Demographics are destiny, and higher education’s demographic picture is ugly. Beginning in 2026, the number of graduating high school seniors is projected to decline by 9%.11 Change is coming. In 2013, renowned Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen predicted that online education would disrupt traditional higher education just as steam power had put sailing ships out of business. Over the next ten to fifteen years, he wrote, 25% of colleges and universities would go out of business.12 By 2018, he’d upped his prediction to 50%.13 And that was before anyone had heard of Covid-19.
