Video Professor

The availability of high quality educational material from Universities and professionals for free has reshaped distance learning. iTunes U a branch of the popular iTunes music store grants anyone access to classes from Universities like MIT, UC Berkley, and Harvard, for free, on topic from aerospace engineering to graphic design. I personally have watched lectures from Penn St. on Investing, Harvard on building dynamic websites, and Michigan Tech on microcontrollers. The availability of this knowledge is a great resource to society and stresses the importance of expanding broadband internet access, but could education end up following a similar path to music, video, and newspapers to free?

As we have learned once technology, especially the internet, touches something it’s a race to the bottom in terms of price. This can be great for consumers but not so much for producers. In this case the producers are Universities and they are the ones potentially digging their own graves. However, I think this race to the bottom has a different set of rules since education is involved. First, I think this trend will follow what’s happening with newspapers more than anything. People have shown they enjoy being able to read timely world-class articles from newspapers all over the world, based not on their geographic location but on the merit of the contents creator. This preference lends itself to lectures and classes as well, and allows someone like me in Montana to watch lectures from Ivy League schools on the east coast.

This wide availability of free courses in many different fields is great way for people to build a latticework of models, without which, as Charlie Munger points out, you will fail in business and life. iTunes U and services like it are the ultimate pass/fail course that allows people to explore new areas, and build out their knowledge into areas that were either unavailable to them or out of reach academically.

While there is nothing out there yet that can match the college experience, which attending lectures is a small part of, it’s not unreasonable to think that in the future there may be a large number of high school grads going to school online at prestigious colleges.