Changing Higher Education

A business model view of changing times in higher education

 

As my regular readers know, I have written several posts that utilize a business model approach to look at one aspect or another of higher education. Last year, readers suggested that I combine several of these posts in an article that would combine multiple threads - ideally in a coherent fashion! The resulting article has found a good response among policy and institutional leaders, and so I thought that some of my other readers might also find it interesting. I have pasted it in below. For those who would prefer it in PDF, they can Download Business model view of change. Curiously, the original document contains Endnotes that were stripped out by Typepad, but they are not crucial to the arguments. 

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Changing times in higher education viewed through the prism of the business model

Lloyd Armstrong

Summary: The environment for higher education in the United States is changing rapidly. The effects of this changing environment will not be the same at all institutions, however. This article uses a business model approach to look at some of these environmental changes from a perspective that gives leaders tools to better understand how various changes might impact their own institutions, and how they might best respond.

 

Barriers to innovation and change in higher education

I recently wrote an article entitled Barriers to Innovation and Change in Higher Education for the TIAA-CREF Institute.  In it, I used a business model perspective to analyze obstacles to change in higher education. This approach facilitates drawing in insights from research on change across a broad spectrum of organizations and industries. I won't try to reproduce the analysis presented in that article, but will just indicate a few my conclusions: