BYU Pathway is a major step in the direction I'm talking about, and certainly a general vision like what I described has been articulated in various ways for a long time.

Pres. Eyring 50 years ago: "Ricks College would 'find direct ways to move the blessing of education ... from this campus out into the lives of men and women everywhere.'"

Elder Bednar 25 years ago: ""It will be necessary for us ... to serve ever better the thousands of students we have on campus while simultaneously reaching out to bless the lives of tens of thousands of young Latter-day Saints throughout the world."



BYU Pathways currently has ~2x BYU (Provo) enrollment and has issued 30K degrees and certificates since it started 14 years ago.


But I'm talking about bigger changes. The BYU Pathway brand (and I can only assume total investment) still pales in comparison to the brand of and investment in the brick-and-mortar institution in Provo. BYU is still very much tied to and deeply invested in the current model of higher education.

I'm talking about trends that suggest it might not be all that long before BYU as a single "place" has become antiquated notion, as the dominant vision and investment of church education has undeniably and irreversibly moved on to a very different model.

I'm talking about when BYU Pathway (or some other decentralized alternative) "is" BYU, and BYU's Provo campus has become what the old local church tabernacles and inaccessible chapels have become — relics of another time, repurposed as community centers, museums of what BYU used to be, or eventually torn down and replaced with more useful structures.

That's the kind of wind I see blowing.