At the Innovation + Disruption Symposium in Higher Education in 2017, Christensen specifically predicted that "50 percent of the 4,000 colleges and universities in the U.S. will be bankrupt in 10 to 15 years."Full disclosure: I spent most of my university teaching career at a "party school" where getting educated was the price students paid for the fun they had while doing it. We won Playboy's Party School of the Year in 1987. I think Christensen overlooks the role of college as a "half-way house" between the parental nest and drab workaday reality.
More recently, he doubled down on his statements, telling 1,500 attendees at Salesforce.org's Higher Education Summit, "If you're asking whether the providers get disrupted within a decade — I might bet that it takes nine years rather than 10."
In his recent book, "The Innovative University," Christensen and co-author Henry Eyring analyze the future of traditional universities, and conclude that online education will become a more cost-effective way for students to receive an education, effectively undermining the business models of traditional institutions and running them out of business.
College/university is a place to grow up, learn to manage money, organize your life without daily nagging, find out about alcohol (and maybe drugs), stay up all night to party or study, do some courting and semi-casual sex, make post-high school friends, and have some bad experiences while still semi-protected by the college community including the student health center.
You also learn go to class and hit the books often enough to earn passing grades. If you screw up in college maybe you lose a semester, rarely a whole career.
By contrast, staying in the bedroom you occupied while in high school, while getting educated via the computer on your desk as your parents look over your shoulder, just isn't the same experience. Those who go this route will find the transition to living away from home and holding a job, if they ever make it, darned tough.
