ABSTRACT
The idea of disruptive change (Christensen, 1997) has become so embedded in everyday discourse about technology and industry that it is easy to lose sight of the radical nature of its central thesis. Disruption occurs when innovators in an industry offer a new product or service that is initially inferior to that of market leaders, but which gains acceptance by virtue of greater convenience, lower cost, or other features. Over time, the new product or service improves to the point that it fully displaces older versions, and incumbent market leaders are toppled. Disruption in industry is the equivalent of revolutionary regime change in the political arena. It is signaled by the rise of insurgent competitors who eventually overtake and dethrone traditional leaders, like a game of king of the hill. Those traditional leaders are made vulnerable by institutional inertia; they are unwilling or unable to change completely enough or fast enough to avoid being overtaken. Many observers of higher education (Selingo, 2014; Carey, 2016; Craig, 2015), including (Christensen & Eyring, 2011; Christensen et. al., 2015), have argued that American higher education is a prime candidate for disruption. The emergence of online learning and the unbundling of educational services, in particular, have been regarded as innovations that number the days for traditional colleges and universities. The theory of disruption implies that, in the field of higher education, those traditionally sitting on the top of the hill—in this case, flagship public and elite private institutions—are vulnerable to being displaced by newer institutions that represent very different approaches to education.
