Economies of scale in higher education

On the rising cost of education

Students entering University today will on graduation face debts of upwards £40,000. But in this post-financial crash world shouldn't we be trying to drive private debt down? Won't increasing costs of higher education deter those from more deprived backgrounds? While it is right that students bare some of the cost of their education isn't there now the room and the incentives in this now marketised Higher Education sector for some serious innovation in the products which University's offer?

It is a paradox that in the information age the cost of Education should be going up.

Well here is the news from across the Atlantic on the Higher Education market. I am currently studying an MIT first year course in analog and digital electronic circuits, whilst simultaneously traveling around South Africa. Sounds like an impressive feat? I seriously wish I could have done my whole undergraduate like this! I hand in my weeks homework, then I stroll down to see the penguins on the beach. There is no requirement for me to be in a specific location so I choose to be in the most comfortable pleasant interesting location I can. No more tins of baked beans and drab overpriced student halls. I'm studying from a chalet in the South Africa bush. I am also studying with one of the most premier technology colleges in the world on an identical course to the students who are actually there in Boston. Its pretty fantastic. Thousands of students across the world are enrolled and the quality of the course is superb. There is also a vibrant online community, with forums and chat rooms. I even found someone else in Cape Town who is studying the same course and met up with him in person for a study session. Since the invention of the video camera, why ever did anyone ever teach the same lecture twice? This will free lecturers time to spend more time on research, increase possibilities for 1 on 1 tuition and bring down costs. There are economies of scale to be achieved in Higher Education.

Ok, this format has its limits, there is perhaps something about face to face learning that an online format can never replace. There is something about the 'University experience' , societies, the social dimension that can't be replaced. But a similar thing could be said about chopping wood and that didn't stop us from upgrading to central heating.

There are several compelling reasons British Universities should be encouraged to start running courses on-line in parallel to courses they are running on site. It'll be relatively low cost to set up and maintain, the Universities that offer such courses will be able to increase their market share, it'll bring the cost/student down making a high quality University education more accessible, its potentially the dawn of a new and infinitely superior student life style. One where perhaps a student could be sitting in Delphi reading Herodotus, in Tehran studying al-gebra or on the American planes reading Mark Twain, in China studying Chinese or in the Congo studying conflict and development. Its a brave new vision of what Higher Education could be: flexible and immersive.

Perhaps, most compellingly, if we don't, the American's will get there first and the whole world will be studying with American Universities and we can't have that. There will be demand if Universities start to offer this, trust me, its awesome.

Now that students in England enrolling with the Open University will be entitled to the same loans as students at campus's, an important barrier to distance learning courses is about to be removed. Perhaps Universities at large will catch on.