Students know the score.

At higher education conferences, you see educators, administrators, and increasingly, vendors.  You seldom see students.  You might think that they are silent, but they are speaking.

Students can tell you how much they owe and about their concerns about repayment.  They make investment decisions every semester.  By the time they reach college, they’ve been engaged in the digital economy for years.

Students are making decisions that are changing the future of higher education as nearly all have taken at least one on-line course for credit.  Traditionalists can argue about this all they want.  They can blame grandstanding politicians for reducing public funding and promoting accountability.  They can blame the for-profits for devaluing the face-to-face classroom.  They can blame extravagant spending on sports programs. All of this and more may be valid, but it doesn’t matter.

Talk with a few students and you will get the clear sense that students know the score.  The costs and benefits of education are ever present as they make their way through the academic labyrinth.  As they see it, they are buying an education.  It’s as simple as that.

Many faculty members do not know the score.  They might think that things will return to “normal.”  They won’t.  Students have analyzed their investments and they are not going back.

Every week or so there is another announcement on the changing terrain of digitally based higher education.  During recent weeks Coursera announced a doubling of its partners (as well as the intention to offer some of its courses in Chinese), and Colorado State University Online announced its intention to accept selected MOOC courses for transfer credit.

Students are seeing only the fourth or fifth generation of “distance learning” platforms, and one niche institution does not make a rule.  However, as the “transferability” of a digital credit hour becomes easier, the market will be changed. This need not happen everywhere or in all cases, but just enough.  That’s where students know the score.

In such situations, an institution only needs to lose some of its market to feel the effect.  It just needs to lose enough.  For most traditional institutions, the loss of 5% may be tolerable. The loss of 10% will be a different matter.

We can disagree about the causes and effects.  For now, lets agree that the savviest students will quickly move more of their college investment to lower cost, equally valued options.  Some of these are now free.  That’s a competitive cost.

Place blame where you will, but students are doing their own investment analysis.  They are tough customers.

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