So what's next for proprietary colleges and universities? If I knew that, I'd be raking it in with the short sellers rather than taking the bus to work every day. But it seems as though the for-profits would be wise to take a cue from other corporations that have reinvented themselves in the face of economic and political challenges. In particular, they may have a lot to learn from companies that evolved from producing and selling goods directly to consumers to providing services and expertise to other organizations.
In short, for-profit colleges should consider becoming the next IBM.
INTERNATIONAL BACHELOR'S MACHINES
In the middle of the last decade, IBM went from being one of the world's leading manufacturers of personal computers to a firm that no longer sells PC's to consumers; the company now provides software, IT service, and business solutions to governments and corporations. The shift has delighted stockholders, who have seen IBM's profit margins consistently increase over the past six years, posting a return on equity that dwarfs the average among other American stocks. IBM's evolution has been so successful that other competitors are now following suit. Just two weeks ago, Hewlett Packard announced plans to shutter its mobile phone and tablet business, sell off its PC division, and acquire a software company.
Where are the parallels with the for-profit college world? It's simple. For a decade or more now, for-profit colleges have thrived by enrolling increasing numbers of new, mostly nontraditional students each year. In the process, the proprietary schools have learned a lot about how to grow capacity, how to leverage technology to create programs that fit student needs, and how to measure student learning and instructor effectiveness. After a decade of growth, though, all signs suggest that the supply of new for-profit students is on the decline and that the prior period of expansion is not sustainable. What's more, many in the policymaking community eye the for-profits with increasing suspicion, leading to lasting political hurdles and headaches.
But President Obama has called for 8 million additional degrees by 2020, and for-profits now sit on a trove of expertise, infrastructure, and innovation that could be more thoroughly tapped to help produce them. For many for-profit colleges, the key to long-term profitability could be a move away from directly educating students to providing other institutions with their proprietary expertise in online learning and program design.
What do the for-profits have to offer? I see three things:
First, the for-profits have shown an ability to grow and expand their capacity. They have developed instructional models that fit the schedules of adult learners and created programs that respond to local labor market demand. Between 2000 and 2009, for-profit enrollments nearly quadrupled, going from 400,000 students at the start of the decade to about 1.58 million in 2009. At a time when community colleges have had to turn students away, the for-profits have shown that they can meet this additional demand. They have moved instruction online in order to free themselves from the constraints imposed by brick and mortar and geography. They have been quick to develop new programs that satisfy local labor market demand and the needs of nontraditional students. Outside of the most entrepreneurial community colleges (and there are some), this spirit is too often absent in the public sector. Traditional institutions who wish to grow but don't have the wherewithal to do so would benefit enormously from a partnership with a for-profit provider that knows how to build capacity. While this is happening on a limited scale with boutique programs at select institutions (see Higher Ed. Holdings and 2tor), there seems to be an enormous market for this kind of reinvention.