Hollowing Out and Reinventing Higher Education: An Individualist Perspective

University-oriented higher education is now expanding. However, its monopolistic role has encountered challenges from new public management, advancement of technology and emerging views towards credentials. Although researchers like (Carlson, Sustaining the College Business Model: How to Shore Up Institutions Now and Reinvent Them for the Future, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2018) and (Letizia, Policy Futures in Education 14:360–376, 2016) investigated how higher education responds to difficulties of sustainability, individualism is infrequently applied to studying the issue. Since individualism concerns the rights and efforts of individuals to solve one’s issue, to narrow down the academic gap, this short article adopted it as a theoretical framework aiming at offering an unconventional view of strengthening higher education from an individualist perspective. Through concepts of “hollowing out” and “reinventing” from public management, this theoretical article outlined the challenges to higher education and depicted its need for reinvention. This article further proclaimed that ideas of autonomy, choice, and self-reliance from individualism offer insightful directions for reinvention. This article will have significant implications for the leadership of higher education and education policymakers.