Michael Horn predicts 25% of colleges will close or merge, but says higher education survives by evolving. New accredited institutions will offer apprenticeship degrees, online programs, and AI-powered learning. Existing colleges will acquire these providers or create spin-offs, much like how research universities forced elite schools to change in the 1800s.
So even though I'm known as the disruptive innovation guy, the guy that's predicted that at least 25% of colleges will close or emerge, I think higher ed as a sector is going to thrive in the years ahead and that my co host, Jeff Selingo, a future you, is probably right that higher ed is going to continue to play a prominent role in society. Now, how do we resolve these two seemingly the very different sources of opinion? Well, I think the answer is this. We're about to see an explosion of new institutions come into the market that will be accredited. They will offer degrees, whether those are apprenticeship degrees, online, mobile, AI powered, competency based, all sorts of manners thereof. And we're going to see some existing institutions adapt and actually spin off separate institutions that will offer these sorts of programs themselves or actually acquire some of these entities themselves to offer it. And it's going to be a real opportunity for higher ed to redefine itself, much as it did in the late 1800s when a whole host of new institutions came in there that had research and economic growth as parts of their driving factors that forced the Harvards and Yales of the world to transform beyond being religious institutions. So yes, disruption. But yes, I think higher ed has a good chance of thriving amidst it.
