NYTimes story by Anna Kamentz on how UniversityNow “rides a low cost wave”.
It’s been fairly obvious for some time that exorbitant college tuition costs were likely to encounter headwinds in the form of alternatives based on cloud and other tools. One of the ideas of UniversityNow is similar to “employee training” that takes place on the job in some area designated for that function. Usually sharing that space with other functions.
Making a space “turn into a learning space” as needed…. is a good idea.
Story also notes that the “educational entrepreneur” driving “UniversityNow” has been involved in controversy in the past over “business practices”. Some of that sort of accusation may come from blow back by the status quo. But it’s also been true in the past, that “operators” have taken advantage of public funding available for education, and run what we know as “diploma mills”, or worse.
Perhaps naive, but it doesn’t seem impossible for “Profit” to co-exist with quality and innovation, and ethics. One imagines there are examples that confirm that out there. Apple was spanked for deal with textbook publishers…what’s Google doing?