Waking up to the economics of networked learning
Via Stephen Downes, Judy Breck believes, and I agree, that the economic crunch will speed the advent of network learning.
Getting a college education in the US is absurdly expensive, but like property, or the stock market, the education bubble too will burst - the financial institutions simply no longer have the money to fund the madness.
Change is on the way. Consider how the Open Courseware movement is giving way to the idea that, in essence, a university education could become available (including Open Accreditation) free of charge. This is not, of course, a done deal, but economic necessity will force us to look more closely at these issues. And crucially, we can now consider such possibilities because of the network. The network doesn’t just change the way we learn from a pedagogical or behavioral perspective - it also changes the economics of the production, distribution, and consumption of educational products and services. The network has the potential to dis-intermediate the inefficiencies in the system and change it fundamentally. That is what will and should happen.
So, it is fair to ask about the value (in the economic sense) of a US university education. Given their origins, it is unsurprising that university cost/benefit may be out of sync with the broader economic reality. Schools are hard to manage from a cost perspective. I’ve sat on the board of a privately held language school since 1996 and I’ve seen that, without the strictest approach to cost-control, for example, the customer can end up paying for the institution’s inefficiencies. In a state-funded university with a closed system and little financial accountability, I can only imagine what goes on. (Even without seeing the books, we could probably guess, though.) And as we all know, there are many other reasons why our educational institutions can allow their fees to, er, bloat.
What I am not saying
Let me be clear on something. I am not proposing that the educational system be turned over to free market forces (though there may actually be a case for it). Nor am I saying that our universities suck and that educators are bad, etc. What I am saying is that the network is exposing the economics of the old system and it doesn’t look good in the context of the tough times ahead. It is the economics, too, that will determine the extent of the changes we are about to see to a far greater extent than will the ideas, the pedagogy, or even the technology.
The fact is that the network can replace large chunks of the old system at a fraction of the cost but it is the economics that will determine how it configures. Judy mentions textbooks, scaling up good teachers, etc, but there are endless other ways. And Judy is exactly right when she suggests the power of mobile learning in this scenario. But there are, in fact, entirely new conceptions of what a university education should be that go way beyond this. This is not news, but that conversation is going to get louder.
Our example
It was this economics of the network concept that brought Praxis together as a company. I spend my days trying to figure out the economic reality of schools, of networked learning, and of how to create more value for our learners-as-customers. I would argue that we are slowly but surely solving the puzzle - thanks, of course, to the network. A Praxis Pass, for example, offers full access to 4 languages for about 80 cents per day. Meanwhile, the more we scale it up, the cheaper it can get, to the point where we could offer access to dozens of languages (or other subjects) for a few cents per day. Nor is there any reason why we could not do that (assuming we reach reasonable scale) make money, and even give the service away free to entire regions where people were too poor to pay for it - parts of Africa, India, or China, for example. We are a small organization (58 people) but it is entirely possible that we could do those things. It may demonstrate the broader potential of the network in this context. We just have to think about this differently.
The point is that networked learning is in its infancy, and so are the economics of networked learning. There is an awesome power out there waiting to be unleashed if we are willing to reconfigure how we think about all of this. The coming economic collapse will provide the push. After that it will be time to be very open and very creative. This isn’t edupunk - this is real life. I doubt if any of us would have liked it this particular way, but hey, get ready for the era of networked learning.
Ken Carroll
October 9th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
[…] the madness. Change is on the way. Consider how the Open Courseware movement is giving way to the Source Education - […]
October 10th, 2008 at 12:24 am
Networked learning and open accreditation will, much like the technologies that allow them, transform things from the bottom up. First to go will be non-accredited adult education — we’re already seeing that. Next will be a lot of the specialized training whose students are very spread out. It will take a while to get to the 4-year university degree — quite possibly longer than any of us have to wait — but it may well happen, and long before it will change university education in ways that would make it unrecognizable to students and teachers today.
October 10th, 2008 at 12:46 am
Ken, I agree that ‘the network is exposing the economics of the old system’, but I can tell you that embracing change is going to be a long and bumpy road…
let me give you an example from where I live : France established a center of distance learning over 20 years ago, now offering a variety of training programmes, I guess a mix of their own content with some from various sources.
my wife is taking a masters degree (teaching French as a foreign language), this year CNED warned their students that they would no longer get audio and VHS tapes but DVDs (which had to be recalled as they didn’t work!) but mp3/4 is yet an option. Mid-term assignments must be sent over as printouts, no email exchange with either teaching or admin staff.
But they opened a forum for students to share experience, to teachers aren’t participating. But, much as the old brick and mortar universities, the forum closes down during the summer holiday (this is no joke). When it reopened after the break a few weeks ago, all forum content from the previous year had been erased…
so even when established institutions are trying to adapt, they’re having a very hard time changing paradigms. I could give other examples from the healthcare industry where I work.
October 10th, 2008 at 12:48 am
I met mp3/4 *not* an option.
October 10th, 2008 at 2:40 am
Ken,
I really like that economies-of-scale economics. Ever considered public funding for teaching - and thereby - keeping alive really rare languages?
Another trend fosterd by the network: I see a further differentiation along the value chain for the future. Specialized providers of basic study content (CPod) vs. tool developers vs. “Skype teacher farms” (CPod executive) vs. test preparation vs. test taking (which for obvious reasons will not occur online for a while).
The decoupling of test-taking & certification from the required teaching appears really promising to me. Especially for those private Universities / “eMBAs” the core motivation to enroll is not teaching but getting the degree. See the possible conflict of interests there?
The network opens huge possibilities to efficiently train for the test while credible institutions are caring about objective test taking. In a sense, that HSK model might be leading the way. And the first sites that are geared at HSK preparation are also begin to materialize - and it amazes me that they are absolutely complementary to CPod in its current form of existence.
Last not least: I think it is valuable to couple research and education. There is huge win-win potential for a bleeding-edge web-learning site to team up with various branches of research, from didactic, over linguistics, to computer sciences and information systems…
All together, you have the potential to form powerful virtual teaching organizations with specialists for all sorts of subtasks.
October 10th, 2008 at 3:11 am
[…] Carroll included this illustration in a post on his blog yesterday about my recent post on how the economic crunch will speed networked learning. This picture (thanks […]
October 10th, 2008 at 5:30 am
I’m interested that you think education isn’t already turned over to free market forces. Isn’t it the case that for university degrees, for example, the institutions charge what they think families will pay for the students to attend?
The only reason our fees are still low at the moment in the UK is that its not traditionally been common practice for parents to “save for college”, but that’s definitely the model the government has been moving us towards for the last ten years. The current financial situation may be the only thing that forces that process to regress, if the economic value of more graduates exceeds the cost of funding their creation.
When I went through the “clearing” process for university places in 1997, I was offered a clearing place at Kings College London but due to a hiccup on the computer system processing my application I could not be issued a clearing reference number to claim it. When the reference number was issued a few days later, I called KCL back. They advised me there were still clearing places on the course, but only for foreign students - who at the time paid about £7,000 more each year to study the same degree.
Sounds like market forces to me…
October 15th, 2008 at 1:31 am
[…] Carroll: Will the economic crunch pave the way for widespread networked learning as a viable replacement for many venues of formal […]
October 16th, 2008 at 11:06 am
You all might be interested to know that last week I was invited to teach a short course and to be a visiting professor at a well know university in Latin America (which might be best to not specifically name here). As part of the process they asked me to send the documents that would part of the course, so that they could print them all out and make a course packet. When I told them that my course would be 100% blog driven, had hundreds of links, would be paperless, and without a textbook, instead of getting a positive reaction, I could tell that they were a little frustrated with me. Turns out that they have a rule of sorts where they don’t allow their students to take laptops into class, because it is distracting. “Bu hui ba!” (Thanks to CPod, that’s a Chinese chunk I learned that means “No way, I can’t believe it.”) Truth told, I’m really looking forward to rocking this boat a bit! Wish me luck.
October 16th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
I think Goulniky’s observation is interesting. Old habits die hard. As for Henning, the man should have his own blog or come work for us - these ideas are profound and insightful.
Victoria, I don’t kn ow much about the UK situation, but it seems that most education there is subsidized, ie, tax funded. But all institutions could benefit from the cost reduction that the netowrk in evitably enables.
Orlando’s is a very clear and simple example of one way the network is more efficient. Following on from there I think there ar many more.
Ken
October 17th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
I’m with Henning in that it is much easier to envision a ‘division of labor’ in which the school does the examining and ‘credentialing’ while much of the ‘heavy lifting’ of preparing and maintaining lessons, writing and grading quizzes, providing feedback and practice resources gets ‘outsourced’ to an online provider. Economic arguments pale in comparison to cultural habits when it comes to education, I’m afraid. Students often accept substandard resources and instruction in exchange for a prestigious (or just ’safe’) name backing them up.
It would make sense for ChinesePod to offer its services as an alternative to a traditional textbook at the university level. I’d guess there would be resistance from students and administrators who are (justifiably) wary of their professors’ inclination to offload work onto teaching assistants, grad students, etc. The key is to make absolutely sure that the student experience is superior. (you’d like to think it would be easy but students will gripe about anything…) Probably the best migration path would be to convince some academic types to do a study–ChinesePod versus a control group. That would really be the best case scenario, really, as it would provide documentation, publicity, and a chance to CPod to experiment with a traditional undergrad population. Also, I’d start with the fanciest names first.
October 21st, 2008 at 8:25 am
Ken,
Great article! Several aspects of networked learning are especially intriguing, namely access for very low cost (or even free, as you mentioned) to areas where educational systems and/or their integrity lacks, as well as the idea that at some time in the not-too-distant future, people might actually “accredit” someone for what they actually achieve with their education, rather than what their education achieves for them.
It is akin to what’s happening on the music scene, where artists are being recognized for their talent rather than their marketing budget, thanks to network distribution and low cost of production essentials.
I see a future where people are essentially accrediting themselves by pursuing their own education through Open Courseware or solutions like Praxis Language’s products and, by virtue of what they make happen in both virtual and real worlds, stake their own claim and demand “accreditation”. Not the kind you pay thousands and thousands for and hang on the wall, but the kind that speaks for itself.
Many thanks for continuing to bring focus on intriguing issues like these.
Chapman