Harvard Professor: Half of US Colleges Will Be Bankrupt in 9 Years

Half of the colleges in the U.S. will be bankrupt in nine years, according to Clayton Christensen, a Harvard business professor.

In his book "The Innovative University," Christensen and co-author Henry Eyring said that online education will become more cost-effective, according to CNBC.

Attendance at traditional universities will drop as more students demand online courses, Christensen said at the Innovation + Disruption in Higher Education symposium in May, CNBC reported.

"If you're asking whether the providers get disrupted within a decade — I might bet that it takes nine years rather than 10," he said at Salesforce.org's Higher Education summit, according to CNBC.

One thing that colleges do better than online courses is providing professors and coaches that inspire students, Christensen said. The professor said that alumni who donated to their colleges were often not doing it out of loyalty to their school or their industry.

"Their connection wasn't their discipline, it wasn't even the college. It was an individual member of the faculty who had changed their lives," Christensen said, according to CNBC.

"Maybe the most important thing that we add value to our students is the ability to change their lives. It's not clear that can be disrupted," Christensen added, the CNBC report said.

Recent closures of small, private liberal arts colleges lend some support to claims that colleges are heading for a wave of closures, according to Inside Higher Ed.

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