Publish at June 29 2004 Updated June 07 2022
The visceral revulsion that educational institutions have toward the "commodification" of education stems from the very principle of their academic independence; indeed, submission to the market automatically relegates their educational mission to the background.
For the market, one can lose interest in one's subject matter and replace it with the interest of the market and its allure: money. This normally produces a self-sustaining frenzy that swells to saturation and bursting. The commercial e-learning bubble was a great example.
But the market is there, as is the competition, without a soul.
In the process of producing a course the estimation of the market is a key input: are there enough people willing to pay to take this course or program?
The clearer the answer, the greater the number of courses and the faster the speed of their appearance.
For example, the large number of courses and programs in e-learning production, a field that did not exist six years ago, corresponds to a strong demand from all educational institutions and corporate training departments.
The situation is the same in rapidly growing fields: computer science, environment, renewable energy, bio-technology, etc.
Captive markets can also be identified, e.g., many universities mediate required courses or their core courses. But these opportunities are limited and usually do not lead to either prestigious or innovative productions.
In many other fields, this estimation is much less obvious: the markets appear too small, fragmented, ephemeral, poor, or the production costs are too high to be eventually covered.
Because of the costs of developing distance courses, the most important market parameters are:
But it would be wrong to think that these are limitations. We have everything to gain by considering these parameters as elements entering into our strategies to get ourselves to produce what we are passionate about and to make our fees.
We can act on all of these parameters at the very moment we decide to produce a course. We don't ignore the market so we play with it.
With the Internet, popularity is a very relative concept.
There must be 10,000 people interested in an advanced quantum physics course (or any specialty) on earth... which requires the production of specialized courses in a format that can accommodate translations into all languages; an Internet distribution and a promotion strategy in specialized channels.
See: e-telestia, fashion course in four European languages.
In other words, there is no popularity argument that holds; one can act on the size of the target market and consequently on the format of the training product. The idea is to teach what we want to teach in order to obtain the desired effect. We consider the capacity of the clientele to receive the training and we make sure that it is received positively. That's popularity. The classic format of a university course may be set to change.
In the case of very popular courses, the format obviously implies the ability to distribute it massively and to support its management.
In the absence of popularity, the stability of a field allows to achieve profitability over time and to cover costs in the more or less long term.
See: "French without mistakes", a course now online that must be at least 20 years old, still good.
The stability of a subject has long been a major factor in the decision to produce a distance course. Some French or arithmetic courses have reached finished forms and have become cash cows requiring only cosmetic updates to bring their appearance up to current formats and tastes. This remains, and when a stable subject is found, the art is to recognize it and exploit it appropriately.
But what to do about unstable, changing fields that are subject to the vagaries of discovery, fashion, or media interest?
This is also a case of broadening the subject to a point of stability: for example, courses in computer science or office automation, and more generally in technology, have a fairly well-identified lifespan curve and their formats incorporate frequent updates. This updateability increases their stability.
Courses that follow volatile fashions are grouped into portals that are constantly being fed with new material. Their formats are light and their production costs low. Stability comes from the capacity to produce novelties. At a certain size, stable effervescence is achieved.
Some academic institutions have been eyeing the market of large corporations. They offer them the prestige of their institution, attract luminaries as references, and play the perceived quality card as a privilege and advantage. They take advantage of this to charge accordingly.
See: " Campus Democracy", Swiss federal government site for citizen education and elections, available in three languages, 30,000 regular subscribers.
But this game can be played at different levels: that of specialists in a hurry, that of the media in search of an audience, of emergency situations, of government policies, of coveted hyper-specialized fields; that of any group ready to pay a high price for training that provides them with a perceived, real or supposed advantage.
Still here the solution is to increase...quality, prestige, volume or speed to attract a market that doesn't know how to be satisfied with the ordinary.
We've already seen training on cruise ships whose main attraction was being a tax-deductible vacation or paltry, expensive government communications programs that would have been better served by popular online training.
If your subject matter can be presented this way, don't be shy. It's far better to see people busy learning under the right conditions than spending on venal tax shelters or reacting to absurd simplifications.
About every academic institution produces online courses for their captive market. Normal, that's how the risk is lowest.
But the disadvantages quickly become apparent: low quality of courses (the market is not big enough to justify more investment), too many courses to produce for the resources available, infrastructure unfit to handle such a diversity of general and specialized courses, clientele left to fend for themselves with indigent and unskilled technical support.
Increase the captive market, not by making more courses mandatory but by securing other captive markets: those of other institutions in exchange for one's own in other areas.
While universities have understood the benefits of online education, they have yet to grasp all the implications for the market and for course production. Collaboration among universities is absolutely essential; otherwise, no market or public e-learning industry worthy of the name.
E-learning is more akin to the film industry than to craft sculpture. It would not occur to producers to release quality films for closed niches, nor would it occur to them to limit themselves exclusively to micro-productions without public distribution.
In short, in terms of freeing institutions at a distance from the market, the answer is essentially a matter of size: increase rather than restrict, favoring strengths over moods, theories, or privileges.
Thus, each institution can focus on its passions while benefiting from the best of the other institutions. One can rarely be good at everything, one will not be able to serve all local or regional needs alone; however, with many one can; almost all can be excellent in a few areas.
Thus, it is not only a matter of producing and offering courses but also of being able to accommodate those of other institutions to come to the point of creating a true educational market.
Achieving the size necessary to break free from the most negative constraints of the market is on this condition.
Illustration : kentoh - DepositPhotos
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