Are Universities Going the Way of CDs and Cable TV?

Like mass media and mass commerce, the average university is on the brink of collapse. Its structure is a rotting legacy of the Industrial Age. For years, anybody who wanted to learn on their own lacked the means to do so. Now, anybody with an internet connection has access to information. Harvard and Stanford will be okay, but dark days are ahead ... See more

Even as the cost of tuition increased, the value of university went unquestioned. Colleges bundled education and signaling. Students who thrived in boring classes signaled traits to employers, like conscientiousness, intelligence and conformity. Now, due to the proliferation of information on the internet and the rise of affordable and effective al... See more

From here, we will see an ecosystem grow up around these online offerings that moves them up the product performance curve over time. In ten years, we may very well see three main options - either you pay up to go to an Ivy League school, get an affordable education with the full college experience at a state school, or learn primarily online and r... See more

This is where the opportunity lies. Through severely overdue cost reductions and deploying small and big tech, we can dramatically lower the cost per student of a college education. The corporatization of campuses, bloated administrations, tenure, a lack of accountability, and a god complex that we, academics, are noble when in fact we’ve been prey... See more

The challenges facing University Inc may ultimately usher in a new era of education. One where the role that elite universities have historically played as gatekeepers on knowledge, prestige and access begins to fall away and the very best education becomes available to any-and-all (with or without a fee). The world may ultimately end up having few... See more

Theirs is not a future of falling enrollment, financial challenges and closing campuses. It’s a brighter world in which students subscribe to rather than enroll in college, learn languages in virtual reality foreign streetscapes with avatars for conversation partners, have their questions answered day or night by A.I. teaching assistants and contro... See more