Next: An Internet Revolution in Higher Education

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Anything that offers merely so-so fidelity and so-so convenience falls into a no man's land of consumer apathy that I call the fidelity belly. That's where music CDs, newspapers, and desktop PCs based on Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows find themselves today.

College is a high-fidelity experience. If you want a respected undergraduate degree, there is one way to get it: You have to get accepted to an accredited college, pay tuition so great that your degree will be one of the most expensive things you ever buy, and uproot your life to move—all so you can engage in a rich, all-encompassing experience for four years.

Where is that "good-enough" degree?

Basically, all four-year, professional-grade colleges and universities sit at the high-fidelity end of education. At the top are Harvard and other elite schools. Public universities are usually a little more convenient (they cost less and let in more applicants) but offer less fidelity (conferring a lower status). Still, every option in the bucket of four-year, professional-grade higher education lands high up on the fidelity axis.

But if most higher education is high fidelity, is there nothing at the high-convenience end? Currently there exists no higher-education version of MP3 music files—no way to get a "good-enough" BA or master's degree that's accepted by professional managers, yet obtain it in a way that's cheap, easy, and convenient. This is a terrible imbalance.

That's like putting up a giant neon sign announcing: Monster Opportunity Inside. And digital technology, as we've seen over and over in the past decade, is a means to that end. Just as the Internet has helped blow down the doors of the music industry, newspapers, and the travel-agent business, it will eventually do the same to higher education.

In researching the fidelity-swap concept, I've been struck by the fact that almost every time I explored a market segment, there was an obvious set of opposites holding down the high-fidelity and high-convenience positions. Some company or group of competitors vie for the top end of fidelity, while another company or group of competitors vie for the outer edge of convenience. Every other player scatters across the fidelity/convenience spectrum.

Accreditation guards the universities

Once in a while, a market gets completely out of balance. Forces conspire to prevent either a high-fidelity or high-convenience player from emerging. All the offerings crowd around one end or the other. Eventually, someone nails a disruptive approach. Customers and competitors rush in and the marketplace wonders why that great idea didn't come sooner.

The higher education market is a lot like that. For centuries the university model dominated because nothing else worked. No technology existed that might deliver an interactive, engaging educational experience without gathering students and teachers in the same physical space. In the past century, a powerful social bias set in: Only accredited universities were allowed to grant degrees, and most professional jobs required an accredited degree. Even though technologies emerged that might foster new models of higher education, the neat accreditation ecosystem locked out innovative competitors.

These days broadband Internet, video games, social networks, and other developments could combine to create an online, inexpensive, super-convenient model for higher education. You wouldn't get the sights and sounds of a campus, personal contact with professors, or beer-soaked frat parties, but you'd end up with the knowledge you need and the degree to prove it. The University of Phoenix which is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, is partway there, though it's a hybrid of online and campus learning. Other organizations, entrepreneurs, and governments are trying to develop super-convenient universities—often in places outside the U.S., including Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Canada.

The Harvards of the world won't go away. They will continue to be the high-fidelity players in the fidelity/convenience trade-off. But a large swath of the population might decide that going deeply into debt before even starting work is too high a price to pay for a high-fidelity education when a more convenient version will do. They will pull out of mid-level universities. Just as surely as many consumers gave up music CDs for Internet downloads, many students will soon decide to put aside a four-year stint at a traditional university for a cheap, easy, and good-enough degree delivered through laptop screens and smart phones. Schools in the middle of the pack—neither high-fidelity nor high-convenience—will have to adapt or suffer.

Maney is an author and journalist who has covered technology for more than 20 years. His previous book was The Maverick and His Machine: Thomas Watson Sr. and the Making of IBM.

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