I’ve written before about the new book, Disrupting Class, and the application of Clayton Christensen’s business-inspired notion of ‘disruptive innovation‘ to the world of education.

The book itself concentrates on compulsory (K-12) education, but many of the ideas have far wider applicability, as Friday’s blog post by book co-author Michael Horn clearly illustrates.

Horn is now Executive Director, Education, and co-founder of the Innosight Institute, which is;

“a non-profit think tank devoted to applying the theories of disruptive innovation to problems in the social sector.”

In this post, Horn muses on the recent trend toward students attending shorter (and cheaper) courses at the local community college (roughly equivalent to a Further Education college here in the UK) rather than the more expensive four year qualifications from a traditional university.

As more content is made available via iTunesU, the OpenCourseWare Consortium, YouTube and others, surely this trend will only accelerate? Why pay top-dollar (or euro) to attend a mid-range university, when you can access a far cheaper curriculum close to home and top it up with reference to lectures and course material from the very best scholars that Stanford, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and the rest have to offer?

Does this disruption create huge opportunity for the lower end of the Higher Education marketplace, turn lecturers at the top end into media stars, and threaten dire consequences for those in between too expensive to compete with the cheaper colleges and not successful enough to monetise their faculty via new markets?