Don’t Sound the Death Knell for Colleges—They’ll Bounce Back – Real Clear Education
Some people have argued that the rise of remote learning and Zoom during the Coronavirus crisis shows that residential and on-campus learning is obsolete and unnecessary. NYU Business professor Scott Galloway recently told James D. Walsh of New York Magazine that the future of college education was in jeopardy, especially for non-elite universities.
Galloway indicated that college would be a substantially degraded and less compelling product that would have trouble recovering from the coronavirus crisis and that many universities would be forced to go out of business. He said, “It will be like department stores in 2018. Everyone will recognize they’re going out of business, but it will take longer than people think. There will be a lot of zombie universities. Alumni will step in to help. They’ll cut costs to figure out how to stay alive, but they’ll effectively be the walking dead. I don’t think you’re going to see massive shutdowns, but there’s going to be a strain on tier-two colleges.”
Others, including Bill Gates, have hyped online learning for years and suggested that on-campus education will become less important.