The US may be about to face a major crisis in higher education that will force hundreds of universities to close (thread).

I was talking about why US higher ed is so vulnerable with some European friends last night. It’s because of the style of education https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/07/07/coronavirus-roundup-more-universities-announce-plans-largely-online-fall-terms

While European universities (free or low-cost) focus strictly on academics, American universities (crazy expensive) focus on the “college experience”.

Dorm life, campus activities, friendship bonds, etc. In countries where higher ed is paid for by taxpayers, it’s just school.

At NYU, I had a sociology professor who early on broke the news to us students: “You’re not paying all this money for the degree. Or for what you learn in class. You’re paying to surround yourself with other upwardly mobile people. You’re paying for the connections”

I didn’t realise just how true that was till I moved to Europe 15 years ago and learned how different university is here. It’s purely about school, not about campus activities. Most students don’t even live on a campus.

So if European universities go online-only in the Autumn, there’s no major reason for students to drop out. Their focus is on the course and the degree.

But in the US, what student in their right mind would pay $40K to do an online-only course in 2020?

Here’s the big secret of US higher ed: it’s a Ponzi scheme. Having a bachelors degree has become essential to social mobility, but what you actually study is immaterial.

You attend college to make connections and mark yourself as middle class or above - not to actually learn.

Take away those social connections - the dorm life, the parties, the sports, the “college experience” and the whole thing will be exposed as empty.

If US universities are stripped down to just the academics, the value for money proposition is rendered absurd.

So I’d expect many kids who graduated high school in June will defer and wait till 2021 to start college (such “gap years” are normally uncommon in the US, unlike UK).

College students who already started would take the year off.

That leaves hundreds of schools with no revenue.

The elite schools will be fine, they have alumni donations and cash reserves. But what about middling universities who depend on tuition? They’ll have to close.

As a result, the proportion of Americans who go to college may precipitously drop. And maybe that’s not a bad thing.