Selingo's disruptive innovation framework for reforming higher education

Jeffrey Selingo’s College Unbound: The Future of Higher Education and What it Means for Students is a book that focuses on America’s failing $490 billion dollar higher-education industry. The key points early in the book focus on the fact that approximately half of students enrolling in four-year colleges take up to six years to graduate. Even with those stats, there are more college students enrolled than ever before. Thus, becoming a default activity for those finishing high school. Along with increased enrollment come surging costs since 1978 that have made going to college an expensive and often debt-creating ordeal.

Selingo believes higher education is “beset by hubris, opposition to change, and resistance to accountability” (Selingo, 2013, p. x). Although the book is well aware of the problem, it is aimed towards looking towards the potential future of postsecondary learning versus a lookback at the origins of this growing problem. For example, one thing that can be improved is the information on job salaries available to students and other pertinent statistics as the current trend involves marketing by colleges that hides the real information in lieu of more favorable data that lures students in to enroll.