Richard Lyons, dean of the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business says:
“Half of the business schools in this country could be out of business in 10 years—or 5.”
This isn’t an empty prediction. It is a stark reality especially when you consider what Robert Lytle, partner in the education practice at Parthenon Group, warns:
“Once you get out of the top tier of schools, you’re either already online, on your way there, or dead in the water.”
While this is a bold statement it does ring true when you consider that Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business which launched an online MBA program in 1999 now has 1,072 students enrolled in their online MBA program–more than double the number in the school’s regular two-year program.
Perhaps an even more significant factor contributing to the need to move programs online is the level of daily online utilization in world around us. Internet banking, ticket purchases, merchandise overnighted from Amazon and so many more daily aspects of our lives are being served online at the times that are convenient for us.
This really became clear in the past few weeks after I started watching the news on cable TV once again. Because of several moves in the past couple of years we haven’t subscribed to cable TV. But now that we are settled down in one location for the foreseeable future and Shaw offered a 6 month free trial TV cable package as an addition to our internet connection, I have been watching several news channels. These channels haven’t really changed all the much in the past few years except that they all point to Twitter as a way to keep up with the breaking news, their websites have matured and now offer virtually all the same content one can watch on TV and they use Skype or other video conferencing tools to regularly to bring in experts from all over the world to comment the news.
If the major news channels and networks have recognized that we all demand control over how we consumer the daily news and expect to have best experts Skype into the conversation in real time is there any wonder that this same level expectation will extend to the way that we are educated. I have been teaching online since 1995 and have been promoting a student-centered approach to creating significant learning environments and I am excited to see that online learning has matured to the point where we can now address the most significant aspect of this type of learning–giving the learner control over the time, place and context in which they wish to learn.
The schools that get this are already online or are well on their way to getting there. The rest will be dead in the water. What category will your school fall into? Are you part of the problem or part of the solution? What are you doing about this?
