The Business of Education

 If you have followed any of the news regarding Quebec's proposed University tuition hikes, and the subsequent protests and near riots that occurred immediately after, you may be surprised to learn that although Premier Jean Charest has provided a compromise to students, talk of peace is far from over.

It says a few significant details were changed and that the final agreement isn't exactly what the students thought they had agreed to. Student leaders are asking that the agreement be revised.
The deal, aimed at ending three months of unrest in the province, uses a variety of mechanisms to keep student fees frozen until the end of the year — but there's a possibility the fees will increase exactly as planned starting next January.

At the same time something extraordinary happened this week in higher education you may have missed. Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology teamed up to announce a US$60-million investment in on-line education known as EdX.  The pilot course is on Circuits and Electronics, and over 120,000 students registered for this course.  There were more students registering for this single online course than make up MIT’s entire alumni.

Technology is changing how we educate our young people, and for Universities this means competition will become increasingly global, expanded beyond the typical bricks and mortar of their campuses. Consider this as example, if I wanted to teach a small course on the growing trends and changes of the Effects of Social Media on Business, I may attract 20 to 30 participants.  However, my linked in group of Retail Managers has over 10,000 members.  I could do a course with this group at a fraction of the cost and with a lot more participants.  Would these Managers want to have access to learning that's convenient, interactive and customized to them, at a reasonable price?

Harvard is betting that students all over the world will use home and office computers to take courses—no trips to Boston required. They’re investing in a nonprofit venture to ensure robust platforms and customized learning, while aiming to come as close as possible to the classroom experience in real time. Even instantaneous language translation may be possible. Mouse tracking may also tell teachers and researchers how students learn and what works and what doesn’t. For now, courses will be free and universally accessible, though that may change. In the short term, only certificates, not traditional degrees, will be available, but who knows where this could lead.

Technology should bring costs down to the end user, not up. However, tuition continues to rise, as does class size. Students graduate with crippling debt.  I believe that Canadian Universities are falling behind the technology curve, and it's time to shake things up.  Certainly an issue we should pay more attention to and possibly some great business opportunities ahead.