Today we are seeing new kinds of institutions: universities that do not have physical campuses but that operate in cyberspace; universities that have a for-profit model and, through mergers and acquisitions, have become global in character (e.g., Laureate Education, Apollo Group). Do some types of institutions disappear? Yes, they do. I think small independent colleges will be particularly challenged right now because of their financial structures. In addition, whether the big complex institutions can maintain worldwide quality and capacity is a very serious question today. The bottom line is that we live in a time in which the drivers of prosperity are primarily the innovation that comes from generating new knowledge and the people who are educated to increasingly more sophisticated levels.
http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume47/ChangeandtheResearchUniversity/250726
