Wow, this guy really likes to stir the pot. I would think the presidents of several universities (ohio, kent state, toledo, bg, etc.) will have comments to make on this Akron is really the weaker school and faces a lot more problems. Based on perception alone it along with BG and Youngstown face tough sledding. Ohio State is Ohio State and Ohio and Miami are the two residential campuses that will survive with the help of increasing scholarship funds and historical political allies.

The online shift is already happening... Look at Ohio's MBA program. They have shifted that to an online focus already.

My Business Cluster a few years back (2010) was focused on the for-profit higher education model and with that a heavy focus on online education. In our examinations of those companies we examined a shift towards online courses at public universities... Been a few years since then and I have no doubt that shift has already accelerated.

Like you mentioned, I think there will always be students looking for a traditional campus setting... Why? Because young people view college as more than just educational classes. They view college as an experience.

Couldn't agree more.

In his speech, he talked of drawing a line on a napkin, and listing on one side the state universities that are well positioned to survive a higher ed shakeout (he used the term "fully branded" universities, which is new to me). The schools in the other column - including Ohio - are likely to go out of business within the next 50 years, he claimed.

OSU and Cincinnati were two of the three identified as "survivors." The third was Miami, which I question. While MU has an excellent reputation, it is largely an undergraduate school with a comparatively small research footprint, correct? I would think they would be at risk in the new paradigm.

Of course, to claim that Akron is in the process of moving to the healthy side of the ledger is a bit farcical given the fact that they are aggressively cutting programs and faculty. The university's academic reputation is not terribly good in most areas, but the areas where they are strong don't draw a significant number of students. So how do you keep afloat when all of those undergrads in non-tech programs transfer to other schools?

Additionally, it's interesting to note that his new director of student learning ($250k-plus salary) comes from White Hat Management, owners of the state's WORST charter schools.

This is likely to get very ugly very fast.

My uninformed take: I think there are better choices ahead than Become the University of Phoenix or Die. And I think as more and more universities go online-only, having a campus in a place like Athens will become more and more attractive to a certain segment of prospective students. The traditional campus experience is kind of dying. So if you still have one that's a thing to sell, not dismantle.

I would think they would do something like they do in nursing.
Take your classes on line and the school has affiliations with hospitals to let you do your clinical work.

Actually, my wife was looking into getting an online MSN with O.U.
But she found out that right now O.U. doesn't have any affiliations with hospitals in N.J.

That doesn't bother me as much for teaching. If a teacher can learn over the web, shouldn't they be able to teach over the web?

As it was mentioned above, I don't really understand how this would work for nursing.
I want my nurses to have real life practice poking IV's, not virtual experience.
^^^
And really, that drives home the deeper question... I could see how this is good for a lecture, but not so much for labs...

That could well be the case, but not always. In our family I have a niece and a grandniece with bachelor's in nursing. Both did their degrees and hospital clinicals in the same town.

This is an example what the real competition to brick-mortar colleges will be:

http://www.wgu.edu/

Take Middle Tennessee State U. for example. Being in a population boom area, the enrollment is now actually larger then UT-Knoxville. People can't get the classes they need for popular majors such as I.T. On top of that, I spoke with a rising soph. who said of all the history classes he needed to pick from as an elective this upcoming school year, only "history of the bible" was not already full.

He will be taking the readiness assessment test for WGU any day now. At least four states outside of Utah that I know of are now connected with it (Indiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas) Bill Gates gave the initial five million dollars start-up money for Tennessee to affiliate with WGU.