The theory of disruptive innovation suggests that new players can enter a marketplace by offering services to overlooked consumers, eventually reshaping entire industries. In the higher education sector, this theory has profound implications as emerging institutions challenge traditional models. This has resulted in a surge in enrollment at new low-cost, flexible institutions, many of which operate on online platforms and cater to working adults. This shift is giving rise to an increasing number of “Mega-Universities” – massively scaled institutions that are rewriting some of the rules of higher education.

As these institutions scale, they also are shifting the “value proposition” of higher education to maximize convenience and efficiency over the traditional metrics of pure academic excellence, selectivity and world-class scholarship. For many students and their families these new criteria offer a different form of value. Michael Horn, co-Founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute and a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, notes that for these largest institutions, “quality looks nothing like a traditional college or university – It’s orthogonal to it” and suggests that instead of thinking of quality, it is better to consider value, which Horn defines as “outcomes divided by costs.”