/msme.php https://executive.engr.utexas.edu/pme/msme.php
  - btrettel 8y ago
    I am a PhD student at UT Austin in mechanical engineering right now. The MS does not require a lab class in either case. In my division, thermal/fluid systems, you can take either a class on experimental methods or a class on numerical methods (or both if you want) for a MS. Both are required for a PhD. http://www.me.utexas.edu/graduate/areas/tfs/courses http://www.me.utexas.edu/graduate/areas/tfs/courses Multiple lab courses are required for a BS in mechanical engineering at UT.
hinkley 8y ago
A primary draw of the engineering school at my university was an overabundance of hardware, especially in the CS program. I only had one class where there was a waiting list for hardware and that class was almost entirely grad students.

koolba 8y ago

Just wait and see what happens when they cut off federal student loans. That’d pull the rug out from under the higher ed house of cards much faster than 10-15 years.

aluminussoma 8y ago

He's been saying this since 2013, sticking the 15 year horizon (which would now leave 10 years): "Fifteen years from now more than half of the universities will be in bankruptcy, including the state schools. In the end, I am excited to see that happen." (source: https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/02/07/disruption-guru-christensen-why.html https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/02/07/disrupti...) Even if he is directionally correct, he could be way off on the timing.

leroy_masochist 8y ago

I think Christensen is generally right here. Colleges exist as physical institutions for largely obsolete reasons: 1. Libraries - pre-internet/digitization, a massive amount of human knowledge lived solely in university libraries. The size and contents of a given university's library was a very real driver of its value as an educational institution. That may be marginally true today, especially in the case of rare manuscripts and whatnot, but the competitive advantage of having an expansive library is basically gone. 2. Recruiting - Companies try to recruit new employees at universities for several reasons. First, they're outsourcing basic candidate diligence to admissions committees. Second, they see efficiency in putting the mouth of the candidate funnel where there are lots of smart motivated young people in one place. Third, alumni loyalty to alma mater is often very strong. However, technology (electronic background checks, being able to look at a candidate's repo, etc) has seriously degraded the AdCom's relative value in filtering for people who are smart, not criminals, and can get authority figures to say nice things about them. Similarly, technology has reduced to near-zero the necessity of having face-to-face interaction during the initial stages of the hiring process (employers will always want to do in-person final rounds, but the need for in-person funnel-mouth events like career fairs / company informational presentations / etc no longer exists as it did pre-internet). Alumni loyalty will be far more sticky, but its importance will diminish over time. 3. Professors - just as the competitive moat provided by libraries was largely destroyed by the internet, so too is professor access. You can talk shop with many big-name academics on Twitter; you can watch their lectures on Youtube; they will email you their papers if you email them to ask; etc. Is a Twitter argument the same as visiting someone during their office hours? No, but it's a big improvement on the previous status quo. I think it's going to be a very, very hard landing for colleges over the next couple decades as young people start making different decisions based on the options available to them.

glup 8y ago
Respectfully, I think analyses like this (there are many going back to the 90's at least) miss the -1st and 0th assets offered by elite universities: signaling power of the institution itself, and the opportunity to live among---and interact nearly continuously with--other full-time learners of diverse backgrounds but of generally similar ability. Elite universities do not exist to impart technical knowledge and skills (both can be obtained via many other routes), but to propagate and modulate the class system by 1) sorting individuals, 2) putting them in a warm fuzzy place where they can acculturate, form new relationships, and figure out how they (and w/e domain they choose to specialize in) relates to the broader array of institutions, and 3) providing a succinct, society-wide signaling mechanism (not that it's good/fair/accurate, just that it is widely accepted). So far as I am aware, these deeper assets of universities are not under threat. In my experience, people with strong technical skills from non-elite educational routes end up working for people with weak technical skills from elite universities, for a broad variety of reasons (esp. access to capital, comfort in managerial positions). That said, I think we are at risk of seeing the higher education system become increasingly bifurcated: winner-takes-all dynamics gradually centralize power in a tiny number of elite universities (there's a lot of work on this, that 2nd and 3rd tier colleges are under the most financial stress) and a larger 'commodity' higher education system focused on imparting skills (basically extended job training).

jedberg 8y ago

I'm of two minds on this. One the one hand, nothing can replicate the college experience of: - Living in a building with a bunch of other 18-22 year olds - Living in a town that is mostly populated by 18-22 year olds - Having to figure out how to take care of the laundry and dishes while having time to study and go to parties with said 18-22 year olds. That being said, I'm currently doing YCs startup school, which is run very similarly to the large lectures I had in college. There is a main weekly lecture or two that is viewable online, and then there is a small group discussion with 15 or so others, led by a "TA". The discussion happens online but is live at a scheduled time (conveniently for me at 7pm). As a 41 year old with kids, this system has a lot of advantages for me. I can watch the lectures at night after they go to bed, I can watch them in double speed so that I can done quicker and my mind doesn't get bored and wander, and I can do the discussion section from pretty much anywhere with internet. So I think overall this system is better for me now, but if I were 18, I don't think I'd prefer it.

overcast 8y ago
If we determined college wasn't necessary for my child to succeed in life. I think it would still be worth the one year tuition fee of having them experience freshmen year. It's just something like you said, that can not be replicated. It builds a skillset I think that is invaluable. Oh, and fun.
toomuchtodo 8y ago
I think you’re conflating an education (what you’re getting now) with a life experience (what you’re describing someone going to college is receiving). I would rather pay for my kids to travel the world for a year after high school, and then educate them separately (similar to the education you’re receiving now, internships, etc), so they can have a richer life experience and hopefully a better education. Disclaimer: Started working at 17, did not attend college.
- jedberg 8y ago
  You're right, I am. However, that life experience is derived from the common experience of "being in college", so I think the two are necessarily intertwined. I don't think you'd get the same experience traveling the world (you'd get great experience, just not anything similar) or just living near other 18-22 year olds without the common goal of graduation.

cosmosa 8y ago

In my opinion moocs have a long way to go to be comparable to an in person experience. First of all the execution of the pre-recorded lectures is not nearly as good as in person. Writing on the board vs seeing slides and hearing a voice vs seeing someone talk in person is very different. The pacing of the pre-recorded lectures is very mechanical as I'm sure it's tough teaching a camera, whereas in person it is pretty natural. The ability to ask questions in class really helps too. Not meeting with other students/tas/professors in person really has a bad outcome on learning.

apo 8y ago

The interesting thing about the marketplace disruption model is how difficult it can be to distinguish disruptive from sustaining innovations in their early phases. Take electric cars, an example that Christensen has talked about in his books. He viewed electric cars as a disruptive innovation. However, few of the predictions about the electric car market from this perspective have held up. Tesla, the upstart, attacked the market from the top end, not the bottom end with luxury cars. The company now has formidable competitors in major auto makers including Mercades, and GM. Electric cars are still pricy and appeal to an upmarket customer base willing to sacrifice range for other factors. Christensen's blueprint for the electric car industry was attack from the bottom. Focus on markets where inexpensive, short range vehicles are an advantage. He offers parents buying a first car for their kids as an example. But that's not how things have played out. It turns out that replacing a combustion-based powertrain with an electric one allows established players to continue using the same business model that got them where they are. Petroleum companies may be disrupted in the changeover to EVs, but that has little to do with automakers who at the end of the day make a bug hunk of metal and plastic for moving people around and sell it on credit. It's tempting to think of online universities in much the same way as Christensen thought about electric cars: as a disruptive innovation. What if online universities are instead sustaining innovations that will allow incumbents to preserve their existing business models (selling prestige and a credential to families with college-age children) while proving hostile to startups hoping to break in?

znpy 8y ago
Meh. So far, on-line education hasn't disrupted that much. Just this year the University of London has launched a fully on-line BSc in CS, but the MOOC movement has started in 2011 that is seven or eight years ago. So far, the MOOC movement has basically failed to truly deliver. In the end Udacity is selling something called "micro-masters" which is a nicer term to indicate "industrial certifications". If this is how it proceeds, my opinion is that in ten years most universities will still be where they now are, safe and sound.
wahern 8y ago
However, few of the predictions about the electric car market from this perspective have held up Clayton Christensen making predictions throws me through a loop. I feel like he misunderstood his own thesis. My take away from Innovator's Dilemma was that (1) at every step of the game the most economically rational, profit maximizing strategy is to ride your successful business model all the way to the cliff and (2) you cannot predict what will become disruptive because success is context dependent, path dependent, and highly dynamic. If you could foresee all those interdependencies you could make a fortune in the stock market over night; but you can't. Something appears disruptive only in retrospect; beforehand it's just one among several competing alternatives, most or all of which will be forgotten. His big solution at the end of the Innovator's Dilemma was GE-style conglomerates that spun off small ventures to test new ideas free from parent companies' economic calculus. But look at where GE and similar corporations mentioned in the book are now. That strategy does nothing to overcome the fundamental impediments to perpetual business success. Failure is inevitable, period. The only real "solution" is a financial market that can quickly reallocate capital to the manifest winners. The more efficient that capital and labor markets become, the less of an advantage large conglomerates will enjoy. But it all comes down to allocation of resources subsequent to the emergence of identifiable market trends. I never bothered to read his other books because what was the point? He was right in the first-half of the Innovator's Dilemma; everything he wrote after that was a contradiction.

joaorico 8y ago

This is a bit of a strange article. First, "in his recent book" refers to his 2011 book [1]. And Christensen has been prophesying this general bankruptcy "in the next decade" since that time. [2] In any case it's interesting to think about the larger argument of the future of traditional higher education in general versus online education. Bryan Caplan's thesis that (the state should cut funding for higher education because) higher education is mostly about signalling 3 things is a good tool. He argues that higher education signals a combination of intelligence, conscientiousness and conformity. The combination of the 3 is crucial for the model. [3] Online education, and more generally self-education, fails on the conformity side. Companies do not want in general to risk such non-conformists, when they can hire from a stream of fresh graduates (smart, hard-working and relatively conformist). Also, I think the socialization, friendships and networking that happen in the university are extremely valuable and not easily replaced by online education (where and with who can a smart, driven 18 year old hang out while studying and learning for 4 years on MOOCs and textbooks?) And in addition, I hope, traditional universities are starting to improve their teaching methods (eg, flipped classroom, peer instruction) to multiply the pedagogical and motivational value they offer vs MOOCs. For online education to replace traditional higher ed, it might require taking into account these factors. Could something like workspaces for freelancers or remote workers - but for studying - replace the traditional institution and the above benefits? Such that, for example, you would not be seen as an extreme non-conformist by not enrolling in a university? Also, outside the US, tuition costs is often much lower. An online STEM degree, say a certified online masters in software engineering such as coursera or edx, could easily be more expensive than regular (or even the best) university. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Innovative-University-Changing-Higher-Education/dp/1118063481 https://www.amazon.com/Innovative-University-Changing-Higher... [2] https://www.economist.com/international/2012/12/22/learning-new-lessons https://www.economist.com/international/2012/12/22/learning-... [3] https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/dp/0691174652/ https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/d... (To be clear, he argues that from the individual's perspective, university is still net positive, if you have what it takes to finish the degree and don't get too much in debt. It's the state that should cut funding since it's inflating credentials.)

j45 8y ago

Education + colleges have been my full-time area of research and work for the past 12 months: - The funnel of how we access learning has changed, and colleges are further down on the bottom of the funnel. Many are already losing money each year. - Traditional education seems simply not able to keep up with the rate of change in society. - How the majority of people today learn something, or acquire knowledge/skill/competency seems to be distinctly changing: 1) Find something on Google/Youtube. Failing that, 2) Find a small e-course. Failing that, 3) Find a larger e-course. Failing that, 4) If there's a lot of courses we discover we need, we look for perhaps a micro-credential or small course. Failing that, 5) If our need is beyond what a micro-course can provide, we may look at a program in a community college, polytechnic, etc. - Academically speaking, the future of education is not solely online, or offline, or blended. These are dated academic concepts that don't cover the 70% of learning that is informal and occurs outside of the classroom. People just find a way to learn now, or share knowledge. - We can't replace instructors, or instruction, we need to better support the instructors who are willing to learn digital skills. Many refuse. We have a lot of educators trying to use technology but not competent with it's capabilities or possibilities. - The future of education is about creating better digital learning interactions that can evolve and update with the rate of change of best pracice in a domain. That domain will be digitally supported, whether it's digital classrooms, digital textbooks (of sorts), or digital learning, all powered through human connection. - Education can't keep up with speed. Lots of topics are emerging and changing faster than ever before. A 2000 year old model of higher education will need to evolve, because knowledge and how to apply it is evolving quicker than traditional education can. - Traditional colleges, while still very relevant, will have a diminished role in the most emergent or changing educational topics. This isn't new, but I think the change will come not from the top or the bottom of the pyramid, but from the side at all levels. There are many good pockets of activity occurring, and while they don't make a suit quite yet...

spsrich 8y ago

Excellent. Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch.

znpy 8y ago

The flaw is, imho, in the fact that we are talking about business models. If you look at thriving universities in Europe, in thriving countries (like Finland, Sweden and Norway) you might see that they are basically run at loss: this is because education is an investment, not an expense. Education is supposed to be an investment for nations, not individuals (or, more realistically, parents of individuals).

TheBeardKing 8y ago
The assumption being that it's the government's job to invest in individuals. I'm not here to argue either way, but at least half the country would disagree that it is.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- beat 8y ago
  The other half treats education as investing in society.
- vkou 8y ago
  > The assumption being that it's the government's job to invest in individuals. I'm not here to argue either way, but at least half the country would disagree that it is. Why is the government involved in teaching children how to read, write, do arithmetic, and sit in a chair for 8 hours a day, then? Absolute ideological opposition to government involvement in education - period - is a fringe opinion, that is at best, shared by ~5% of the country - not 50%. (Much of the 50% disagrees about the curriculum, but that's another story.)
  - TheBeardKing 8y ago
    We're obviously talking about higher education here. We all agree basic functioning citizens need 12 years of education. Educational attainment beyond that varies depending on occupation requirements and personal interest.

naveen99 8y ago

well educational institutions are getting close to extracting most of their ROI from education. if education costs a million dollars, it might make sense for many to just invest the money, and skip the education and career, and go straight to retirement.

Zigurd 8y ago

The title is clickbait. Enough third tier schools will in fact fail to give it the aura of plausibility. And if the US becomes more hostile and closed to foreign students, we could totally screw this up. But rising economies around the world will produce a lot more high quality students than their home countries' elite universities can absorb, and that will provide enough customers for good quality universities in the US. There will also be a market for children of wealthy families who can't make it into very selective schools. Probably for 30 years+. Beyond that, US schools will face more competition, but a global middle class will continue to grow.

DoreenMichele 8y ago
I don't have any sources at my fingertips, but the US has some of the most lenient college admissions for "adult" students of any country on the planet. In some countries, if you haven't decided on a college track by, say, middle school, then you are going to a trade school, not college. And it's tough in many countries to get into school at all later if you didn't get all your ducks in a row for college right out of high school. In contrast, the US makes it easier to go back to school past a certain age. So a lot of foreigners go to school here because you basically need enough money to pull it off. There are a lot of fewer things that automatically slam the door shut in your face because you didn't do a thing at age 13 or whatever. Disclaimer: I haven't read the article. I'm just replying to what is in this comment and agreeing that the US will likely continue to educate the world for the foreseeable future.

jgamman 8y ago

If we unbundle the courses and/or make MOOCS minimally OK - what's to stop students hiring their own TA to help them through. So long as you pair this up with a nationally recognised micro-credential framework you could see the development of a "faculty" led small-school revival. Add in some sort of matchmaker service at critical mass, some sort of pedagogy credential (how to teach well, not what to teach) and education becomes a nice small business opportunity for PhD holders.

irrational 8y ago

Teenage pregnancy has been in a nose-dive because the teenagers are online instead of hanging out these days (at least that is what I've read). If young adults went to school online instead of getting together at college... no more sex? I'm reminded of some sci-fi stories I read in my youth about futuristic societies where nobody interacted in person and babies came from the lab. At the time the notion of people not having sex and babies anymore seemed far fetched. Now... maybe not so unlikely after all.

fiftyfifty 8y ago

People here seem to think Christensen is saying higher ed is dying, but I don't think that is the point he is making. Flagship state schools and the Stanfords, MITs and Princetons of the world will be just fine, but there are many small, private, liberal arts colleges (often with a religious affiliation) that are in a big trouble financially. Many of these schools are fairly expensive at 30k a year or more and they are having a really hard time attracting students. This article has a lot more details about this trend: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/13/spate-recent-college-closures-has-some-seeing-long-predicted-consolidation-taking https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/13/spate-recent-... Something like 30% of the colleges in the US have less than 1,000 students and those are the schools that are in trouble, a drop in enrollment for a school that size is a death knell: https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Real-Reason-Small-Colleges/236732 https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Real-Reason-Small-Coll... Many of these schools haven't changed their curriculum in decades, in fact they can't even give a reasonable definition to the term "Liberal Arts" and with costs so high parents and students are expecting a little bit more to justify the investment. https://hechingerreport.org/with-enrollment-sliding-liberal-arts-colleges-struggle-to-make-a-case-for-themselves/ https://hechingerreport.org/with-enrollment-sliding-liberal-... Personally I think the way we handle higher education in the US is totally backwards; get the degree and then try to figure out what to do for the rest of your life? What the heck kind of plan is that? If someone came to you with a business plan written like some of these kid's plans for the future would you invest $200,000 in their business? And yet somehow we loan kids money to pursue this plan and/or parents spend the money to fund it. It is absolutely insane that this has gone on as long as it has. Imagine if these kids had to submit a 10-20 year plan before they could take a out a student loan?

wahern 8y ago
Imagine if these kids had to submit a 10-20 year plan before they could take a out a student loan? Imagine if you had to pick a major when you were 6 years old. That would be insane. (Insane is a poor choice of words because this is effectively the case in many countries for cultural reasons, but in the context of U.S. culture would be considered imprudent and impractical.) In a society like the United States where employees are expendable and life-time employment will involve numerous different companies and positions, there's something to be said for a generalist education. If the U.S. had an industrial policy like Germany than a German-style educational model would make much more sense. But the U.S. has consistently rejected those policies, despite decades of economists of all stripes advising politicians to do so. (The same is true to a lesser extent in the rest of the Anglosphere, which not coincidentally also have higher education models more similar to the U.S. than continental Europe and much of the rest of the world.) Therefore, employers will value the more generalist approach. In the U.S. a 4-year biology degree matters not because of what it says about your knowledge in biology, but largely because it shows you persevered through 2+ years of writing, history, etc. In other words, you had the discipline to take up other subjects you didn't explicitly choose; not only pass their exams but to go to the classes (i.e. show-up!) and do the coursework (obey orders). And, ideally, it would show that you can integrate and apply those disciplines and methodologies to various tasks. (This is more aspirational.)

mrnobody_67 8y ago

Charlie Munger quotes-- “There’s a lot wrong [with American universities]. I’d remove 3/4 of the faculty — everything but the hard sciences. But nobody’s going to do that, so we’ll have to live with the defects. It’s amazing how wrongheaded [the teaching is]. There is fatal disconnectedness. You have these squirrelly people in each department who don’t see the big picture.” “I think liberal art faculties at major universities have views that are not very sound, at least on public policy issues — they may know a lot of French [however].” "Teaching people formulas that don’t really work in real life is a disaster for the world.”

ataturk 8y ago

This is the best thing that could happen. It's not even online education that is disrupting colleges, it is their own ridiculous bs--creating all these bs majors that nobody can viably do anything with after graduating at huge personal cost in time and money. It is the fact that jobs don't line up with anything colleges produce. Not even CS majors are well prepared for the working world, so what exactly is the point? If colleges exist only to create more academics, then all they have built is a self-licking ice cream cone. That means fewer people should be attending college, not more. Couple that with the ridiculous over-spending colleges have done in the area of real estate development, and figure out the huge carrying cost of all that new infrastructure, and it paints a very bleak picture for their future viability. They should not have taken the easy Wall Street $$. It was a sugar high.