Sloan-C Workshops fro 2013 link
John looked at 2012 fees for Sloan-C Workshops to post below:
This sounded good. Then I noticed they want $1485 for it.
Didn’t they get the memo that information wants to be free?
Now I have to search for how to hack their gateway.
Let me get this straight…if I want to study all of MIT curriculum and don’t care if the accreditation is “official” I can do that for free. But if I want to take some short summer “workshops” from Sloan Consortium, with equally unofficial “credits”, I can give up my vacation in Vegas for the privilege.
“Professional Development” may be one of the last bastions of high margin education when the dust settles…with it’s captive market. Unless of course someone figures out how to provide the form of accreditation that pros need for job advancement, and offers it wholesale online.
Found a bit more about the above pricing model. Not surprisingly, they’ve brokered deals with universities to sell seats when the university can then turn around and offer at low cost no cost to their preferred faculty needing pro development. Something called “College Pass”. Not sure I’m that happy with this business model either, from a consumer and “open education” standpoint.
Another brain teaser about what future business models for online education might look like. In this case, it’s the conundrum of “Hulu”, the streaming TV source which is owned by the big boys, but is trying to appeal to the new tech audience that wants it’s TV online and streamed to Home Theater screens, and doesn’t want to pay big bucks to get it. (free in the online world often neglects to mention costs for having access such as a cable or cell phone contract, but that’s another story)
In this stories world, one ends up with a somewhat debased service so as not to compete with the costly cable TV services.
Would not be surprised to see universities and colleges try to debase their online courses for same reasons of not competing “too much” with on campus classroom “service”.