Free, Abundant Learning Combination

Seth Godin's August 17th blog post, Education at the Crossroads, presents three choices that higher ed providers will have to make.

With universities like Stanford and MIT beginning to make available online courses for free, Wikipedia offering "the world's fact base" for free, and more and more people beginning to realize that schools are not necessarily always about learning, these three questions are vital for the future of education.

Should this be scarce or abundant?
Should this be free or expensive?
Should this be about school or about learning?

Ultimately, Godin explains, it's the free, abundant learning combination that will change the world.

The combinations...

Imagine a school that's built around free, abundant learning. And compare it to one that's focused on scarce, expensive schooling. Or dream up your own combination. My recent MBA program, for example, was scarce (only 9 people got to do it) and it was free and focused on learning.

Just because something is free doesn't meant there isn't money to be made. Someone could charge, for example, for custom curricula, or focused tutoring, or for a certified (scarce) degree. When a million people are taking your course, you only need 1% to pay you to be happy indeed.

Eight combinations of the three choices are available and my guess is that all eight will be tried. If I were going to wager, I'd say that the free, abundant learning combination is the one that's going to change the world.

You can read the full article here.