The World of Higher Education Capitalizing on College: Mission, Money, and Survival in Higher Ed with Joshua Travis Brown
Oct 9, 2025
Join academic Joshua Travis Brown from Johns Hopkins University as he dives into how private religious colleges tackle financial challenges in 'Capitalizing on College.' He outlines innovative strategies like the Traditional model relying on endowments and the Pioneer approach enhancing adult education. Brown also discusses the Network strategy, which adds diverse enrollment avenues, and the Accelerated model, expanding online courses for greater revenue. Explore the trade-offs between mission and market forces that shape the future of higher education today.
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Hidden Majority Of Colleges Face Cost Pressures
- Most non-elite colleges face rising costs with limited ability to raise prices or secure public funds.
- Joshua Travis Brown studies tuition-driven private religious colleges to reveal common survival behaviors.
Religious Colleges As A Diagnostic Sample
- Religious colleges form the largest group of tuition-driven private institutions in the U.S. and offer a useful lens for behavior-based study.
- Brown sampled Protestant institutions to control for noise and compare behavioral strategies across similar schools.
Four Strategies Emerged From The Data
- Four strategies emerged organically from grounded research: Traditional, Pioneer, Network, and Accelerated.
- These categories explain how tuition-driven institutions seek margins to subsidize their residential core.