Higher Education's Next Big Move: No More Bachelor's Degrees

A lot has been written about the state of higher education - the ROI, costs, quality and over all allocation of resources in the typical four year university leaves a lot of room for improvement. I could link to a bunch of articles, but really there has been so much it's tough to par down a representative sample.

A lot of the people who really dig deep into the system come to the same conclusion: the top 5/10% of Universities will be able to maintain their supremacy/high prices, while the other 1,000's of colleges will be consolidated/merged/out of business and move mostly online.

At the same time, people have finally begun to notice that higher education institutions primarily focus their resources and talent in higher level courses: ie Calculus 101 at Harvard is probably taught by a TA, as at Western Louisiana State, with the student experience being pretty much the same. When you hit the "Good Will Hunting" level courses, that's when you get some Nobel laureate teaching the course.

All these trends lead to a similar conclusion: The branded "Higher Education" shouldn't really be about the basics, for anyone.  The basics fundamentals should be the "Associate Degree". Everyone who graduates college goes into this program with the intent on learning the general education requirements, as well as the basics of their own major/chosen field of study. At the end of your chosen path (online, community college, etc...), everyone should take SAT II Subject Tests/AP type tests to get into the next level of college, or join the workforce. 90% of colleges would offer these types of degrees and focus on costs and ROI on learning (ie higher test scores).

The next level of higher education should be a Master's degree. This is where you go to the big dog Universities and research, learn the advanced stuff and specialize. Since you aren't taking other courses (just the one's in your new major), I figure 2 to 2.5 years of intensive study should get you to a current "master's level" knowledge we now know (no summers off or only practical internships for credit as breaks). This includes law, business, etc... So we have a bunch old 22-24 year olds with real, hard skills and the same network as they had in the old our year college system. 2 years should be enough of a fun "residential college experience" to make up for the first few years.


A few firms innovating in the space:

Western Governors University is building out a competency based online university - meaning all the courses are geared towards existing certification exams.

Straighterline has build up a menu of cheap (around $99) courses that automatically transfer to higher education institutions - so you can get a bunch of credits out of the way and save a ton of cash in the process.

Altius is focused on a similar business model (cheap online community college, transfer credits to a four year school).