Higher Education in America

Even as the cost of tuition increased, the value of university went unquestioned. Colleges bundled education and signaling. Students who thrived in boring classes signaled traits to employers, like conscientiousness, intelligence and conformity. Now, due to the proliferation of information on the internet and the rise of affordable and effective al... See more

Like mass media and mass commerce, the average university is on the brink of collapse. Its structure is a rotting legacy of the Industrial Age. For years, anybody who wanted to learn on their own lacked the means to do so. Now, anybody with an internet connection has access to information. Harvard and Stanford will be okay, but dark days are ahead ... See more

If you notice the thread across all these activities, it’s human labor: and a lot of it. A mathematician on campus needs a blackboard and some chalk to teach a room of students. In the digital world, now they need a producer, a director, camera crews, audio engineers, software engineers to integrate online platforms, technical support staff to hand... See more