ACE Supports So Called Disruptions in Higher Education Business Models | Inside Higher Ed

I love studying/being part of higher education right now. It is the perfect confluence of my startup experiences/business education and my PhD research and teaching/work at the Mason Center for Social Entrepreneurship. I am by no means part of the industry elite — never been to an ACE event or even a traditional academic conference — but I do enjoy reading about them. From Paul Fain at Inside Higher Ed:

The council says it wants more students to earn college credit for learning that occurs outside the college classroom. Some of these credit pathways are trendy and new; others have been around for decades. But interest in prior learning assessment has grown rapidly, particularly during the last six months, and ACE is riding the wave.

ACE’s leaders say they are giving a boost to alternative credit pathways because of the college “completion agenda,” work force development and money worries that are buffeting colleges.“We are experiencing a confluence of forces of change,” Molly Broad, the council’s president, recently told the University of Wisconsin System’s Board of Regents. “All of this coming together is persuasive that business as usual is not in the future cards and we must innovate.

“While it’s known primarily as a lobby and membership group, ACE, whose annual meeting opened Sunday, has long had a hand in prior learning assessment. The council started issuing credit recommendations for military service shortly after World War II, and added the assessment of corporate training programs for credit in 1974. These days students can get transcripts for ACE’s credit recommendations for $20 a pop. The council has issued 63,000 credit transcripts since 2001.

The article goes on to explain in great detail the recent, large push towards awarding credits for ‘alternative’ learning — ie work experience or MOOCs and a variety of other options.  Its an interesting debate and it underscores how much people still value degrees even with the push to self-led learning (Uncollege), dropping out, badges, and all of the other opportunities being presented to today’s learners.  Degree attainment is a policy goal of President Obama and many other leaders — whether it crosses a point of diminishing returns. But with technology, budget challenges, debt reflux, etc… its a really interesting time for higher education.

Btw, for many colleges these alternative credits could be a gold mine. Its kind of like Amazon.com’s marketplace — where Amazon.com plays host to a buyer and seller and collects basic fees, and often upsells both parties on more items/services. This business model is much more high margin (profitable) than Amazon actually stocking and selling things themselves.

Also, while we are talking Amazon, lets think Kindle/ebook model — digital products served on demand with few physical activities and interactions before, during or after the sale. MOOCs/distance are the proxy for higher education. Like the Amazon marketplace model, this model should be higher margin than traditional sales, distribution, delivery, and service — even compared to Amazon’s original model of selling books online only (which was radical at the time).

Enjoy Fain’s piece and let me know what ACE’s angle is?

via ACE doubles down on prior learning assessment | Inside Higher Ed.

Blodget Thanks Bezos and Amazon For Vision and Independence | #AMZN

I recently posted that I believed Jeff Bezos might become the face of American entrepreneurship with the passing of Steve Jobs. Henry Blodget seems to agree, writing a piece, Dear America: It’s Time to Say a Big ‘Thank You’ to Amazon, in which he highlights that Amazon missed its most recent earnings numbers and issued lower guidance — basically chartering a path independent of Wall Street analysts. Blodget writes:

Amazon is a highly unusual American corporation, for several reasons:

Amazon unapologetically builds its business for the long-term, without worrying about what short-term Wall Street traders think.

Amazon sacrifices near-term profits for long-term investments, again without worrying about what short-term traders think.

Amazon operates at a much lower profit margin than it could have if it were trying to “maximize near-term returns,” which is what many (most) American corporations try to do.

Amazon is investing — and hiring — aggressively for the future, at a time when most American corporations are cutting costs, laying off workers, and hoarding humongous piles of cash.

The piece by Henry Blodget highlights that other than Jobs, perhaps no other technology entrepreneur has had the vision and ability to execute as well as Bezos over the past 20 years. The piece highlights the eco-systems that Bezos and Amazon have built. BTW, there is a new book on Bezos and Amazon out this week by Richard L. Brandt, One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com.

from Blodget: DEAR AMERICA: It’s Time To Say A Big ‘Thank You’ To Amazon.

Our New Hero: Jeff Bezos of Amazon | Birth of a Salesman – WSJ.com

There is no doubt that Steve Jobs and Apple were/are the face of American Innovation and Entrepreneurship (over the last decade or so). To me, Jeff Bezo’s is the man to enter the vacuum that Jobs’ passing has created.

This past weekend the WSJ published an excerpt of an upcoming biography on Bezos by Richard L. Brandt. The book is called One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com

Bezos and Amazon have been amazing and his vision and execution are on par with anyone (including Jobs) during the past 20 years. From Brandt in the WSJ:

In the summer of 1994, Mr. Bezos quit his job in New York as a vice president at the financial-services firm D.E. Shaw. He and his wife, MacKenzie, moved to Seattle to take advantage of the explosive growth of the Internet and to start Amazon. The company’s original name, Cadabra, was nixed after someone misheard it as “cadaver.”

Their first rental, a three-bedroom house in the suburb of Bellevue, cost $890 a month. Mr. Bezos chose it in part because it had one crucial requirement—a garage, so that he could boast of having a garage start-up like Silicon Valley legends from Hewlett-Packard on. The garage had actually been converted into a recreation room, but Mr. Bezos figured it was close enough.

The site was launched on July 16, 1995—just as masses of people started moving onto the Internet and before many competitors had created strong commercial sites.

Mr. Bezos moved the company to an industrial neighborhood that it shared with a needle-exchange program and a shuttered pawnshop. He had 1,100 square feet of office space on the second floor and 400 square feet in the basement to use as a warehouse. The desks were made from cheap doors, with sawed-off two-by-fours for legs. The warehouse could store just a few hundred books on their way from the distributor to customers.

Thanks to discounts of 10% to 30%, orders started coming in as soon as the site launched. At first, there were a half-dozen orders per day. One of the programmers set up the computers so that a bell would ring every time an order came in. A great novelty at first, it quickly got annoying and had to be turned off.

The article is a great read and I am sharing it with my students. Will likely buy the Kindle Edition on iPad (though I really want a way to print my notes and highlights — am I missing something? Does the Kindle app do this?)

So look for more Jeff Bezos and talk of Amazon. Will be interesting to see how Bezos and Amazon will respond to the attention that I believe is about to come their way. Jobs managed it flawlessly. Will/can Bezo’s or Amazon? Is that their style?

via Jeff Bezos of Amazon: Birth of a Salesman – WSJ.com.

New Kindle to Target Campus

A few months back, with the release of the Kindle 2, we opined that Amazon was clearly going to bring ‘creative destruction’ to the campus textbook market.

Last week, Jeff Bezos/Amazon introduced the Kindle DX. This larger Kindle (from screen to memory to price) is targeting the campus market. According to a piece by Chris Gaylord in the CS Monitor,

Many hoped that the original Kindle heralded a major shift in the college textbook market, with its hefty prices and heavier tomes. Little has changed in the past couple of years, but Bezos says that the DX has its sights set on campuses.

“We’re going to get students with smaller backpacks, less load,” he says. The company has signed deals with three major textbook publishers, which together represent about two-thirds of the market. Amazon even arranged for five universities to test out the new model. Students at Arizona State University, Case Western Reserve University, Princeton University, the University of Virginia, and Reed College will receive trial copies of the DX.

I have yet to really play with a Kindle (my Dad has the first version and my mom just received the Kindle 2 for Mother’s Day from my Dad), but am interested to hear how the trials go at the Universities partnering with Amazon. BTW, are their Apps for Kindles? Apps for students, on Kindles, would seem to be a great market for entrepreneurs.

Kindle to Bring Creative Destruction to Textbook/Library Market?

We have seen many campus entrepreneurs enter the textbook market; it is a huge cost for students and bringing relief has driven many new companies. Amazon, while not a pure play in the textbook market, has brought great benefits to the market.

With the release of the Kindle 2 it becomes clear that this type of device may go to the crux of the textbook issue: new editions. The publication (and printing) of new editions of textbooks has driven costs up for students and made large profits for publishers, profs, and schools; by moving to a Kindle-like device, new editions would no longer have huge costs from print/shipping etc. So just as applications, software, and itunes update digitally, so would text books. It would of course kill the used market for books, having widespread consequences.

Moreover, instead of just buying the e-version (or Kindle version) of the book, students could rent it (or perhaps subscribe like Rhapsody) and have access during the semester or term that they need the book. Next up would be entire collections — obviously Google is dabbling in this space as is Apple through its Apps, but no ‘serious’ product has emerged to target the textbook market.

Last week, unable to get to the library in order to pick up “Lobbying for Higher Education” by Contance Cook, I read the e-book via the GMU Library website. I logged in about 12 times and read the entire book. With a Kindle and a e-library membership, perhaps I could have downloaded it for a few weeks and read it comfortable wherever I was, no need for. After two weeks the file might lock or ‘disintegrate’, forcing me to ‘renew’ it.

While it was pretty easy to read the e-book, I had to be online in order to read it. There was no download feature. This is far more limiting than a downloaded book on a personal device (be it Kindle or other device).

For campus entrepreneurs and others interested in campus economics, the question is: will the acquisition of ‘premium’ knowledge via the written word — by the purchase of and rental of physical textbooks —  to go the way of music? Will this fundamentally alter the economics of college expenses?

Once more into the breach campus entrepreneurs.