Sorry- the education you ordered is out of stock

By 2050 the world's population will have (slightly) more 18-year-olds than it does today (UN data).  The problem for many Univeristies is that the proportion of those young people in wealthy and developed countries is decreasing whilst, in poorer and less developed regions is increasing.
Why is this a problem for Universities?  Well, money, obviously, or, to be more precise, the lack of it.

So can Universities make their offerings more accessible, affordable and of equal or better quality than the unscalable business model they currently run?

PICTURE COURTESY OF MR NORMAN © 2018

Scalability is a key business problem.  What does it take to up-scale - and how swiftly and efficiently can that be achieved?  In many developed nations that have good quality Universities, mainly for domestic students, the issue will be - how can we down-scale??

Unless, of course, those brilliant minds, planning the strategies of their universities over the next 30 years can think of a way, develop it as a core part of their business model and transform themselves, whilst retaining their brand identity? (see, that Marketing stuff was not wasted on me).

...and whilst I am a great fan and supporter of on-line education I'm not so naive to consider it a panacea.  But the fact remains that tomorrow's students want accessible, flexible, good quality delivery of worthwhile qualifications but very few Universities are prepared to meet those demands.

Oh, but 2050 is years away....

Really?