Modularization in Higher Education

Writer Bonnie Gillespie captures the problem of the modern university in the following sentence.

When you try to be everything to everyone, you accomplish being nothing to anyone. — Bonnie Gillespie

Universities are too big. They attempt to do too much, to solve too many problems, to reach too many types of students.

The answer is not to bundle services, as some colleges have attempted to do, or even worse — add additional services to help students navigate the maze that is the college experience.

What we need is the adoption of a model already prevalent in the business sector: modularization.

Modularization is the process of breaking things down into their essential, separate parts.

What’s unique about how online businesses treat modularization is that each “module” becomes its own business. These micro-entities thrive by doing less.

They specialize and then offer their targeted solutions to the other modules which require them. As a consequence, a web of mutual benefit is built. One that is sustained by trust, competition, and innovation.

But universities have placed all of their bets on a different model.

The False Belief of Integration

Author Ben Thompson defines the integration model as follows:

To put it in generic terms, profit in a value chain flows to whatever company…