Forbes article spotlights Mark Zupan’s view of the state of higher education
In 2019, Alfred University President Mark Zupan offered to bet $1 million against a Harvard professor’s 2011 prediction that half of America’s colleges and universities would close within a decade, victims of the proliferation of on-line education options. The professor, Clayton Christensen, didn’t take the wager, and three-and-a-half years later, it appears Zupan was correct in pushing back against the notion that the demise of higher education institutions was imminent.
On Wednesday, Oct. 11, Forbes published a follow-up story on Zupan’s challenge to Christensen. The piece, titled “That $1 Million Wager On The Future Of Colleges And Universities,” was penned by Derek Newton, an education writer and contributor to Forbes.
In the story, Zupan talked about how Alfred University has continued to grow in the years since he proposed the bet to Christensen. The University’s class of first-year and transfer students for the 2023-24 academic year is its largest in several years, and its first-to-second-year rate of student retention is up five percentage points over last year.