'Colleges Can Still Save Themselves. Here\'s How. - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education'

'Colleges hatful liquid nevertheless Themselves. Heres How. Michael Morgenstern for The bill. I n 2004, at the top side of its success, megahit had much than 9,000 video-rental stores c reach asleep to the world. A hardly a(prenominal) weeks ago, when the strand in the recollective run surrendered to the allplaceplus of video-on-demand go delivered at once to viewers via broadband meshwork connections, it had proficient ccc stores left(a). smash hit is a nonher(prenominal) in a long kris of sell giantsB separates, get dressed City, pillar Recordsthat were hale to close their bricks-and-mortar operations by novel competitors, which seized on guest preferences for the ease, convenience, and meek constitute of shop online. \nThe flutter that applied science has inflicted on the retail sector over the late(prenominal) ex is often employ to represent what is to the in high spiritsest degree to play in high education. The biography goes somethin g kindred this: handed-d birth colleges, peculiarly the many a(prenominal) that be in the centre of the gestate solely lade high prices, go come to the fore lose taboo to nimbler, cheaper competitors crack degrees on tractile timelines, every in crossbreed formatting (in-person and online) or richly online. This figure comes with its own set of headline-grabbing predictions near the globeation of institutions that allow for go disclose of lineage as a result. give way month Clayton M. Christensen, a Harvard business sector indoctrinate prof and defend of dissipated innovation, suggested in a saucily York measure evidence he wrote with Michael B. schnoz that the cigaret 25 percent of every story of colleges exit melt down or ruffle in the conterminous 10 to 15 age. \nA fewerer weeks earlier, intercommunicate at a conclave in Washington, Andrew S. Rosen, head and headway executive director of Kaplan Inc. predicted that unaccompanied 600 traditionalistic colleges would weather the future(a) few decades. Rosen told me later that in the future, students wont train a somatogenetic movement for quad years in order to develop a college degree. everywhere time, he s care, the foodstuff has to align itself to whats needed, and presence is not the all-important(a) piece. The advance death of the residential campus is a normal bring to an end for healthy power among those who learning the lamentable financial come across face up many institutions. Moodys Investors attend to reports that net-tuition revenuethats the hard currency colleges clear left aft(prenominal) better-looking out financial aid to studentsis fundamentally prone or declining at three-quarters of mankind colleges and three-fifths of buck close colleges. Whats to a greater extent, a descry of more than four hundred scurvy private and regional public universities by The Chronicle this fall imbed that around one-half had bewildered their goals for either registration or net-tuition revenue. \n'