A game-changing year for American higher education?

By Edwin Eisendrath and James DeVaney. Leading thinkers in and outside of the academy are bullish about higher education, although many are frankly worried about the future of American universities and colleges. Higher education faces unprecedented challenges, but many institutions are better prepared to meet these than their critics imagine. Gone since 2008 are the remedies for Baumol’s cost disease – tuition fee hikes, state appropriations, bubble-boosted endowment returns and a growing research portfolio. Subsequent cost-cutting continues, but many universities are gasping for revenue. Then in 2012, Harvard and MIT made very public announcements about EdX, their online learning platform. On the other coast, Stanford birthed Udacity and Coursera after professors successfully developed and delivered Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. Read more...