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  • EDU Gigs and the Movie Business

    By Joshua Kim March 24, 2011 9:45 pm EDT

    I read somewhere a few years ago (maybe in Pink's Free Agent Nation, maybe somewhere else), that many jobs would soon resemble movie industry jobs. None of us would work for a single employer. Just as the studio system is dead in Hollywood (except perhaps at Disney), the time when actors and directors worked for a salary and made the movies the studio bosses chose, soon the "salary model" would also be a memory.

    "Talent" from different disciplines would come together to work on projects, get paid for the gig, and disperse once the job was done. Some teams might move from project to project, and the free market for talent would both raise wages and productivity. The Web would grease the wheels, lowering transaction and search costs, and serving as the medium (and often the product) of much of this work.

    This future never quite arrived. How many of us are incoming packaging from multiple sources, jumping from project to project, team to team? Or more to the point, how many of our projects are completed by free agents? Perhaps it is because the world is broken down into services and projects, and much of our time is spent on delivering these (critical) existing services. Services do not conform to the movie business model of production. The studio system, at least in my world of academic tech, seems to be entrenched.

    But lately I've been wondering if we are seeing signs of a change? Ed tech and teaching/learning creative types seem to be spending less time in any given job. People seem to be moving from one project to another. Institution to institution. Ed tech company to ed tech company. Publisher to publisher. Some are indeed becoming free agents. Consultants and free-lancers.

    What is going on? Some guesses:

    Not A Real Trend 1 - An Illusion: Perhaps the flex and fluidity that I think I'm seeing is an artifact, a false positive, a series of random events that I'm falsely putting into a pattern. People are not changing jobs or employers or locales or ways of working any more frequently than 2 or 5 or 10 years ago, and it is a mistake to generalize from what I think I'm witnessing.

    Not A Real Trend 2 - A Cohort Effect: Could be that I am indeed seeing people change jobs, employers, titles, institutions, and cities more frequently - but the overall rates of employment change are staying consistent? Maybe what I'm seeing has more to do with where I am in my career than any change in the overall structure of ed tech employment.

    A Real Trend 1 - Growth of Opportunities: But, perhaps something is going on. Maybe we are seeing some maturation of the ed tech space, and a growth in opportunities and needs across schools and companies. Ed tech is essential to both save dollars and create opportunities for new dollars. If your school or company or non-profits is part of the higher ed world, and don't have a project underway that somehow involves technology, you probably will not be around all that much longer.

    A Real Trend 2 - Growth of Networks: The 2nd reason why I think that this trend might be real is the Web has made it much easier for the people in our community to connect and collaborate. We work with people at other institutions, know what is going on at other companies, and hear about opportunities that might have been hidden in the past. The ed tech community is truly a very small one. At some point we start to know the players, and these networks lead to job offers and new projects.

    What do you think?

    Have you changed jobs or switched your model of working lately?

    Are you now income packaging, freelancing, or consulting?

    Are you going Hollywood?

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Comments on EDU Gigs and the Movie Business

  • Research, Education and the Movie industry
  • Posted by Jim Farmer , Researcher at instructional media + magic inc. on March 25, 2011 at 4:15pm EDT
  • Although the “Hollywood” paradigm may not yet apply to teaching and learning, it seems to apply to university research and perhaps adjunct faculty and faculty “stars” as the first steps.

    Since working briefly for Paramount on the cost of production several decades ago, I observed the same pattern emerging in research projects. The principal investigator has the same role as a movie producer: To assemble a group of experts and talent, present a proposal to funders, and manage the finance and resources of the project. And, in higher education, contribute directly to the final product. Increasingly actors—Tom Cruise as an example—also serve as producers.

    A movie requires a broad spectrum of talents and experience. Increasingly research teams are assembled from several different universities and firms. A researcher is responsible for finding the next project—as in the movie industry. And some adjunct faculty who must continually search for new work. The same applies to researchers when funded projects are completed.

    When Ronald Reagan headed the Screen Actors Guild he observed two limitations of the disintegrating studio model. First employees need continuing medical coverage for periods “between employment.” He achieved this by using the Screen Actors Guild to provide continuous health insurance based on contributions from industry when the person was working. (Notice the averaging). The second was retirement. Employers make a contribution to the Guild which provides retirement benefits. This is similar to TIAA/CREF where the retirement program follows the faculty member from one private institution to another. And potentially a third, set the minimum wage for the various specialties

    If we think of selecting “star” faculty (the Teaching Company)for their courses, learning services from publishers—the production technologists and services, have “locations” that are used for education, and produce education as a series of “takes” or learning activities—such as executive MBA programs often do—there is a possibility that education will become like movies; the model is worth studying.

    The only downside I saw was people seeking the next job while on the current job. This was distracting but viewed as necessary in the “free market” that followed the studio model.

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