Coronavirus Is Blowing Up America’s Higher Education System

With the coronavirus upending the service model and the economics of universities across the country, it is not at all clear how flexible America’s higher education system will be in the face of high costs, institutional barriers to change, and a longstanding belief in the value of the way things are traditionally done. A professor at Columbia Business School once told me that “all businesses will be disrupted in the digital age,” but added with a self-satisfied smile, “except for us, of course.” The American affection for the residential model is understandable, but as Mitchell Stevens, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, told me, it also comes with an astronomical price tag: student costs significantly higher than those in other countries; oppressive student debt; and exclusion from top universities for a wide range of students who can’t afford to leave behind family commitments to spend years on campus.