BlogU

  • How Would You Spend $100 Million?

    By Joshua Kim January 17, 2011 8:30 pm EST

    Anya Kamenetz has an article in this month's Fast Company, "How to Spend $100 Million to Really Save Education". $100 million is the amount that Mark Zuckerberg pledged to the Newark school system.
    How would you spend $100 million on higher ed?
    For my higher ed $100 million I'd:

    • Start a new university.
    • Make the fees sliding scale, but the courses and educational experience world-class.
    • Focus on the liberal arts - for which a rigorous background should not be reserved for the most affluent.
    • Make it fully virtual and online, with not only no campus but no offices.
    • Recruit of cadre of full-time faculty who love to teach, want the flexibility of online learning, and are mission driven to reform higher ed.
    • Rely on donated, cloud based learning and student management platforms.
    • Rely on donated hardware (notebooks and mobile devices) so that all students have a level playing field for learning.
    • Rely on open source curriculum.
    • Make all of the courses, curriculum, and learning materials open and transparent to the world (while protecting the privacy of the students).
    • Encourage and facilitate the adoption of full course designs by other institutions.
    • Actively seek out to utilize existing best-in-practice course designs, curriculum and materials.
    • Celebrate the institutions or companies that provide best practices, courses, technology or services publicly.
    • Make all faculty development materials transparent and open.
    • Make all costs transparent to students, faculty, the donor community and the world.
    • Commit to rapidly scaling up the number of students that can be accommodated within the boundaries of insuring a long-term sustainable fiscal model.

    At this point in my career, I have the knowledge and networks to start this type of institution (and get universities to share courses and companies to share technologies), what I lack is the $100 million.
    Would you want to be a part of building this new university?

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Comments on How Would You Spend $100 Million?

  • invest in University of the People
  • Posted by Brian Mulligan , Open Learning Coordinator at IT Sligo, Ireland on January 18, 2011 at 9:15am EST
  • A lot of the money would be sent on getting accreditation for University of The People. http://www.uopeople.org/
  • Is $100 million enough?
  • Posted by Jim Farmer , Researcher at instructional media + magic inc. on January 18, 2011 at 5:15pm EST
  • All of us would agree with you goals. Most of us agree with your actions. And many of us would like to attend your new university.

    It would be helpful if you ranked the actions you would take in priority order. And even better if you made cost estimates for each action.

    You may reach a conclusion that $100 million would not be enough. Some examples:

    Colleges and universities often have between 1,000 and 2,000 courses. The development of eLearning content with adaptive learning has consistently been estimated at $1 million. So content development alone would be between $1 and $2 billion. The baccalaureate degree materials at Open University was $1 billion. If existing faculty materials were used, the costs could exceed the $30,000 per course MIT had to expend to reformat and obtain copyright permissions, or $30 million of your $100 million immediately.

    Sliding scale tuition and fees presents another problem. Currently the tuition discount is reaching 50%, which means revenue may be significantly less than planned.

    To use Clayton Christensen’s analysis, liberal arts is under-served as a supplement to career-oriented education. The Teaching Company is an example of success in that segment. Those who prepared for a professional certificate or degree often want to expand their knowledge and would do so at a reasonable price—which is several hundred dollars per "course". So your university may be approaching the “take off” Christensen predicts and venture capitalist seek.

    Earlier Rio Salado College used retired faculty—there were more than 10,000 in Sun City—as tutors. Those who volunteered did, as you suggested, “love to teach” and also talk with peers. This seems to be an untapped resource.

    Although open source software is available, donated “cloud-based learning and student management platforms” may be less available that you suggest. Moodle tends to be offered as a remote “cloud-based” service at costs from $1 to $5 per student per year or term. The cost of developing these facilities is, for your university, minimal measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

    And so on.

    I believe your model is viable economically. And if you completed your plan with a cost model likely would be funded by venture capitalists. Which would make you a for-profit capitalist.

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