Trajectory #17: The End of University Inc

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

This realization will push most students to delay fall matriculation, or attend a virtual school over Zoom or some other platform. If they do the latter, they certainly won’t want to pay even a fraction of traditional tuition. If a virtual academic year costs 1/10th of the normal tuition, the school would need to enroll at least 10x the number of s... See more

It’s not inconceivable that, in the next academic year, we will see a quarter of all public and private universities close their doors.

The levy was bound to break at some point, but COVID-19 has accelerated the timeline of the collapse of the conventional university system.

We’ll see a culling among universities. Just as retail closures are accelerating from 9,500 stores in 2019 to more than 15,000 in 2020, we’re going to see dozens, maybe hundreds, of universities not reopen. In academia, we have been preying on the hopes and prayers of the middle class, offering parents the chance to check an instinctive box, giving... See more