XplanaZine

In this chapter on their 2001 work, The Internet and The University, authors Christensen, Aaron, and Clark talk about why four-year universities have grown slowly while corporate universities and corporate training has exploded. Take a look at some of the statistics presented (and their discussion about budgetary crises — written two years ago — is haunting in light of the real problems universities are facing today).

“Enrollment in four-year programs has grown at a snail-like rate of one-half percent over the past decade. The United State’s world-renowned higher education system faces a severe budgetary crisis at both the state and federal levels, and more than 500 institutions have closed their doors in the past decade. Meanwhile, distance learning and corporate universities are growing at meteoric rates. Enrollment in distance learning is growing at three times the pace of classroom-based programs and is expected to reach five million by 2005. Corporate training is a $32 billion annual industry, with a reported 2,000 corporate universities in the United States. The growth in the number of corporate universities is explosive: there were roughly 400 such universities at the beginning of the 1990s.”

They attribute this disparity in the two paths to the disruptive innovation — a dynamic form of industry change that unlocks tremendous gains in economic and social welfare. Essentially, disruptive innovation means that new technology is introduced and embraced by some. That innovation is disruptive because it champions, more than previous technologies, the efficient and agile companies/organizations more than the inefficient/non-agile groups. Disruptive technologies also provide new opportunities for competition because they level the playing field, allowing broader groups of people to do things that only the experts or privileged could do previously.

Disruptive technologies have already altered dramatically fields such as publishing and movie making. And now they are changing the way we do education. Commercial training providers, taking advantage of technologies that permit the distribution of education and inexpensive access to learning materials, have proven themselves much more agile and adaptive to the needs of the corporate market. Businesses, for their part, are more interested in results than tradition and name-recognition. Their bottom line is determined by the proven, on-the-job abilities of their employees. Little else matters. That, however, is a are cry form the traditional view universities have maintained toward education.

Is there room for both, or will traditional universities wither away eventually as do non-competitive businesses when disruptive technology hits? Well, the latter seems highly unlikely, but unless they become more adaptive, traditional universities will fail to be any kind of a player in the new distributed markets. On the other hand, since commercial education providers are unfettered by tradition and cater only to the real needs of the consumer (measured by what they’re willing to pay for), they will continue to make inroads into that marketplace that, at one time, belonged exclusively to four-year universities.

Commercial providers, empowered by technology and contracts, have successfully built products tailored specifically for the needs of their learning customers. Rather that a one-education-size-fits-all mentality that works in traditional higher education, these companies have focused on tailored learning that features collaborative tools, immediate feedback, and enhanced communication features.

Is their level of education that great? Not yet. four-year schools still provide good, adaptive learning opportunities (learning) while these companies focus on static training (training). In other words, the tools don’t overcome mediocre content. The other problem these companies face is that they are still working on an old paradigm. The fact that they have access to and have employees disruptive technologies hasn’t yet led them to re-engineer the information they are presenting to be as dynamic as the technologies themselves. But still, they are real players now and their market potential looks much stronger than the competition’s.