Next Up For Disruption? College

One of the reasons we spend so much time talking about the music and news industries, is because the disruption and upheaval happening in those industries right now are likely to impact nearly every industry you can think of in the near future. Understanding the mistakes being made by those in the industries that are further along the disruption curve should (hopefully, though, I’m not entirely optimistic on this) help keep those newer industries from making the same mistakes down the road.

Jake points us to an inkling of how the higher education market is beginning to be disrupted — and it goes beyond just cheaper textbooks or courses being offered online. By now, online distance learning is well-known and not all that big a deal. But, really, all the old school online university efforts, like University of Phoenix, did was to take the traditional college model and move it online. True disruptive innovation is never about just moving a legacy model to a new medium, but about embracing some aspect of that new medium to offer something in a different way that really wasn’t possible prior to that.

The article in Washington Monthly discusses a company called StraighterLine, which offers online college classes, but it totally disrupts the traditional business model of university learning. While the classic model is that you pay per class (or per semester as a fully matriculated student), StraighterLine has a simple model: you pay $99/month and get an all-you-can-eat offering. You go at your own pace — so if you have lots of time (and can complete the work) you can take multiple classes in that month. In the opening story of the article, a woman completes four full classes in just two months — for a grand total of $200. Taking those same classes at either local universities or online would have cost thousands, and would have taken much longer to complete. And, it’s not as if the StraighterLine courses skimp either. According to the article (and it would be great to hear from anyone who’s tried it to see if this is true), they use the same materials found in many college courses.

Read more . . .

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