Discipline: Education
According to Clayton Christensen’s Disruptive Innovation Theory, upstarts eat up market share often with innovative and more affordable products and soon become the new market leader. Christensen sees its relevance in many aspects of human endeavor including in education. Cheaper online education is said to be disruptive of colleges offering expensive classroom-based modes of instruction. This concern was highlighted in a forum held in Russia and attended by education leaders around the globe. Other scholars, however, dispute this. For them, it is the interruptions to the totalizing attempt of most scholarships and not the impact of technological innovations that is disrupting education. This paper supports this view, especially from the standpoint of developing countries long shackled by western-oriented paradigms.