Celebrity Professors
We are also witnessing another phenomenon that will hasten the demise of the brick and mortar university. We are now seeing celebrity professors breaking away from the traditional university and offering their personal brand as an alternative to the expensive university brand. We have lecture and discussion networks called "open lecture series" initially sponsored by universities and later developed by celebrity professors in conjunction with television and internet news companies and moderated by celebrity news anchors. ESMT offers video platforms as well as the social networks Twitter and Facebook. The new ESMTcast format "Learning for Leading" aims to share business school research and expertise with a broad audience. The first videos include Professors. Konstantin Korotov and Manfred Kets de Vries titled "Leadership and Coaching" and Professor Luc Wathieu titled "Decision-making". The New York Times continuously advertises the "One Day University" offered by the Learning Annex. For $99 one can attend 17 lectures from "award-winning" professors from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Early in 2010 Bill Gates claimed: "Five years from now on the web for free you'll be able to find the best lectures in the world online." In the near future these lectures will have college credit attached. It may happen sooner than Gates predicted, in October 2010 the London School of Business and Finance (LSBF) announced it will offer MBA courses free online through Facebook, only charging tuition if you choose to take exams to gain formal credit towards the MBA. LSBF founder, Aaron Etingen said the free online MBA course material will include lectures online from its faculty and panel discussion groups including industry highflyers such as Partners at Accenture Management Consulting and Deloitte, the Head of Royal Navy Leadership Academy and the Director of Marketing at Viagogo (Olsen, 2010). It may very well be that these new education delivery models will adopt India's "study centers" were students can go to study and take examinations. Hey, we already have them they are called "libraries."
No need to brand oneself
The brick and mortar university bases its survival on branding, these brands are like clubs, where they establish networks and obtain sheepskins as the ticket to gain entry into a business or professional sector. The university screens and filters people into concentrates of similar socioeconomic status (SES), with a sprinkle of intentional diversity. Corporate recruiters go these branded universities to obtain near clones, those that are considered "executive material" who can be molded into the culture of the company or profession. But this will change when the brick and mortar university ceases to exist. No longer will the university serve as an employment training feeder for the corporation and we may see the end of what the university has become; a vocation technical institute and perhaps we will witness a return to the universities original mission. But only online. In addition university customers no longer need to be branded. As a recruiter for an MBA program discovered when he told a student that the program would increase his contacts and networking only to be told by the student "I've been on Facebook since the 10th grade and I have 1100 friends and my 1100 friends each have 1100 friends, do the math. And you want me to spend how much to network and get branded?"
Scrambling to survive
As students reject the $50,000 per year education and enrollment drops, college presidents have responded by going overseas and differentiating their degree offerings to keep the inputs flowing. This has left the colleges with increased administrative overhead and a faculty spread so thin that they often teach in areas they have little or no knowledge. It is common for a tenured faculty member with a doctorate in electric engineering with no students to teach or administer a program far removed from his discipline. Deans are desperate and they are forever looking for the new "cash cows" and a chance to move into or up the rankings in one of the many ranking magazines.
Will the brick and mortar university go down without a fight? Never.
Brick and mortar universities go to the state agencies, accrediting agencies, state boards of education and government, to keep these online programs out of their state. In particular they are going after the online doctoral programs by convincing state boards of education and other accrediting agencies not to recognize the degrees or credits. But this may be a losing battle, according to MBA Alliance (2006), two thirds of all MBA's are now earned on-line. It is suggested that two thirds of all graduate degrees (masters and doctorates) in the next 10 years will be earned on-line. While colleges are fighting the online universities, especially the for-profits, they are scrambling to get into the online business themselves. In the 2006--07 academic year, 66 percent of the 4,160 2-year and 4-year Title IV degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the nation offered college-level online courses. The overall percentage includes 97 percent of public 2-year institutions, 18 percent of private for-profit 2-year institutions, 89 percent of public 4-year institutions, 53 percent of private not-for-profit institutions, and 70 percent of private for-profit 4-year institutions (National education center for statistics, 2009).
Academic leaders know the laptop education is without boundaries and a New York resident can obtain an MBA from Duke University or Hikets School of Hotel and Hospitality Management in India or online certification in an array of specific business areas from Cornell, Boston University, Pennsylvania State University, University of California at Berkeley, University of Notre Dame, University of San Francisco, Tulane and Villanova. This phenomenon will continue to grow making the brick and mortar institutions obsolete and with as much relevancy as summer camp. In 2009 there are 12,000 different degree offerings and hundreds of thousands of courses offered online in America and we will witness continued growth. The demise of the brick and mortar university will also be expedited by a new generation of students the first generation of students to have spent their entire lives in the new technological world; the Gen Y's.
Enter the Gen Y's
This generation born between 1980 and 1994 and representing approximately 25 percent of the American population questions the value of Face-to-Face (f2f) interaction at work and education. They are multi-taskers who in 2007 claimed the following:
- 74 percent of employers say Gen Y workers expect to be paid more
- 61 percent say Gen Y workers expect to have flexible work schedules
- 56 percent say Gen Y workers expect to be promoted within a year
- 50 percent say Gen Y workers expect to have more vacation or personal time
- 37 percent say Gen Y workers expect to have access to state-of-the-art technology
In 2011 it is safe to say these percentages have increased.
Colleges and universities are addressing these new students in a variety of ways: by increasing the use of technology not only in the classroom but throughout the campus. Many are turning their campuses into a Google type office playgrounds, social media is pervasive and food courts and study/play centers that try to accommodate every student's need. Will it work? According to Symonds (2010), "Unless schools really understand the mind-set of the potential Gen Y ", they risk looking at best like enthusiastic amateurs and at worst like the embarrassing "cool dad" attempting to engage with their teenage children about the latest release by Jay-Z or Lady Gaga."
Gen Y's are the first generation to reject sitting in class and later sitting in the cubical. Why? Sitting in class means they cannot do other things, like being on their laptops, IPods, IPads, cell phones, TVs, etc., in most cases at the same time. In the process they have developed a unique method of cognitive functioning shaped by their always on electronic communication. They demand to have lectures taped and they can watch them at their leisure while doing other things. Rejecting the classroom is the first giant step. Rejecting a $200,000 diploma may be the second. The Gen Y's will also question the value of another educational model, the for-profits. They have the capability to carefully assess these institutions and anyone with internet expertise will quickly discover their questionable quality and the outrage that exists in the cyberspace.
Want to get Rich? Open up a For-Profit School: But you better do it soon
There is no better example of educational institutions that have grossly misplaced priorities than the publically traded for-profits. The for-profits have created a stink that has permeated all educational institutions. These for-profits engage in practices that prey on minorities and the poor; not to lift them up educationally but to exploit and put them in debt and ruin their lives all in the name of profit. These for-profits are the most powerful educational lobbying group among all universities and colleges. When Phoenix wanted to move into Connecticut, universities and colleges banded together to keep them out of their state. Like most states, they failed. Federal and state governments have investigated them for years and investigative journalists have exposed them to little or no avail.
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