Newspapers are dropping like flies.

Are Universities next?

… Universities were also subject to a lot of fevered speculation back then. In 1997 the legendary management consultant Peter Drucker said, “Thirty years from now, the big university campuses will be relics…. Such totally uncontrollable expenditures, without any visible improvement in either the content or the quality of education, means that the system is rapidly becoming untenable.” Twelve years later, universities are bursting with customers, bigger, and (until recently) richer than ever before.

Was Drucker wrong?

My own guess is that the existing Universities will continue to evolve into the future. In one form or another.

But that the cost of tuition will force future students into less expensive online Universities.

… Quick, name the largest private university in the U.S. The answer is the University of Phoenix, founded in 1976, where 95% of faculty are part-time and the large majority of teaching happens completely online.

It could happen that more education-providing corporations (one hesitates to call them “universities”) could develop better ways to provide online classroom educations to a large number of students who are interested in the first purpose listed above but are unwilling to pay for the second. If that model catches on, it will cause dramatic upheaval in the economy of traditional universities. …

Blogs / Cosmic Variance – Will the Internet Replace Universities?

The University of Phoenix (UPX) is a for-profit educational institution that specializes in adult education. The largest private university in North America, it has an enrollment of more than 345,300 students …