Expensive private colleges, offering online courses, free of charge? Recently, Stanford, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan also formed a new company, Coursera, with more free online courses. Yet headlines are full of rising tuition costs at universities, and pressure on cost-cutting. The education market is one of the last markets where educational information technology– not IT, but textbooks– is still bound by antiquated and monopolistic practices. Professors are now creating their own “textbook” content, in all-digital form, and are starting to clash with both their own schools (who like to own all IP) and with traditional textbook publishers. News such as this means all sides are trying out new learning platforms to test the waters and prepare for tidal waves of change in who owns what, and delivers what, to whom, in the world of Education.
– David Keene
