“Jay, given what you’ve just told us, what do you think will happen to colleges?”
“You mean the campuses? I think many of today’s campuses will make swell resorts and hotels.”
A story from Washington Monthly, reprinted in this morning’s New York Times, spells out the vision.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF ONLINE COLLEGE
Kevin Carey examines the promise of online education in The Washington Monthly:
The day is coming — sooner than many people think — when a great deal of money is going to abruptly melt out of the higher education system, just as it has in scores of other industries that traffic in information that is now far cheaper and more easily accessible than it has ever been before. Much of that money will end up in the pockets of students in the form of lower prices, a boon and a necessity in a time when higher education is the key to prosperity. Colleges will specialize where they have comparative advantage, rather than trying to be all things to all people. A lot of silly, too-expensive things — vainglorious building projects, money-sucking sports programs, tenured professors who contribute little in the way of teaching or research — will fade from memory, and won’t be missed.
But other parts of those institutions will be threatened too — vital parts that support local communities and legitimate scholarship, that make the world a more enlightened, richer place to live. Just as the world needs the foreign bureaus that newspapers are rapidly shutting down, it needs quirky small university presses, Mughal textile historians, and people who are paid to think deep, economically unproductive thoughts … There is an unstable, treacherous future ahead for institutions that have been comfortable for a long time. Like it or not, that’s the higher education world to come.
Do you agree?
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Royal Roads University is an example of an institution catering to mid-career professionals. Most courses are online and programs have a variety of residence options, such as one to two week intensive on-site activities. For example a 2 year program could start with one week on-site, getting to know the instructors and students, and then work moves online until the mid-way point when the cohort gets together again. The institution knows that working professionals cannot take a year or two and devote it to studies.
Perhaps a reduction of on-site time will happen with traditional undergraduate programs too. The demand will have to come from the customer though, and I’m not hearing this demand from students or parents, yet. I think it will happen when higher tuition combines with the next spike in oil. Something will have to give, and that may be the infrastructure. I’ve noticed a “rationalization” of infrastructure at our local university recently, with old buildings demolished and satellite buildings sold off.
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