Trendspotting: Should Higher Ed Get Leaner and Meaner?

NewsWire: 6/10/21

• In an op-ed, historian Daniel Pipes argues that the U.S. higher ed system will get pared down to just a few star universities. He envisions a world where most campuses are converted to affiliates of the big-name schools, which would help bring down prices. (The Wall Street Journal)
• NH: Pipes envisions a higher education system that supports several dozen schools instead of several thousand. When students are already flocking to the Harvards and Yales of the world anyway, he argues, why not make the elite schools the last ones standing and convert lesser-known schools into satellite campuses?
• Professors would teach large, MOOC-style online courses, and students would receive personalized attention from TAs at their home campuses. In short, “a few star universities will flourish while the rest starve and die.”
• In the closing paragraphs, Pipes pitches his vision as a way to address exploding tuition costs. Fewer lecturers reaching more students would achieve economies of scale and bring prices down.
• I like the idea of using tech to scale up education. If the Ivies and other selective schools hugely expanded their student populations and truly competed with each other, this could be a good solution.
• But there's the rub. As it stands, the big-name schools don't compete. For example, by mutual agreement, the Ivies don't offer merit scholarships. Thanks to a special federal antitrust exemption, students are only eligible for need-based financial aid. It's policies like these that allow brand-name schools to have basically unlimited pricing power. (See “A Student Debt Jubilee…Is It Coming?” and “How to Control the Exploding Price of Higher Ed.”) If there's no real competition, there's no real incentive to lower tuition.
• So sure: Invite the 20 or 30 top schools in the nation to scale up. But unless the feds require them to compete--just like they did for the Baby Bells after the break up of AT&T--none of them will budge. They're doing so very well the way things are right now.
• And while we're at it, why stop with a few dozen top schools? IMO, an effective satellite system also needs some new players. Not everyone wants the kind of four-year liberal arts education a traditional university offers. What if this mix included schools that offer coding bootcamps, machine learning courses, trades classes, or other in-demand skills training? Now that would be truly revolutionary.