What if the Secret to Success Is Failure? A College Degree for $99 a Month. Disintermediation: The Disruption to Come for Education 2.0 - O'Reilly Radar. On the largest of scales, we rarely have the luxury of designing technological systems. Instead, technologies happen to us – our experience of them being ragged, volatile, turbulent and rife with unexpected interactions. Tim’s posts about the emerging internet operating system (here and here) describe a great example of this – the winner of that particular fight being very much TBD and the factors determining victory or defeat being themselves the subject of lively debate. When we talk about Education 2.0, though, we are prone to think that we can design it – that we can consciously and deliberately lay the groundwork for its effective implementation.
Our deliberation, though, may be less powerful than the larger forces driving its rapid evolution. Disintermediation is a process in which a middle player poised between service or product providers and their consumers is weakened or removed from the value chain. The lessons of this example apply rather directly to Education 2.0. National universities. [T]hroughout our history, America has traditionally been the best educated country in the world. That goes all the way back to New England’s settlement by Bible-obsessed Puritans who through up schools everywhere so kids could learn to read the word of God. It continues through Justin Smith Morrill’s Land Grant Colleges Act, through an emphasis on being an attractive destination for high-skill workers, through to the GI Bill, and public school desegregation in the twenty years after 1955. But we’ve really slowed down. Our fancy colleges are getting more expensive rather than getting bigger or better. The downscale for-profit college sector is dynamic and innovative, but it’s basically a scam where barely anyone graduates.
Yglesias is, of course, completely right. But that doesn't mean there isn't fruit left to be picked! There is some improvement here, but as you can see, just over a third of Americans of college age is actually enrolled in college. Update 2: Matt Yglesias weighs in: