Colleges and universities must adopt College 2020 if they want to remain in the game, says Vance Fried.

Jane Shaw:

In spite of all the alarm over rising costs and excessive borrowing for college, one person is confident that college will be far less expensive in just a few years.

In the vision outlined by Vance H. Fried, there will be little need for federally subsidized loans. Many parents will be able to pay for college for their children out of current income.

Fried is no utopian. He is a professor of entrepreneurship at Oklahoma State University who earlier wrote a paper explaining how a full-fledged residential college could operate with tuition less than $8,000 a year.

His new paper, "College 2020," forecasts what he thinks will happen as online education increases its competitive impact. The paper is published by the Heritage Foundation's Center for Policy Innovation.

Some commentators worry that tuition-dependent colleges will have to go out of business because they can't control their costs and low-priced suppliers are going to take away their students. But Fried thinks that colleges and universities can survive, if they act soon.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at April 13, 2013 1:02 AM
Subscribe to this site via RSS/Atom: Newsletter signup | Send us your ideas