Community Corner

Belmont Resident Pens 'Times' Article on Education's Disruptors

Clayton Christensen sees more students learning what they need to know online than in a college classroom.

It's not that rare of an event when a Belmont resident shows up in the august New York Times. There was this fellow named Romney who personally felled many trees as Times reporters and essayists wrote about his exploits to be president recently. Then there are those mentioned in the Book Review, or the latest scientific discovery and those lucky enough to have their wedding announcement selected for the "Vows" section of the Sunday Styles section. 

Then there are those few who are asked to write an article for the publication in the newspaper which publishes "All the News That's Fit to Print." They are usually smart, forward thinking and influential. Clayton Christensen is just that sort of person. 

The Belmont Hill resident and long-time business administration professor at the Harvard Business School is a leading organizational theorist who is currently trumpeting "disruptive innovation"; one that "introduces more convenient and affordable products or services that over time transform sectors," according to Christensen. 

In his essay "Going All the Way" he wrote with Michael B. Horn in the Sunday Times' quarterly "Education Life," (Nov. 3) Christensen looks how the ever increasingly popular online education courses and startups – The Minerva Project, for one start-up, University Now – populating the web is doing to many traditional bricks-and-mortar colleges and universities what steamships did to the age of sail 100 years ago; in the next 10 to 15 years fully a quarter of those most struggling colleges will disappear as more students gravitate toward cheaper, more available courses and degrees.

Yet "disruptive" online education is not exclusive to higher education; Christensen promoted the use of internet learning for Belmont High School students, an idea promoted by the late School Committee member Dan Scharfman in an effort to flatten the expense curve of Belmont's education costs. 


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