100% Online Class – 300% Fail
It was sexy, so enticing. Take the Stanford Advanced Program
Management course (SAPM) online and save 50% over the on-campus, in-person
cost. The online course featured the same professors, same lectures, the same
class materials – all online, all accessible at any time. Take the classes at
your leisure, complete the test at the end of each class, six classes, and
voila a SAPM Certificate.
Is it possible to digitize college content, drive out
costs, deliver terrific content and create prodigious prodigy?
College Classes as Digital Content
I consider myself a smart guy. Not brilliant, but certainly
capable of completing an online program. I did hesitate when my company refused
to pay for the program – which means that I’m on the hook for the $9000
tuition. Academic capacity (check), economic capacity (conditional check), execution (big red ink "Fail").
The first copy of Digital Content is expensive to make. The second
copy is not. Consider the obvious examples of music, books, and software. How
many hours, weeks, months, years, does it take to create a book, or produce an
album, or write a program? How long does it take to produce a movie? Once it is
in digital format, what is the cost of the second copy?
