The Consumer Reckoning: How Will Education Respond?

The pandemic will play the role of supercharging change in a stagnant industry with limited previous disruption. Education has remained in relatively the same place for some time, struggling with the same issues and failing to adapt an industry to changing pricing, delivery, assessment, and time variables. The consumer will demand something different from education in the future and that alone will hold schools, colleges, and universities more accountable for their systems and structures.

Education has been historically responsive and adaptive primarily to the systems that it has created. Systems, policies, and structures have been created mostly to ensure the sustainability of the organization and those who hold position of power within it. Chief among those include faculty, administrators, and board members. Only a small number of early adaptors have created the space for change – prior to the pandemic – that was necessary to be responsive to the market. Those with independent missions and the freedom and flexibility to adapt have had a greater opportunity to innovate and be responsive.

This will change in the coming months and years. The market will demand a more responsive educational system, both public and private. One that is more fluid, practical, accessible, and adaptable. One that meet students and their families where they need them, on their terms. The genie was let out of the bottle during the pandemic and it will not return. There will be an explosion of educational responses that will be focused on meeting the needs of students and families. The pandemic was the innovative disruptor. Schools and colleges will have to respond to a game in which the rules have changed.