Join Michael Horn as he presents...

Higher Education is in crisis across the nation.  America’s colleges and universities are strapped for resources, students and families are faced with eye-popping tuition increases and we are falling behind other developed nations in postsecondary attainment. 

America’s colleges and universities are facing a perfect storm of challenges. The Great Recession, state economic budget shortfalls, expanding enrollments and increasing calls for accountability for student outcomes are coalescing to place enormous strain on business as usual in the higher education system.  In addition, a decades long decline in state funding of public college and universities has led to tuition increases for students and families, so much so that while median income rose by 147 percent between 1982 and 2006, college tuition and fees soared 439 percent during the same period. 

Many experts and policymakers are asking if the business model of higher education is broken?  It is time for a national dialogue to fundamentally rethink how higher education works.  Since 1965, with the passage of the Higher Education Act, America has focused almost exclusively and with much success on ensuring access to college now we must shift to add metrics of quality and value to our public policymaking and institutional practices.

To advance this policy discussion, The Center for American Progress, in collaboration with Clayton Christensen of the Harvard Business School and the Innosight Institute has published a new paper, Disrupting College: How Disruptive Innovation Can Deliver Quality and Affordability in Postsecondary Education.  The paper analyzes higher education through the lens of disruptive technologies and business model transformation to provide a new way to think about ensuring that colleges and universities are fulfilling their public role of knowledge creation and education while not breaking the bank of neither the taxpayer nor students and families.