When will colleges go the way of the internet?

Colleges are experiencing the technology changes of the internet, delivering content and courses in new ways, but economic flattening has not occurred (yet). The internet has had an amazing flattening force on the economics of many businesses, but college education has never cost more and I'm wondering why.

The internet has created an environment where the price of information is driven to the cost of about zero. Meanwhile, the statement I often hear is that a degree is worth more than ever today. That’s true and academic institutions are simply raising their prices to levels to reflect the value of worth to the marketplace, not the value academic institutions provide. The tuition at the school I went to is greater than 200% more than what I paid just a bit over 10 years ago. However until there is economic pain, meaning less enrolled students and less government funding, we will not change our ways.

College used to be an area where you were introduced to new knowledge or it was knowledge discovery.  In times past, there were degrees of separation between knowledge and students that colleges served as the connector between. I'm not sure that applies anymore. Have you seen YouTube.com/edu or Ted.com? If you haven’t, I suggest that you take some time and click over to the content. It’s really good stuff. The point is the distance between content creator and end consumer, or learner in this case, has never been more direct. Again, college attendance and cost has never been higher.

The really smart schools are getting the value of their brand to potential suitors and are using the internet as a credentialing mechanism as to the type of education they will receive. Look at MIT, Harvard , UCLA, Carnegie Mellon--they all get it. They all have brand channels on YouTube/Edu. These colleges are building and protecting the brand. If I'm a student or parent, especially a paying parent, they will use the internet as the same vetting mechanism they use it for now before making a purchase. Good for those schools. They get how the world is changing and are changing with it. The sad thing is there are over 4,500 colleges and universities. They are in the minority.

I believe in education, earned a degree and so forth. I'm a life-long learner. However, I simply cannot understand while we've driven the cost of information to zero, the cost of college continues to skyrocket. My full expectation is the a company, like Google (this isn't a prediction, just example), will develop a credentialed program out of internet maintained content that will serve as a flattening force for many public institutions. A change like that, I welcome. 

~marty follow me on twitter @marty_b

     

Comments

[Bill]

Great post Marty,

As a college graduate who has worked for 3+ years for a company whose primary client base is colleges and universities I believe that most schools are far too bureaucratic in structure and stoic in leadership, and will only adopt change when free market pressure is brought to bear on them such as is only beginning to happen now with the rise of for profit schools like the University of Phoenix. MIT, Harvard, et al will lead the way but until the current educational bubble bursts, driven only by the recent economic down turn, I doubt you'll see an appreciable course correction in academia.

Again, great post as usual.

[Marty]

Thanks Bill for the comments and great feedback. Yeah, I'm rooting for a privatization of academia. Economics will have to drive it down, you're right about the old way of thinking in that world.