Title : Universities are the new newspapers
Link : Universities are the new newspapers
Universities are the new newspapers
Regardless, one does not want to be compared to the newspaper industry.
In any case, I thought I would share my thoughts. Mark Cuban's analysis is a little US-centric, talking about how universities are taking on debt and increasing fees in order to invest in physical infrastructure that is increasingly going to become obsolete... presumably because of the proliferation of online education institutions such as Coursera, Khan Academy, and whatnot. While this is no doubt true, I think that the comparison goes quite a lot deeper than that.
The meteor that killed the newspapers
Newspapers were hit by a one-two combo thanks to the Internet over the last decade or so. The first punch was that classifieds, newspapers' main revenue source, worked much better on the Internet than they did in print. In a short span of time, classifieds had migrated almost entirely to the Internet. In many cases, these advertisements were not appearing on newspaper websites, but on those of new and nimble organisations that were all about online listings and nothing at all about news. eBay, Craig's List and many others cut the newspapers' lunch, separating many of them from a critical source of revenue.
But the bad news was just beginning. Even newspapers that were robust enough not to have to rely on classified advertising, or that were nimble enough to transfer their listings business online, now had to contend with the massively broader reach engendered by this new form of distribution. Back in the good old days, if you lived in Melbourne you had a choice of Melbourne newspapers and that was it. Rich fancy-pants types might occasionally pay $15 for yesterday's copy of the New York Times that had been air-freighted in. The costs and logistics of physically distributing the relatively bulky newspapers ensured that local markets retained their integrity, and every major city could safely sustain at least two or three major newspapers. The Internet took down the barriers that kept newspapers' markets local. Suddenly, I could go online and have a choice of The New York Times or The Guardian, as well as the Melbourne Age.
Newspapers are a broadcast medium and now that they are online, they are dominated nearly entirely by fixed costs. Such a situation naturally favours economies of scale and a small number of dominant players. Why would I want to read the world news in a midrange paper like The Age when I can read the very best online for the same price? Very bad for medium-sized local papers, many of which have closed down or become shadows of their former selves.
Notice that I've not mentioned the removal of barrier to entry as one of things that have killed newspapers. With some notable exceptions, predictions that newspapers would be rendered obsolete by a flood of amateur blogs have not come to fruition. Newspapers are being killed by other newspapers--and, one could argue, by Twitter--not by Joe's Blog.
Something has been lost to cities that no longer have a serious newspaper. Real analysis of local politics, world news delivered from a local perspective. Somewhere for local thinkers to have their thoughts aired to a wide audience. A local narrative. The culture of newspaperless city is no doubt diminished.
Why universities are like newspapers and how they can save themselves
Anyway, back to universities. Of couse all analogies are rather imperfect, but to me it's easy to see a similar one-two coming at them right now. The first punch is the nimbler organisations (Khan Academy et al.) that are taking advantage of the educational possibilities of the Internet faster than traditional universities are doing. This is starting to take some of the growth opportunities (for example, in developing countries) away from established universities. Number two is on the way: turning education into a global online marketplace. Stanford have already started experimenting with massive online courses. Now in the future, a student might wonder why they're doing their undergraduate course with whatever lecturers their local university is turning out when they could be studying at Stanford or Cambridge online with the best lecturers in their field. Not good for medium-sized local universities.
Now, unlike for newspapers, there is something universities can do about this. The analogy between newspapers and universities holds primarily because they both behave like broadcast media, which with the Internet means tiny marginal costs and a "tipping" process towards the highest-quality providers. I believe that for the high-volume undergraduate part of the university (i.e. where the money is), the broadcast analogy holds true. Teaching is focused on a lecturer model with very little student interaction; tutorial classes are focused on supporting the lectures and are not the primary product.
In the future, local universities will have start providing a much more personalised and interactive experience for their students if they want to maintain their physical advantages over the Ivy Leagues and Oxbridges of the world. In other words, they must become true Teaching Universities. Second-tier universities that follow the traditional model of focusing all the love on research will lose students and find diminishing into research institutions rather than full-fledged universities. Which is fine, of course, as long as they are able to sustainably fund themselves as such. But undergraduates can no longer be taken for granted; continue to treat them as cash cows who can be herded through one-size-fits-all courses and they will desert you.
I think that local universities are worth saving. Like newspapers, they are part of the civic life of any major city. A city without a university has lost something essential. Even if just as many of the population continue to be university-educated, all of the secondary functions of the university (cultural and political vanguard, formative experience for young people, etc.) will be lost. Furthermore, without a funnel to take high-school graduates and place them within a vibrant research scene, innovation is threatened.
Universities have the chance to improve teaching and give this story a happy ending, or they can do what hidebound old institutions usually do, which is change far too slowly or in the wrong way. That story never ends well.
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