Abstract by: Amy Muse

Among the more heated issues involving the future of higher education is the notion that colleges and universities could effectively be put out of business by the new proprietary schools. Institutions of higher education are being challenged by social changes that have resulted in students who see themselves as consumers and who are more interested in college as a career track as opposed to (and “opposed” is used deliberately) a path to learning; students who need more remedial help and teaching attention while cuts in funding have mandated larger class sizes and heavier teaching loads; an interest in and emphasis on using information technology in coursework; changing or vanishing boundaries between disciplines which cause professors to become more generalized and speak the language of and keep current with several disciplines; and, simultaneously, a necessity to stay deeply specialized as universities attempt to define centers of excellence and to focus on them. While traditional higher education is trying to come up with good ways of addressing and accommodating all these concerns, private-sector, for-profit schools are burgeoning and competing for customers.

The Fall 1997 issue of Daedalus is dedicated to the changes within the American academic profession and the fifteen articles within it cover, in a mostly optimistic manner, the range of changes and emphasize the need for those within higher education systems to be flexible and to evolve and become more fit as a result of the changes--most of which are out of our control. Arthur Levine, President of Teachers College, Columbia University, draws a comparison to Rip Van Winkle, who awoke after twenty years to find his sleepy village bustling and cacophonous from the strange and diverse new inhabitants and industries. Similarly, academics are opening their eyes to the influx of new people and new ideas affecting our jobs and our lives.

We may not often consult Business Week for information regarding the future of higher education, but one sign of the new times is the inter-penetration of realms; as increasingly colleges and universities are regarded as businesses, they receive a larger amount of coverage in such sources, and readers can discover new discussions from other points of view. For example, both articles in Daedalus and Business Week recently devoted a substantial amount of space to discussions of “the new competition” to traditional higher education, which is “unencumbered by tenure, departmental politics, or legislative oversight” and which is “coming fast” (Hammonds, et al. 100).

In Daedalus, Levine notes that the private-sector competitors are eyeing universities, and that “as the chair of a major university’s board of trustees confided recently, if higher education were a publicly traded stock, it would be overripe for a hostile takeover” (16). Both venture capital firms and traditional corporations are surveying the territory because there is “an underlying belief that colleges and universities are making precisely the same mistake they were in the railroad business; they focused on making bigger and better railroads. The problem is that they were actually in the transportation industry and, as a result, were derailed by the airlines” (17). Similarly, Levine argues, it can be said that higher education is “making the same mistake of thinking it is in the campus business, when in reality it is in the very lucrative education business” (17). Already some major companies, including Disney, IBM, and Bell Atlantic, are developing learning technologies and forging partnerships with universities. With industry as the “driving force and senior partner” in most of these relationships, there is talk of companies one day offering both education and degrees.

According to Business Week, a number of business leaders have become enamored of the idea of “fixing” education themselves, and have established a number of corporate “universities” (quotation marks are in the original description). Michael R. Milken, for instance, of junk-bond fame, in conjunction with the CEO of Oracle Corp., Lawrence J. Ellison, has invested $500 million in “Knowledge Universe, a for-profit company aiming to capture a $10 billion slice of the education market, from toys to advanced degrees” (100). Further, Knowledge Universe has a joint venture with Tele-Communications Inc. and aims to “provide the backbone for cable-tv distribution of university classes.”

Another such entrepreneur of education is Glenn R. Jones who runs his own, entirely electronic univer-sity -- a “cyber-univer-sity”--called International University. He also started College Connection, which offers students Internet access to inexpensive degree programs from 13 institutions including International University; College Connection currently has 7,000 students and is growing at a rate of 30% a year (100).

Other universities are trimming themselves to fit a specialized market; for instance, the University of Phoenix has a “main” campus of “two modest office buildings” (in addition to growing “branch” campuses in many states) and no laboratories, dorms, gyms, or even library. And, the authors note, “no kids.” It accepts only adults who work full-time and offers classes only at night or online. Most of the students range in age from 23 to 60 (100), and they receive credit for life experience to apply towards their bachelor’s and master’s degrees (which are offered mostly in business and information technology) (102). Teaching faculty are “entirely part-time and tenureless,” hold simultaneous jobs in industry, and do not design their own courses but “teach from a standardized script” (102). The University of Phoenix has 58 campuses in 12 states, and with an enrollment of 42,000, which is growing at a rate of 20% a year (plans are to expand to 200,000 over the next decade), it is the largest example of proprietary higher education today (100, 102). Founder John G. Sperling declares that they will be “the first national university” and that they “intend to operate in every major metropolitan area of the U.S.” (102).

Critics call this kind of school and curriculum “McEducation.” There is a large audience, however, who loves the relatively low cost and high level of convenience. Investors also love these new ventures--the University of Phoenix is traded on the NASDAQ exchange--and have been profiting from them. The Business Week authors claim that these for-profit cyber- and commuter schools “stand to win a big share of the surge in college enrollment expected over the next decade as Echo Boomers emerge from high school and as more adults seek continuing education” (102). The predictions are that “colleges and universities must confront this new competition--and the changing demographics, economics, and technology behind it” or that they will be shut out by the “nimbler rivals” (102). Both sources voice concern that the rise of the new schools is pushing American higher education into a “two-tiered entity” in which there is “one system of exceptionally high quality for those with the means to pay and a second for those without” (Hammonds, et al. 97). In order to stay competitive and to maintain high-quality education at research universities, the new wisdom seems to be that universities need --now-- to identify their strengths and to specialize in those and cut out all else.

In the Daedalus articles, but not in Business Week, the prevailing wisdom was that colleges and research universities will adapt and stay strong and that there is little to fear from the new competitors. In many cases, the students likely to attend the proprietary universities (or the non- profit open universities, for that matter) are not “traditional” college students: they are older, more serious, more goal-oriented; in some cases they are less prepared to do college-level academic work and will need time and faculty attention to adjust to the new discourse, and in other cases the non-academic life experience they bring will raise the level of discourse and stimulate faculty. Few 18-22 year olds who are interested in campus life (and whose parents are paying for their college) are going to be attracted to these new schools; thus, the core constituency of academia will likely remain the same, or even grow, as demographics show that there will be more young people coming into college over the next decade. However, it is not difficult to imagine looming ahead a Disney University that provides both accessibility, fun high- tech learning environments, and a Magic Kingdom campus; that, Business Week implies, would be a good investment.

Some at Auburn would welcome a change that brought nontraditional students and varieties of working experiences to the university, and that reduced more “frivolous” aspects of university life. Others will fiercely defend traditional campus life and its advantages for the development of students and teachers alike. Whichever way we go, we don’t want to forget that all schools are made up of individuals, and that individuals tend to have a stronger and longer-lasting impact on one another than does any technology. As economist and futurist Hazel Henderson notes in the current issue of the Utne Reader (featuring, not coincidentally, discussions on the “new renaissance” of social action over and in conjunction with high technology) we need to realize “how powerful real people are in creating the future” and not to turn our decision-making power over to others and thus become mere spectators of our own future. There will almost certainly not be one solution that will suit everyone, but the challenge for institutions now is to be pro-active and decide for themselves (but not in isolation from the wider community) in what direction they want to go in order to position themselves and survive, and thrive.