Services and technology: Revolutionizing higher education

Powerful economic, technical, and social trends - facilitated by the Internet - are revolutionizing traditional concepts of economics, business, education, and learning. The effects on higher education are especially profound. Knowledge is deepening and broadening so rapidly that formal programs cannot hope to keep up with it. Over 90% of the relevant literature in many technical fields - such as biotechnology, astronomy, computers and software, and environmental sciences - has been produced since 1985. Daily, terabytes of information are entering the GenBank, environmental, and space databases. The two billion new minds connecting to advanced countries' marketplaces between 1995 and 2010 constantly add even more new discoveries. Traditional programmatic approaches to education simply cannot keep up with the outpouring. Education is likely to go through the same 5-step sequence that all other services went through when confronted with major new technologies: 1. new economies of scale, 2. new economies of scope, 3. increased complexity, 4. totally new service concepts, and 5. disintermediation and redecentralization.