Today, I ask those of us who are technology leaders to step back and focus our discourse and energy on how we can use technology to improve education. As technology leaders, we need to focus on how we create value with technology so that we can contribute to lowering costs and increasing efficiencies across our individual institutions as well as at the industry level. This need is driven by my profound belief that the higher education business model is broken. I support this belief with simple facts. In our industry, virtually all of our customers are unable to afford our listed market price for tuition. A significant number of these customers experience an extremely long payback period, after which they reap economic rewards from having bought (invested in) our products. Further, many of our institutions are near or beyond bankruptcy when deferred maintenance and depreciation are factored in. The final signal that the business model is flawed is the rapid flow of venture capital and private equity into the education market based on the belief that there is a better model for delivering education. Yes, these are broad generalizations, and no, not every institution is in trouble, but we as an industry need to face the facts: our business model will not sustain us into the future.
http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume47/RethinkingHigherEducationTechn/250730
