Staying Ahead of the Technology Shift in Higher Education

Maintaining my focus on the topics of this course and their implications on higher education, I’ll be using Clayton M Christensen’s Introduction to Why Good Companies Fail to Thrive in Fast-Moving Industries (Harvard Business School Press; 2006) to illustrate some potential emerging threats. Christensen builds a framework centered around three central findings that describe why good management can lead to failure for businesses. These findings and their higher education implications are:

•          Sustaining Vs. Disruptive Technologies: Higher Education can be considered a sustaining technology by Christensen’s metric. Improvements are incremental. Syllabi and teaching methods are improved semester-by-semester, but rarely are any changes radical. The suppliers remain the same (Universities) and the customer base has remained similar (students looking for specific knowledge and education credentials). I propose that AI Tutors, paired with MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), will be the disruptive technology. Per the article, it should be noted that these AI Tutors will have worse performance compared to a tenured professor. However, it’ll be much cheaper and reach far more people. Eventually, the technology will displace the traditional education-setting and it is unclear whether global universities have been preparing for this eventuality.  
•        Trajectories of Market Need Vs. Technology Improvement: Some universities have pursed MOOCs in earnest. Stanford and MIT are notable examples. However, deals with organizations like Udacity and Coursera now offer hundreds of courses online. This may be an example of the technology progressing faster than the market demand. While hundreds of thousands are taking these courses globally, they tend not to be viewed as equal certificates of education. Universities that have relationships with these organizations should attempt to accurately define the state of the MOOC industry with their offerings, while ensuring a certain level of quality products. That way the market isn’t flooded with low-rate courses and can develop in conjunction with higher education leaders. AI Tutors have not had a wide introduction to audiences yet, but the same concept should work across industries.
•         Disruptive Technologies Vs. Rational Investments: Christensen notes several reasons organizations fail to adopt disruptive technologies. They are applicable to both AI Tutors and MOOCs. These disruptive technologies will have lower margins and will lower profits for universities. This makes them less lucrative to explore and promote. Next, a disruptive technology tends to be deployed first in emerging markets. MOOCs are widely popular in emerging economies, especially India and China. This huge market of eager learners will ensure the success of MOOCs and eventually AI Tutors through their growing market power. This subset of the population can’t always access traditional higher education and many universities will experience failure for ignoring this market. Finally, leading universities are listening to their highest paying customers now – they want a full, on-campus college experience with professors and TAs. This may not be the future of higher education, but at the moment it is the most profitable. Universities will need to balance their current curriculum with the benefits of AI Tutors and MOOCs.