The Omnipresent Threat of Disruption

So far, universities have been able to avoid disruptive innovation. Instead, they have grown bigger and better, albeit by charging high tuition fees and incurring hefty student debts. Now, with local student demand flattening and graduate employability declining, some universities find themselves in financial stress. Escalating tuition, rising student debts, the unbundling of higher education services and the rapid advance of learning technologies mean that higher education is ripe for disruption. In their race to expand and pursue ranking excellence, universities have driven up costs and lost focus on their academic mission. They are now unsustainably over-extended, and unaffordable for most of the population. The commodification of higher education in the last century has made universities more vulnerable to disruptive competition.

Keywords: Academic Mission, Commodification of Higher Education, Disruptive Innovation, Learning Styles, Multiple Intelligences, Technological Core.