Are Colleges Toast? Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA via AP Images Although the pandemic threatens schools that depend on tuition, some of these colleges are demonstrating their ingenuity. Belt Never let a good crisis go to wasteâWinston Churchillâs old saw has been deployed so many times that it has mostly lost its punch, but COVID is the kind of mega-crisis that Churchill had in mind. Disruptors in the mold of Clayton Christensen have rushed to predict that the pandemic will generate massive changes in every American institution, including higher education. Descriptions of the current disorder in academeâstudents arriving on campus, only to be sent home weeks later, while professors struggle to master Zoomâsegue into cataclysmic predictions.