Universities are like any large organization, mission drift occurs and keeping your customers happy can means offering non-core services in a bundle. I think t

Universities are like any large organization, mission drift occurs and keeping your customers happy can means offering non-core services in a bundle. I think the real trouble is that college is still awesome for people who can afford it. It's like anything in capitalism, whatever the people who can pay want is what happens. I read an article awhile back that discussed how one of the private schools in NYC was building new luxury student housing and sending limos to pick students up from the airport, that's about as far from these recommendations as you can get. The point is that change isn't going to come from the elite schools, not real change. They may offer online programs and such, just dabbling really, but they have no trouble attracting wealthy students and donors, so they have no real incentive to radically change what they are doing. At best, they may tack on some extra programs under different names that just further cement the inequality in education we have in the US. So, change needs to come from the bottom, from the small state schools and community colleges whose students are struggling to fund their educations. But state schools are on strict budgets, and small ones have small endowments. So real change won't come from there either because those institutions can't afford to make such radical changes, they literally don't have enough money. All they can do in many cases is what they've been doing in the past until they can't do that any more and then they can close up shop. Either way, I personally have a pretty bleak view of the future of higher education in the US.