Originally, the university bundle included courses, food, and board. Over time they’ve added more services, at first academic (extracurriculars, better libraries) and now luxury (rock-climbing walls, European-style bistros).
Higher education is still trending towards increasing bundle size. The more they bundle, the more they can raise prices. So when, if ever, can we expect higher ed to start trending in the other direction, towards unbundling?
My guess is in about five years, plus or minus. The forces that will make it inevitable are picking up steam right now.
He also points to this post.
Bundling has been the primary way universities have managed to avoid the cost/benefit analyses consumers make for virtually every other purchase decision. Just as it has for music, unbundling would dramatically reduce per student revenue in higher education. In microeconomic terms, bundling captures surplus for producers. Unbundling moves some of that producer surplus to consumers and may create new consumer surplus.
As I watch the world of online YouTube lectures emerge, it strikes me that it is not a good idea to think in terms of one teacher providing a lot of lessons (Sal Khan started that way, but I don’t think that most of his lessons will still be watched in ten years, and my guess is he would not disagree).
Instead, you should focus on what you teach really, really well. If you are a guitar teacher, and you are really good at bluesy hammer-ons, then that you should focus on those. If you are really good at double-string lead guitar solos, then you should focus on those.
In economics, if you teach comparative advantage really well, then do that. If you teach the Coase Theorem really well, then teach that.
For example, of all my high school teaching videos, the ones that are most viewed are “calculating p-values on the TI-84,” “Z test and t test,” and “joint probability.” My most popular AP economics video is on “Substitutes and complements.” I would not have guessed that these were my strong suits (actually, joint probability is something I think I do well), but for now, that is what the market says.
Evidently, the market is not impressed with my talks on market structure in econ or my talks on doing calculations with the normal distribution. Somebody out there must be doing that stuff better.
Think in terms of a future in which all that survives of all of your lectures is only the best 20 minutes, covering a total of one or two topics.
Reads like you are applying the Pareto Paradigm.
Not a bad thought!
One side thought (having been forced to live in a University owed dorm for 3 years as a condition of entry..)
One can argue (and I now do) that is is *bad* for most of these things to be bundled because students are going to have to learn to do/acquire all of those things in a fairly short time anyway. And so dormitories, U provided health clubs, etc. should be deemphasized so that students are pushed into dealing with these things the way they will for the rest of their lives…
(Universities in small university towns might have to have more leeway…)
“I would not have guessed that these were my strong suits (actually, joint probability is something I think I do well), but for now, that is what the market says”
That they are popular does not mean that you do them well relative to your other videos, necessarily. It might mean that these topics are in higher demand than the other video topics (either because they are required for a lot of people or because they are hard to understand), or perhaps that there are not many substitutes available.
I also see an opportunity opening for ‘mix-tape’ / ‘mash-up’ / ‘remix’ makers, who can take the stream of the best available online-teaching content, slice and dice, pick and choose, and create not just the ‘best of the best’ teaching products, but a multiplicity of such products that can be both adaptive and tailored to the learning style, cognitive capacity, and other particularities of the student.
Isn’t that the holy grail of education and pedagogical? “Find the most efficient way to get student X from knowledge-understanding-skill level A to level B.”
Students certainly would find a lot of value in someone who could analyze them, tell them a lot about which B is most likely to focus on both their satisfaction and comparative advantages, and put them on the path that will get them there as efficiently and enjoyably as possible.
I think there is something to be said for coherent style and presentation that mitigates against the extreme diversification of lessons. I might prefer 10 economics videos from one above average instructor to one each from the 10 best instructors. Even now at the course level, there is some gain from continuing in a second course with a decent instructor whose style is familiar to switching to an objectively better instructor, given the costs of learning a new style.
As for bundling at the university level, I do not see it going away so quickly. In part, bundling by the university mediates a negotiation between parents (who pay) and children (who consume). That the college bundle is acceptable to both is its central appeal.
There can be much randomness in this where others view what is already popular. One might consider trending as well as popular.