Another reason for the lack of disruption in higher education has been the absence of a disruptive technology. Since the time that universities first gathered students into classrooms, the learning technologies—lectures, textbooks, oral and written examinations—have remained largely the same.

In particular, he noted how scholarly activity tends to distance professors from the undergraduate teaching and learning process.

The other is the emergence of technologies that will, in the right hands, allow new competitors to serve this disenfranchised group of nonconsumers, as shown in Figure 1.2.

A disruptive innovation, by contrast, disrupts the bigger-and-better cycle by bringing to market a product or service that is not as good as the best traditional offerings but is more affordable and easier to use.

To the contrary, success in an increasingly competitive higher education environment requires each institution to identify and pursue those things it can do uniquely well.

He introduced himself to faculty members as “a teacher who is now working as a president, not a president who used to be a teacher.”1

For the first time since the introduction of the printed textbook, there is a new, much less expensive technology for educating students: online learning.

For example, online course developers not only add features such as video conferencing that make the online course more like a classroom setting, they also create online tutorials and student discussion forums that the traditional face-to-face course doesn't provide.

clearly or perform competently in analyzing complex, non-technical problems, even though faculties rank critical thinking as the primary goal of a college education.7