I started posting some of my lectures on youtube to help my students that attend my class. What has surprised me is the number of views. My statistics channel (youtube.com/statisticsfun) has nearly 40,000 views in less than a year.

When a student takes a class, pays a fee and gets a credit what exactly did they pay for? They paid to be credentialed. The next hurdle will be how to credential a person who has gained knowledge independent from going to physical or online class at a specific university. I think there is a huge opportunity for a university to start just giving tests and charging fees like the SAT.

Nice comments and I am curious to see how higher education responds to all this online stuff.

Simply piping education through an iPod doesn’t make it better. The Kaplan ad appeals to consumer-oriented teens infatuated with handheld MP3 players and netbooks. No goose bumps here. Pavlov would have a field day with this ad campaign.

The fundemental problem with your discussion is that your reasoning is predicated on the nebulous notion that any resource can be subjected to market forces. I’m certain that you have not considered this matter in any detail.

Here’s a challenge for you: Please comment of the distinction between public and private interest. Is there any object or service that should not be subject to market models? I’ll help and name one for you : votes. Consider why our society has determined that votes should not be bought and sold. I would then challenge you to argue why education is different than voting and why education should only be offered to those with the means to pay.

I would argue that education, like voting, is a necessary prerequisite for an informed democracy. What we need is a high-performance public education system first and foremost.

If I were to apply market models to our education system, I would be inclined to increase funding for teacher salaries in order to attract more talent into the field. Public education is in need of reform, and Barack Obama is considering many good ideas at this time. A bad idea is increased commercial influence.

Private interest and markets should rightfully focus on increasing shareholder wealth, and that is as it should be. Please refrain from childish rhetoric like, “Profit bad…”. Any true free-market adherent should proudly proclaim that greed is good and be done with it. Stick to your guns and quit complaining. You don’t represent yourself well in this complaining mode.

On the other hand, don’t be lulled by lazy logic into thinking that markets are a vehicle for setting education policy. For non-essentials like cup cakes and candy bars, let the market decide. For essentials like education, we need to serve the public interest.

BTW, before you let the goose bumps get out of control, Google “Kaplan scam”

Here’s a quote from one of the dozens of hits:

“I will say if the academic advisory team was an ounce as attentive as the collections team, I would have had a great many questions answered. Most recently, Ms. E contacted me offering a deal provided they could access my checking account monthly, if not I would go to collections, which is apparently more unprofessional and aggressive than their ‘business team’. They claim to be concerned with your education, make no mistake THEY ARE ALL ABOUT MONEY, GETTING MONEY, KEEPING MONEY AND DESTROYING ANYONE WHO COMES BETWEEN THEM AND MONEY!”