The Great Upheaval: Higher Education's Past, Present, and Uncertain Future

by Arthur Levine

The commonalities in the accounts of the three industries loom far larger and more powerfully for higher education. They speak to the hows, whys, and extent to which those industries changed in the face of the same demographic, economic, and technological shifts facing the nation’s colleges and universities. Thirteen commonalities stand out: 1. All three industries developed their business models during the Industrial Revolution, reflecting the practices of the age, such as assembly-line production processes and fixed time and location distribution. 2. They clung tenaciously to that model and to its products—albums, physical movies, and newspapers—until the model broke and even after. 3. All three industries used the same strategy to respond to environmental change, seeking to make the minimum alterations in their business models necessary to accommodate them in piecemeal fashion by means of reform, repair, and adaptation. 4. All three attempted to employ that same strategy even as their industries were being disrupted and they were threatened with replacement. The organizational knee-jerk response was maintenance by adaptation, rooted in piecemeal over wholistic organizational change. 5. Demographic and economic changes did not alter the business model in any of the three industries. 6. All three were disrupted by digital technology. 7. The three industries did not see the digital technology threat coming, nor did they recognize the magnitude of the change i...