gpmt

Which universities will emerge as the winners and the losers from all the turmoil in higher education policy and funding? How many institutions will disappear, and what will happen to those in the "squeezed middle"?

 

There is a polarisation of views on these questions. On the one side are the "learning 2.0 tendency", who hold that the traditional campus-based model of HE provision is obsolete and doomed in the new world of open educational resources and borderless learning services.

Ranked against them are the "defenders of the faith", who point out that demand for "traditional" university study continues to grow strongly around the world, and that new campus universities are opening daily in China, India and many other emerging economies.

A fresh perspective on this producer-centred impasse can be found by considering the kinds of customer-driven disruptive innovations that have overturned the established structures of almost every other major world industry, from IT to airlines to entertainment. In all of these industries, the power to control the market has moved from the traditional producers to their customer groups, causing the old guard to confront the existential question: what business are you in?

 

Four forces lending to answers are:

1. Diverging domains of learning

2. Next wave globalisation

3. Explosion of the learning value chain

4. Public-private mash-ups

Via susangautsch