When Shelf Space Stops Mattering, What Does a College Actually Own?

I remember walking across campus late one night when I was a university web director.

I realized something fundamental had changed on campus as I walked through a computer lab that used to be packed and found almost no one there.

Years earlier, that room was a bottleneck. Students waited for stations. Access was managed. Space mattered. That night, the lab was clean, fully powered on, and nearly empty. Nothing was broken. Students were still learning. They just no longer needed the room.

That moment stuck with me because it mirrors what is happening to higher education right now.

For decades, entire industries were built around scarcity. Shelf space was limited. Distribution was controlled. Access determined value. When technology removed those limits, consumption did not slow down. It changed.

Content did not disappear. Distribution did.

Music stopped needing record stores. News stopped needing a front page. Retail stopped needing a physical shelf to be discovered. Once space stopped being scarce, owning it no longer guaranteed relevance.

Higher education, in many ways, still operates as if shelf space exists.

We talk about seats in classrooms, beds in residence halls, and courses tied to fixed schedules as if those constraints automatically equal value. For a long time, they did. For today’s learners, they increasingly do not.

That shift forces a distinction higher education can no longer afford to blur: content versus distribution.

History is clear on this point. Once people no longer depend on your distribution channels, owning only the pipes becomes risky. When that happens, content becomes the real source of leverage.

Which leads to an uncomfortable but necessary question.

What is your institution’s actual intellectual property?

Is it faculty, who are more mobile than ever? Is it curriculum, much of which has become interchangeable across institutions? Is it the residential experience, which can be powerful but is also expensive and out of reach for many? Or is it the network and outcomes, whose value varies widely depending on the institution?

This question matters because intellectual property defines what you truly own. It determines what can be copied, what can be bypassed, and where you still have leverage in a market that no longer respects old boundaries.

At the same time, access to learners is increasingly shaped by others.

Employers are stepping in as education partners. Workforce platforms are shaping credential pathways. A growing number of intermediaries now sit between students and institutions, often owning the relationship before a campus ever enters the picture.

That should give higher education leaders pause.

Institutions that move early gain clarity and optionality. They get explicit about what they actually own. They understand which distribution channels they still control. They make deliberate choices about where to invest, where to partner, and where competing no longer makes sense.

Institutions that avoid this work slowly lose leverage without realizing it.

Because once shelf space disappears, buildings do not protect you. Technology stacks do not protect you. Even reputation has limits.

The relationship with learners does.

And the institutions that define, protect, and strengthen that relationship now will be the ones that remain relevant long after the old rooms stop filling up.