The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education from the Inside Out

The University of Phoenix, for example, recognized revenues of $2.5 billion in 2007; by the end of 2009 that figure had risen to nearly $3.8 billion.13 In that year it enrolled 355,800 new students, roughly 150,000 more than the total enrollment of the ten campuses of the University of California.14

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.

Harvard succeeded in becoming Harvard in large part because it never tried to become anything else.

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.

BYU-Idaho determined to serve only undergraduates, with the goal of providing even ordinary students a first-class education via a focused set of academic offerings.

indictments—that fewer U.S. adults are completing post-high school degrees; that the costs of attending college are rising faster than inflation; that employers report hiring college graduates unprepared for the workplace.3

For example, among BYU-Idaho's most watched statistics is the percentage of students admitted, rather than the percentage denied.

Adjunct instructors give the online educators two other advantages. Rather than receiving an annual salary, as full-time faculty at traditional universities do, online instructors are paid by the course.

The first type, sustaining innovation, makes something bigger or better.