Just finishing up Peter Jarvis’ Globalization, Lifelong Learning, and the Learning Society.

He provides a really interesting look at the relationship between capitalism and education. In brief, he sees the Americanization of the world as a central force of globalization that is amplified through control of capital markets and information technology. He further argues that education is increasingly being influenced by the globalization/Americanization force. He describes his view of how multinational corporations wield influence on national and local political leaders through corporate investment (eg., We’ll build a factory in this area that will increase jobs and revenue, if…). Similarly, he sees these corporations also influencing the university via grants, funding, and other investment; the primary result is an increased university focus on teaching and scholarship that results in graduates that can be employed in those fields (eg., engineering) and less focus on areas that are not associated with business interest (eg., arts).

Jarvis then goes on to illustrate how education has become the “handmaiden” of corporate interest. He argues that one of the main factors behind the development in adult education, or lifelong learning, is the need for companies to have increased access to human capital. Essentially, if organizations didn’t require more knowledge workers, then there would be considerably less need for lifelong learning.

He then contrasts this with the humanistic efforts of UNESCO that focus on individual development and empowerment. From this perspective, there definitely seems to be a tension between these two ends of the spectrum of lifelong learning:

Corporate Need <—————> Human Empowerment

The optimistic side of me wants to these less as 2 ends of the same spectrum and more as 2 threads that can be interwoven to meet an end that is a win/win for both the individual and the corporation.

———————> Corporate Interests

———————> Human Empowerment

My sense is that the smart organizations have already figured this out and are doing everything they can to marry their business goals with the objectives of the individuals they employ. As the talent crisis continues, I think we will see more and more of this process. People will want to work where they feel they are growing, making real contributions, and solving real problems. If companies can harness that by aligning their goals with their people, then they should be able to capitalize on it and, in the end, create value, help their employees, and be good global citizens.

Stephen Downes, Martin Weller, Tony Hirst, and Gary Lewis have all been having an intriguing discussion on the business of education. Martin started it off with a great post proposing different business models (advertising, affiliates, sponsorships etc.) to support free eLearning. Stephen responded by suggesting that eLearning should be free and should not be monetized. Gary Lewis summarized things and asked them both to add more detail. I’m jumping in now because we have been struggling with this very issue for the last year.

We finally decided that you need multiple streams of revenue to be able to support a system that can ultimately empower education for everyone. The overhead is just to high to be able to do it for free without advertising or some other type of monetizing strategy. Many people don’t realize it, but running a web-based business is pretty expensive, especially if that business scales so that even a fraction of the people on the planet utilize it. Moore’s law does help with storage costs, but, still, in an increasingly video intensive context, storage and bandwidth costs are very, very, high. Additionally, if you want to provide a service that is reliable and one that educators and academic institutions feel comfortable using, then you have to make sure you can offer a decent SLA (guaranteed 99% uptime etc.). That means you have to have reliable datacenters, co-location, and people on hand to help if the site goes down or gets hacked (eg., slideshare.com with its recent bouts of denial of service attacks). These are just the basic costs and don’t even begin to cover design and engineering costs, particularly if you want to do something really innovative.

So, I guess I’m adding my thoughts to the mix. I’d love to see a platform that provided free education for all, but I just don’t see how it can happen without advertising or other revenue generating strategies. I’m with Martin in that I “don’t have the imagination” to visualize it occurring. The overhead is just too high.

That said, monetizing strategies are not inherently bad. There is much good that occurs through business processes. Paul Graham has a phenomenal video here where he talks about the brilliance of being a benevolent business. He uses several illustrations, but perhaps the most poignant is his Google example. He rhetorically asks something like, “Would Google be as good as it is if it were a ministry or non-profit?” The answer is no. It wouldn’t be such a great resource if it were a non-profit. So, even though Google is a business that uses advertising as its sole monetizing strategy, it provides an amazing amount of value to people everyday. It uses that revenue to provide new services that really help people (think Gmail). I, for one, am happy to use Google’s services and I don’t mind the advertising in the least, because I see it in the larger context. They are providing great tools for me for free. Graham’s hypothesis is that this model is ideal for both users and companies. It is a true win/win. We certainly think so.