You expect to pay less today for a computer than you did ten years ago. But universities are more like media companies than computer manufacturers, so imagine if universities were subject to the same disruptive market forces as, let’s say, newspapers, what would things looks like?
The Economist has three terrific articles on higher ed this week. On the newspaper analogy:
“Were the market for higher education to perform in future as that for newspapers has done over the past decade or two, universities’ revenues would fall by more than half, employment in the industry would drop by nearly 30% and more than 700 institutions would shut their doors.”
Just because this hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean it won’t in the future.
Interesting too to read about the higher ed market in Brazil — which is 75% for-profit institutions.
The quote of the day:
“Quality [in education] is easy,” says Rodrigo Galindo, Kroton’s energetic young boss. “And so is quantity. What’s difficult is combining the two.” Kroton is a highly successful for-profit in Brazil.
I’m also glad to see the Economist expending some words and ideas in favor of MOOCs. The education pundit trail went predictably from MOOCS as “savior of higher ed” to “ridiculous and a failure” when MOOCs were and are surely a permanent part of the future mix of higher ed.