Innovation in education

Michael Tushman has written about the era of ferment, that period of time just after a major technological change that leads to paradigm shift. That's exactly where higher education is today. The internet has made possible a wide variety of alternatives to the traditional classroom model but it will take several years, perhaps a generation, before we see clear 'winners' emerging and a new standard or paradigm for higher-ed.

Higher education, to use Michael Porter's five forces framework, has been content to relax behind huge entry barriers; the high cost of getting a PhD and the limited supply of new faculty, not to mention the issue of brand, reputation and industry self-accreditation makes it hard if not impossible for for new entrants. When was the last time you heard of a new conventional brick and mortar university being established? And that's supported fairly high prices, regardless of whether the cost is borne by the student, the taxpayer, or some combination of both.

The threat comes not from new entrants using the existing model but from substitution. Potential competitors are not going to be institutions full of professors with PhDs and doctoral candidates/TAs but internet start-ups coming from the technology space, who are buying the content they need and innovating the delivery system.

Solutions like Udacity may only impart 50% as much knowledge as traditional universities; but their ability to potentially do so for orders of magnitude lower cost (and to some extent commensurately lower prices to consumers of education) may not be something current educators like, but may meet both a market need and a broader societal one too.

Democracy

Democracy seems to be difficult. Hand-wringing abounds after what some see as the failure of the Arab Spring. Yet nearly a quarter century after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, most of the former states USSR are struggling to make it work, while Russia has reverted to something George Orwell would recognize.

Perhaps it's a something-for-nothing mentality; we all want freedom and a say in how things are run but don't even want to spent the time paying attention, far less getting involved. It's a collective action thing. The effort to keep up is greater than the marginal reward from doing so. Yet failing to hold elected officials accountable opens the door for those for whom their efforts are more than amply rewarded to set the agenda and control the outcomes. Getting money out of politics is only have the battle. The citizenry has to get and remain involved.

It also requires compromise and willingness to work constructively for the  good of society as a whole, not just ones own interest groups. When 'the other side' wins an election, things won't go the way we want. But for democracy to work requires both that those who lost accept that they aren't' going to get what they wanted. The obstructionist approach take by House Republicans create dysfunctional government. The secularists recent coup in Egypt is worse. But equally it means the winner has a responsibility not to go for broke. Winners shouldn't expect to get everything they want either;  elected officials are responsible for every member of society, not just those who elected them.

Atrophy

Early reports suggested that the pilots on Asiana flight 214 didn't check their air speed on their final approach because they thought the that plane's automated systems were taking care of that. (Is it still astonishing that only three people out of over three hundred on board perished in this terrible accident).



In the discussions following the crash, several experts have noted the issue of pilots losing their touch as electronics do more and more of the flying. While this is clearly of concern to air travelers, it is possibly the thin end of the wedge of a bigger problem that will affect a lot more people; I'm thinking here about Google's driver-less car.

I'd love to have a car that drove itself (and me) to the office. I could get a lot of work done in those two and a half hours (each way).  But software isn't, and those who create it aren't, perfect, and there will be situations in which a pilot or a driver may have to take back control from the auto-pilot.

There are to issues here. First, if pilots and drivers don't get the hours under their belts they may not become sufficiently skilled to act decisively and appropriately to avoid an accident.

Second, we need to thing carefully about designing machines that are too complex and unstable that they can only be operated with a computer intermediary. Modern fly-by-wire jet fighters, the F-117 in particular, are like this; they are so aerodynamically unstable that without computers to continually monitor plane's motion and apply minute but critical adjustment to the the control services, it would fall out of the sky; human pilots simply couldn't response fast enough and in the right way to keep the machine aloft. Imagine if we started building cars that we couldn't drive without technological assistance to control them.

In fact we probably we have already. From power assisted brakes and the simple end of the spectrum, to the Prius' fly-by-wire throttle at the other, we're already moving determinedly down that path. Remember all the kerfuffle about the Prius' throttle jamming open? That doesn't augur well for a fully automated, self-driving car.  Do we want the most efficient (high value, low cost) possible system that works 99.9% of the time, while risking calamity in the 0.1% of the time it fails?

Returning to a related theme, that's exactly what we've done with our food supply and our manufacturing supply chain. So the answer is probably "yes".

Credit card metality

Credit cards, a fairly recent invention, provide us with enormous convenience at the point of purchase. But there are both proximate and distal by-products. First, as consumers the act of buying and the act of paying are now temporally separated and become distinct. We make a bunch of purchases without worrying much about paying for each individually, and then face the inevitability of paying for all of them (no picking and choosing now) later on.

This creates a sense of normality in this separation of buying and paying that carries over into the legislative process. Lawmakers are happy to vote for programs, for which they have not really felt any obligation to pay, at least for at the time they vote for the bill.

Its exacerbated in California by two thing; ballot initiatives and redistribution. The ballot initiative means that people with less skin in the game can impose their "buy now pay later" mentality on everyone else. And since in the process the 'who pays' it generally a larger number than 'who benefits', we have in effect redistribution. Calling the imposition of taxes on all Californians to pay for one tiny town's pet project - a turtle tunnel for example - the provision of a public good is stretching the concept. In all likelihood, most wouldn’t agree and so the 'public' who benefit isn't really what economist think of as 'the public' (i.e. everyone).

Of course the corollary is that only the lowest common denominator get funded, and that isn't really desirable either. 

Education and banking

When I was 15 my grandmother decided it was time I had a bank account. But in order to accomplish this, I had to put on a suit and tie and be interviewed by manager of the local branch of the Midland Bank to see if I was a suitable customer for one the the UK's most august institutions.In the 1960s and 70s one had a personal relationship with the branch manager.

Fast forward 40 years. Now it's off-share call centres, internet self service banking, telephone menu systems and literally no way to talk to the local branch manager on the phone; HSBC which bought Midland in the 1990s publishes only a central toll free number.

Unless that is, you are wealthy. If you're part of the 1% then you have a personal wealth manager,and tailored personal service.

Education is in danger to going the same way. John Henessy, Stanford's president has said:


“while the gold standard of small in-person classes led by great instructors...”
“…the gold standard is, by its nature, expensive. So it is, in my mind, the ideal educational opportunity for the really best students for the institutions
that can afford to provide that together with families. But it can’t be the entire solution given the cost of education in the U.S.”

“As a country we are simply trying to support too many universities.  Nationally we may not be able to afford as many research institutions going forward.”

That looks to me like a two tier solution; small classes for the super rich, and MOOCs for everyone else.

That's not how I envision widespread access to quality higher education. 

Three cornered hat

One thing that should I think be borne in mind is that there are really three groups in contention (literally) in Egypt, rather than the two sided tug of war most of us are used to. Of course on the ground it's undoubtedly more nuanced than that, but three major blocks is the largest simplification possible; two is too few.

There is the secular opposition, there is the Brotherhood and then there is the old Mubarak establishment, including the army.  That makes the picture more complicated than right vs. left, Suni vs. Shia, secular vs. religious.  And that's before one considered the interests of external parties like the US...

We live in interesting times. 

Coup d'etat

The army's leadership gave Morsi an ultimatum. He thought they were bluffing and called them: they weren't.

The road ahead is unclear; but two ugly possibilities loom. First, the army were fairly slow to relinquish power after the Arab Spring two years ago.  For obvious reasons, they may be far slower this time round.

Second, the Muslim Brotherhood will have gotten the message that they can't hope to achieve their political aims though the ballot box and I'm certain will resort to violence. That will make returning to economic growth even harder.

    

I didn't see that one coming.

Today, the Egyptian Army issued an ultimatum to President Morsi: "sort it out, or we will". In hindsight this should not have come as a surprise. The army has long been the guarantor of stability in Egypt and with the growing scale of the unrest and dissatisfaction with Morsi and the Brotherhood, its patience seems finally to have run out.

The rebellion seems to be a coalescing of economic, secular and Mubarak establishment concerns. They are asking for a do-over of the election. It's a pity that the secularists, central to the Arab Spring that unseated Mubarak, couldn't have gotten their act together before last year's election; they made a pretty dismal showing. On the other hand, they may have - somewhat naively - believed Morsi when he promised not to turn Egypt into an Islamic state. They now risk coming across as spoilers who couldn't accept the results of the democratic process. The signal that sends is disastrous: "everyone needs to renounce violence and embrace democracy; except when we don't like the result".

Even the brightest future looks fairly grim. Morsi will be ousted, the generals plan will lead to an election probably next year, hopefully a more broadly representative government installed, and the constitution amended to purge of  the religious extremists' power grab. But the unrest has turned from a debate about policy to one of faith and that's terrible news for any hopes of compromise. Having failed ultimately failed by peaceful means to get its way, the Brotherhood could well resort to violence and acts of terror to further its aims; that won't  be good for Egypt, for the Middle East or the rest of the world.