So what should colleges do? First, they need to recognize the inevitability of change. Change is coming, and those schools that embrace it are far more likely to survive. Second, they should start listening to the constituency that is paying the bills. Providing real job skills and job placement assistance—along with a solid education—should take priority over identifying potential micro-aggressions. And third, colleges must make a real effort to make college affordable to middle-class families.

Colleges are facing a perfect storm that could shutter hundreds of them and leave many more wondering how to survive. Yet much of higher education’s leadership is in denial that anything is amiss.

The College Board just concluded its annual Higher Ed Colloquiumof college presidents, admissions deans, and financial aid directors. I was invited to address the group about whether there is an irreconcilable gap between college costs and the stressed middle class. There is. And my message was about as popular as a hurricane forecast.

The perfect storm will be the culmination of soaring tuitions, technological disruption, and parent dissatisfaction.

Out-of-control tuition increases have been the stuff of parents’ nightmares and media headlines for years. The Bureau of Labor Statistics pegs it at a 1200% increase since 1978, far higher than health care’s 634% rise, or the Consumer Price Index’s 279% increase over the same period.

Most middle class families are ineligible for the government’s scholarship programs – Pell grants almost never go to kids whose parents earn more than $60,000. And colleges’ own financial aid programs typically don’t kick in until the family puts up the first monies known as the “Expected Family Contribution,” an amount dictated by a Congressional formula that most observers recognize as unrealistically high. For example, the EFC for a family of fourearning $100,000 and with $50,000 in assets and just one child about to go off to college is expected to contribute the first $20,000 of the school costs—every year.

Exactly how education will be changed by technology—or by whom—is a constant betting game among Silicon Valley’s venture capitalists. But with an industry estimated at around $1.3 trillion annually—9% of the GDP—lots of entrepreneurs are looking to disrupt education just as their predecessors saw opportunities in music, publishing, and communications. Moreover, there are just as many innovators without a profit motive looking to change education in order to improve it and make it more accessible.

The third force in this intensifying maelstrom is parent dissatisfaction with colleges themselves. That’s not my speculation or provocation. It’s the conclusion of research on middle class parents conducted by the education site Noodle.

In December, Noodle surveyed nearly 1,000 middle-class parents—two-thirds with college bound kids and the rest with children who are currently in college or recently graduated. Unfortunately, what these parents want for their kids is not what colleges are delivering.

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