College Disrupted
The Great Unbundling of Higher Education
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- CHF 12.00
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- CHF 12.00
Beschreibung des Verlags
For nearly two decades, pundits have been predicting the demise of higher education in the United States. Our colleges and universities will soon find themselves competing for students with universities from around the world. With the advent of massive open online courses ("MOOCS") over the past two years, predictions that higher education will be the next industry to undergo "disruption" have become more frequent and fervent. Currently a university's reputation relies heavily on the "four Rs" in which the most elite schools thrive—rankings, research, real estate, and rah! (i.e. sports). But for the majority of students who are not attending these elite institutions, the "four Rs" offer poor value for the expense of a college education.
Craig sees the future of higher education in online degrees that unbundle course offerings to offer a true bottom line return for the majority of students in terms of graduation, employment, and wages. College Disrupted details the changes that American higher education will undergo, including the transformation from packaged courses and degrees to truly unbundled course offerings, along with those that it will not. Written by a professional at the only investment firm focused on the higher education market, College Disrupted takes a creative view of the forces roiling higher education and the likely outcome, including light-hearted, real-life anecdotes that illustrate the author's points.
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Combining a flair for numbers with a grasp of the bigger picture, venture capitalist and educational entrepreneur Craig spells out the threats facing higher education in America, among them crises of affordability and governance, "the effects of technological disruption and globalization," and "absolutely no outcome data related to student learning." With sportive analogies to pop culture and his own college pranks at Yale University, Craig outlines what institutions can do to position themselves for "the Great Unbundling," in which students pay for education rather than for faculty research, fancy buildings, and college athletics. Craig's strategic vision is strictly a business model, requiring institutions to compete for consumers, market their brand, and successfully distribute their products worldwide, but his advice makes sound economic sense: to survive, he argues, institutions need to reprioritize "knowledge creation and dissemination" and provide a good return on investment by cultivating in students the cognitive, self-management, and "creative and critical thinking skills that employers demand." His suggestions, he admits, take "a ton work," but his discussion of the existing data, federal policy, and market trends address "clear social economic needs." Savvy, sharp, and ultimately optimistic, Craig's book offers an ambitious blueprint that administrators would be wise to heed.
