OK. Who here is PC based and who is Mac?
We all know that newspapers and TV networks are bloated and increasingly unproductive in the digital world.
Big buildings, overstaffed, trapped with a 1950’s mentality of how things get done. They spend a fortune to accomplish the simplest tasks.
The Internet is now blowing that model to smithereens.
The New York Times ran an article this Sunday on new models for journalism – leaner, meaner with much smaller overheads and much smaller profit margins.
But the web is a voracious virus, infecting everything. And perhaps education is next. Perhaps it should be.
Like newspapers, education in this country is also still trapped in a 1950s model that worked then, but increasingly does not work now. Big buildings, big staff, bit overhead and big costs.
My nephew is about to graduate from Dalton, an elite and very expensive private school in Manhattan. The cost of his educaiton, to date, about $40,000 a year, for 12 years, or $480,000. Next September he will start Washington University in St. Louis, which is going to cost another $60,000 a year, for four years, or $240,000. By the time he graduates in four years, his parents will have sunk nearly 3/4ths of a million dollars into his basic education. And this is before we start any kind of graduate school.
No matter how you look at it, that is a lot of money.
Well, here is one way to look at it. If his parents had taken all that money and put it into an investment fund returning 6% a year he would have $13 million by the time he reached age 65.
There is something fundamentally wrong with the ‘cost of education’, like there is with the ‘cost of running a newspaper’.
The education market is ripe for a Craigslist to come along and take away a good chunk of business – unless they get their act together fast (unlikely).
This is, in fact, already happening to some extent. Phoenix University, an entirely online university, last year made (ready?) $2 billion. Harvard made $4 billion, but, and this is a big but, Harvard’s total asset value, its buildings and libraries are at $26 billion. Phoenix puts their at $1 billion.
And Phoenix is just getting started.
So is online education.
It is no secret that Stanley Kaplan, the SAT Review Business, owned by The Washington Post Company is the only thing that keeps The Washington Post afloat. The joke is that Stanley Kaplan wakes up one day and decides to sell off the Post as it is losing too much money.
No joke.
The whole education business is going to undergo the same kind of transformation that is already shattering newspapers and television networks.
And no doubt, the Universities will wait until the last possible moment when the waves are washing over the deck to start the lifeboat drills.
Harvard on the ropes?
The New York Times facing bankruptcy?
Yep.
12 Comments
southuniversityonline.net/ October 09, 2013
Online classes are indeed an important resource in providing various types of lessons.
The history of distance learning spans three major periods of development, beginning
in the mid-1800s. Both types of courses, classroom teaching and online courses, are available.
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Francis Mcgraw May 29, 2010
Haha I’m literally the only comment to this awesome writing?
Steve May 27, 2010
I strongly doubt that Universities will cease existance due to the internet. I can of course imagine that some tution will shift towards the net as will handing out assignments and returning term papers. A University provides research facilities you will hardly find in a student dig. The intercommunion between professions on a personal basis is possible on campus only and it is necessary in the prevention of nerd-rearing. Your nephew will confirm that friendships and acquaintances he established while studying on campus afforded him with some advantages. If not already, he will find out about it when he finally graduates. The most necessary change in my opinion would be that education in kindergardens, schools and univerities is made more widely available for everyone on a government funded basis. who can afford the horrendous price-tags attached to courses of studies at the facilities your nephew has the shear luck and resources to be able to attend. The internet is a fascinating pool of information and educational opportunities, i acknowledge this. It is not used for those noble purposes by most of its audience. Most spend their online hours on facef.ck, twitter and platforms alike. Few frequent sites providing information that further their education. why, if tution was that easily accomplished by the use of the www, do you have to travel distances for a hands on vj-training i wonder.
fosca May 20, 2010
you could not do this online, could you?
http://www.ktvu.com/news/23592937/detail.html
i do not agree to it offline either. wtf
fosca May 19, 2010
i don´t need to as i have a good understanding on “how video works”. i am, besides the internet, a trained user of those out of fashion devices called books. i use newsU, poynter and what not online. unfortunately their online tution is always dear and the courses run at times when it long is lights out in old europe.
fosca May 19, 2010
I strongly doubt that Universities will cease existance due to the internet. I can of course imagine that some tution will shift towards the net as will handing out assignments and returning term papers. A University provides research facilities you will hardly find in a student dig. The intercommunion between professions on a personal basis is possible on campus only and it is necessary in the prevention of nerd-rearing. Your nephew will confirm that friendships and acquaintances he established while studying on campus afforded him with some advantages. If not already, he will find out about it when he finally graduates. The most necessary change in my opinion would be that education in kindergardens, schools and univerities is made more widely available for everyone on a government funded basis. who can afford the horrendous price-tags attached to courses of studies at the facilities your nephew has the shear luck and resources to be able to attend. The internet is a fascinating pool of information and educational opportunities, i acknowledge this. It is not used for those noble purposes by most of its audience. Most spend their online hours on facef.ck, twitter and platforms alike. Few frequent sites providing information that further their education. why, if tution was that easily accomplished by the use of the www, do you have to travel distances for a hands on vj-training i wonder.
Michael Rosenblum May 19, 2010
You can also just go to http://www.nyvs.com!
Ralph May 18, 2010
I am a professor and I couldn’t agree with you more. I see it everyday in this business. We refuse to change. We are fighting a losing battle. The market is calling for a different kind of education. I here you loud and clear. Just like the VJ there will be EF – education freelancers selling their courses directly to students who want the knowledge. Times are a changin’
steve May 18, 2010
might as well toss 6-7% real estate commissions in there.
rarely do i have a tv on over the last three-five years, but last evening the cbc ran a story about the fuss full-service real estate brokers are having with upstarts doing “their” job for as little as $700.
may have been the exception, but one fairly educated sounding guy with a “luxury condo” saved himself 35-40k in a deal that took less than 60 days start to finish (the canadian real estate mkt is still hot).
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Terry Heaton May 18, 2010
Michael,
I preach this everywhere I go as a story that must be assigned and covered, especially in towns where a university is a big part of the economy. I’ve also written about it many times. It’s textbook disruptive innovation, and if Harvard was smart, they’d move to own the marketplace, even if it meant gutting its campus. An affordable, online Harvard degree would bring something with it that no Phoenix degree ever could.
Of course, Harvard won’t do this — just as newspapers refused to build a new boat instead of clinging to the one that’s sinking.
And so it goes.
Terry