A couple of years back I asked (in the article "Industrial Education" which is worth a read):
"An Ivy League Education for less than $20 a month. Why not?"
At the time there were only a smattering of course materials online. That's changing. It's coming. Here's an example of a class that signed up 56,000 people in two weeks.
Another example of a highly scalable education product: Codecademy
The way to repair and revitalize modern civilization is on the horizon. It follows a simple dictum:
Localize production. Virtualize everything else.
With the above, we see the virtualization of formal education (books were the first wave).
Some other thoughts on this:
- It can drop costs by 3 orders of magnitude. $20 a year instead of $20,000.
- It means that the best instructors teach almost everyone. Why not the best?