Category: Books

Education costs trending towards zero

There’s a lot of talk about how the cost of education is decreasing year over year because of the advances in technology. Free courses, free text

image from freebeer.org
image from freebeer.org

books, free content available from the most prestigious universities in the world, all online, accessible all the time to anyone anywhere.

Josh Catone of Mashable wrote a quick article about how those three forces (free text books, free courses, free course ware) are trending the cost of “education” in the traditional sense towards zero. It makes some sense.  But I don’t fully buy it.

There are major advantages to the University structure that contribute to many areas of society other than the preparation of individuals for jobs or civic involvement: economic development, organization of dissenting views/opinions, creation of new technology, centers for investment in research, maintaining thriving university-centered communities, etc. etc.

But mostly I don’t buy it because education has been “free” (as in free speech, not free beer) forever.  Honestly, probably the best invention to make learning free was the book (because you didn’t need a storyteller to educate you anymore); then the library made the books freely available to those who wanted them (not that the industrious didn’t find ways to borrow them prior to that).  The Mashable article was basically saying that the internet was bring the cost to zero.  Um, no.  The internet is changing education, but only in efficiency and reach (not necessarily in accessibility).

The fact of the matter is that for advanced nations, the content is reaching new people, while not-as-advanced countries are struggling to get internet (accessibility is still hampered).  Not only that but near 100% of the content is in English (another barrier for the least “educated”).  It’d be nice to have totally free education and even free college degrees for those that want to pursue them.  In some sense that’s already happening and has been happening for 100s of years.  Before there were standards and accreditation, men were self-made and educated for free.

Ben Franklin did it as an indentured servant to his brother, reading in his spare moments and writing and practicing using borrowed books.  He didn’t go to college but turned out pretty highly regarded.  And if you’re thinking, “but that’s just Benjamin Franklin…” then I say this, other less well known men have done the same for generations and made their mark in history with FREE educations (and many more because we so often enforce a price on traditional educational systems, barring them from entry to their own benefit).

Now, I do believe education is much too expensive and increasing unjustly in price year after year.  But if you truly want to learn, the options and content are, and always have been, available to you.

Related: if you’re interested in Benjamin Franklin and his life, check out the free ebook from Dailylit.com.

New guards for their future security

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

-The Declaration of Independence (America’s Greatest Hits – DailyLit.com)

Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.  Reading this document of documents really shows how our forefathers were the original punks.  They also probably would have quit jobs they didn’t like pretty fast.

Malcolm Gladwell Does NECC

One of my favorite writers, Malcolm Gladwell (The Outliers, Blink, and The Tipping Point) gave one of the keynote addresses at NECC in Washington DC this year.  It’s a great talk that ambles along to touch on the 10,000 hour rule (read Outliers for his complete piece about that), Fleetwood Mac and what it really means to learn and to construct a learning community.

Gladwell is savvy enough to touch on the most poignant aspects of the current education debate, specifically that small classes don’t mean jack.  The recording is pretty good quality and more information can be found at this site.

Even if you’re not into education, this is a great listen about what it takes to be successful and how we often forget about/discount/downplay the hard work that our greatest and brightest put in before they become ‘stars’.  Gladwell starts at about 54 minutes and closes out the recording.

gladwell

CA ditches bound books for their digital counterparts…hell freezes over.

Honestly?  I’m shocked.  I think this is fantastic, revolutionary, crazy, awesome…and sad.  But I didn’t see it happening this soon.  You can read about textbooks anywhere to find out how ridiculous the authoring process and business really is (this is one of my favorite articles “Textbook Example of What’s Wrong with Education“).

I think it’s great because digital textbooks are the future (I might have thought further in the future).  With ebook technology coming from major consumer electronic manufacturers at an increasing rate (just check out the Kindle DX) and the ability to store the books and ‘mark them up’ for extended periods of time is growing ever closer. Plus, they are cheap (no printing costs, immediate delivery, etc).  And Gov. Schwarzenegger likes them, “The governor of California wants state students to ditch bulky books in favour of up-to-the-minute digital texts on the internet” (DailyMail online).

What saddens and worries me though, is that this revolutionary change is brought on by a vast budget crisis.  According to the DailyMail article the CA State textbook budget is over 200 million a year.  This plan is to simply slash that and take advantage of the text books available at sites like

But in most cases you have to pay for quality, so there will still be an expense.  This is not to mention that students will HAVE to have some device (computer, ebook reading, netbook, ipod, or otherwise) to access the material.  This will cost MUCH more than the original textbook budget allocation (as these devices are 4-5 X the cost of a textbook, or more).

Sure there is some overlap with 1-1 computer policies (which CA has not opted for) so other states like Maine would be easily transitioned down the same road as California.  But the education budget is hurting in ALL ASPECTS in the golden state, which means less computers, fewer devices and MORE burden on students and their families to ensure that their students have the tools they need to do their school work.

Before students needed just a backpack to carry them home and a little more initiative just to open the books.  No need for a backpack anymore, but they will need something much more sophisticated just to crack the cover.

Don't Panic

Hitchhiker’s Guide is probably the best book I’ve read in a while.  It’s a light read, but I was laughing pretty much the entire time and always wonder how the hell Doug Adams came up with the content.  The fact that psychologists are out to prevent the universe’s biggest questions from being answered: priceless.  Sorry for the spoiler (I’m reading The Restaurant at the End of the Universe already).

An awesome quote:

“listen, three eyes…don’t you try to outweird me, I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal” -Zaphod, page 39

I can’t put them down.

Go buy it and help Jeff Bezos take over the the world.

the obvious point of a business

…is to make money.  Otherwise I think it’s called a hobby.  Another great Seth Godin quote:

“There’s a great cartoon of a mathematician doing a complicated proof on the blackboard. The board is covered with all sorts of squiggles and symbols and then, at the bottom, it says, “And then a miracle happens,” followed by the end of the proof. Business models can’t depend on miracles any more than mathematics can. Every once in a while a business comes along that creates its own model. I can tell you that it’s infinitely better to have one before you start.”

This is called competition

I’m using dailylit.com to read Seth Godin’s “Bootstrapper’s Bible” and it’s great (it’s also completely free, I also just finished a novel by Cory Doctorow “Someone comes to town…”…let’s just say, not as good). Between he and Guy I think they could write the entrepreneur’s version of the Hitchhiker’s Guide.

Here’s a quote that made me laugh (No idea on the page since it’s send via email).

In a free society, the government doesn’t control who gets the right to start a business. Anyone can do it—in most cases without a license, a permit, or a training course. This has one chilling implication: as soon as a business starts to make money, other people will notice, and they’ll start a business just like it. This is called competition, and it usually keeps people from retiring at the age of 28.

I was this close…