There are all kinds of business models out there, but I think the most ingenious one has to be universities. They are massive money making machines and its crazy how they are able to get everyone to pay for an education they can’t afford.
When you look at the university industry from a business perspective there is one thing that they seem to disregard that is central to any business, having a customer focus and by customer in this situation I mean the students.
Universities have become too big to be flexible and meet needs of their students anymore, essentially they do what they see fit and everyone else has to fit into the box that is a university or major. Think about the choices you have as a student. Basically you can choose your major and perhaps a few electives here and there, but that’s all the choice they allow. This may not be true for all colleges, but it is for the majority.
If you think about, when was the last time a university asked you, the paying customer, the student, what YOU wanted from the school?
When the students are what makes the universities prosper, make millions of dollars, and empowers them to continually raise tuition, then shouldn’t the students be better served? Shouldn’t they have a larger voice? Universities don’t serve their customers adequately for how much we pay them.
Fortunately, at the same time we’re seeing a counter movement in education in the use of technology, content, and design to deliver a higher quality, individualized experience to students that meets their needs. Organizations such as the Khan Academy, P2PU, and Academic Earth are giving the power to the students instead of the teachers or institutions.
I can understand how many are saying the education system may be the next bubble, but at the same time no real change will occur until our preconceived perceptions of these systems and their value are broken. In the meantime, let’s continue paying off our student loans.
This HBR articles acknowledges the importance of collaboration for success, but there are a number of misconceptions that can seriously derail productive teamwork. These include harmony, fluidity, size, communication methods, leadership, and talent.
Education has been a hot topic this year and one trend that is apparent is the movement of learning into a digital format, accessible to all. In this video, we are introduced to DIY U and the future of education, based on the new book from Anya Kamenetz.
This article from behavioral economist Dan Ariely explores the interesting situation in which we make many of our choices. More importantly he shows how we often alter our choices to match our underlying preferences, despite external pressures.
In this Q&A with Janet Echelman from the TED Blog, we learn more about the creative overlap. She talks about the need for time to stumble upon the creative, the importance of collaboration across fields, and pushing the limits.
Seth Godin does it again, as he compares and contrasts the work we do in two very different contexts. Either we can work for someone or we can work for ourselves, which do you think is more fulfilling?
And if you missed last week’s links, check them out here.
… to quit college and start businesses. Peter Thiel’s program “20 under 20″ is designed to give students funds to startup new businesses instead of stay in college. A bit extreme, but its definitely making a statement about issues with the education system.
The latest tool from LinkedIn Labs comes in the form of a connection timeline. Now you can watch how you built up your network over the years, which is pretty cool to see if you have an established network already.
These ten YouTube videos cover some of the great thought leaders of our time and useful advice for all entrepreneurs. Learn from Steve Jobs, Seth Godin, Muhammad Yunus, Warren Buffet, and more.
Disney decided to spend some cash and come out with the first graphic novel via HTML5 for the movie Tron: Legacy. The novel is very well put together and using HTML5 really brings the story to life.
In a recent McKinsey report released for the eG8 forum, we get more insight into just how big of an economic driver the internet has become. There’s also a number of charts and graphics that convey the most important information from their report, which is also available.
And if you missed last week’s links check them out here.
What exactly do students get with the ridiculous amounts of tuition they pay every semester? An important question as more and more students are facing ever increasing student loans. Seth Godin tries to clarify the real value of the money being spent.
In a TED Talk by Ron Gutman, we get a high level overview of just how powerful smiling can be. Some surprising findings include its impact on longevity and how a smile can create positive emotions in others, very interesting stuff.
Behavioral economist Dan Ariely shares some further insights into the area of self-control. He covers how our self-control is essentially challenged everyday and how we can develop the ability for our own benefit. Also, the marshmallow experiment video near the end is hilarious.
Another showcase of HTML5 is found in the interactive film ROME for the latest collaboration album between Danger Mouse, Jack White, and Norah Jones. Its really cool stuff, but as it says its experimental, so you should use Chrome to watch it.
A recent post from 37 Signals talks about how it is the process that is more important than the passion, when doing business. There are some great points in the article about the issues with following your passion and how to find meaning in your work. Also for more from 37 Signals, check out their book Rework, that rethinks the assumptions of business settings.
And if you missed last week’s links, check them out here.
Ever wonder what kind of media Malcolm Gladwell consumes? Well in this series called Media Diet from the Atlantic Wire, we get insights into Gladwell’s media consumption, as well as several others, such as Eric Schmidt, Clay Shirky, and more.
Video Games as a solution for education has been a growing trend of late, and Bill Gates is clearly pushing the trend forward. In this article from Fast Company we see how video games are taking a bigger role in the re-design of education for the future.
Eric Schmidt recently interviewed Tina Fey at Google HQ to discuss her new book, comedy, and life. It’s a good interview with some great advice from Tina Fey, and Eric Schmidt was a surprisingly good interviewer.
There’s a few different ways to overcome procrastination: habit, fear, deadlines, but incentives or bribery is apparently the trendy solution. In this article from Fortune, we look at how properly framed incentives can get us to act.
I’m sure everyone has heard about the iPhone tracking scandal by now, but this article from the Economist dives deeper into the issue touching on the responses from Apple and Steve Jobs, the real problems, and the possibility of similar problems on the Android OS.
Also, if you missed last week’s links, check them out here.
I’ve noticed lately just how much we’ve started to focus on the value of failure. It seems we’re understanding that failing is how we learn, how we grow, how we gain experience. I know I remember my failures much better than my successes, because they teach us something new and valuable every time.
Posts from Seth Godin, Wired, and Harvard Business Review have been hitting on failure more and more often, but are we seeing any significant changes? I’m not so sure. The underlying problems of accepting failure and making mistakes can be seen in the education system, where we get it drilled into our impressionable minds where being right is all that matters, and if you’re not right you’re basically stupid.
Additionally, even though we can acknowledge the importance of failure and making mistakes, are we able to actually be open to them, be receptive and accepting to situations when we have failures? Can we see the bigger picture, rather than feeling crappy, embarrassed, and discouraged? A recent TED Talk from Kathryn Schulz talks further about this idea of acceptance and being wrong. You can watch the full video below.
Michael Jordan is one of the best, if not the best basketball player of all time and a major part of his game was talking trash.
There’s one major lesson I want to point out about Jordan and his trash talking. As the commentator mentioned, you have to play the game against Jordan on two levels: physically and mentally. The power of his mind games gave him a huge advantage over his opponents, especially when they didn’t know how to play the game.
Lately, we’ve been hearing more and more about Emotional Intelligence and how the combination of it with developed talent can be a hugely successful combination. Emotional Intelligence or the ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself, others, and groups is something that Jordan seemed to excel at when playing against his opponents. Talking trash perhaps isn’t the ideal example of how one can use emotional intelligence, but it is related nonetheless. Being able to get into his opponents minds, he was able to beat them without them even realizing it.
This is one of many examples that show the value of Emotional Intelligence and the importance for having a balance between these abilities and more standard skills that are focused on in education. Hopefully in the future, there is more emphasis on such “soft skills” in school. To learn more about Emotional Intelligence check out Daniel Goleman, one of the leaders in the field.
This article from Bruce Nussbaum makes the bold statement that design thinking has failed and its time to move on. It’s an interesting piece basically outlining why he thinks we’ve gotten all we can from this process and its now time to move towards the next big thing: Creative Intelligence.
Influencers is a short documentary about influential people and how trends become contagious in todays world. In this short in-depth series, Steve Stoute talks about the concept of cool, culture, communication, and collaboration. You can watch the full documentary here.
I’ve been a big fan of infographics and how they present information in a visually pleasing, yet effective manner. One of the best resources I’ve found for infographics is GOOD magazines website, where they have a large collection of high quality graphics covering a range of topics.
This article from Smashing Magazine, talks about the battle between Inspiration vs. Working Hard and how working hard always wins. It goes further into why inspiration doesn’t really work, despite our infatuation with it, and how ultimately its our hard work that will lead us to success.
TED has recently decided to take the venture into education with their latest initiative through TED-ED. TED-ED is essentially a new platform focused around the TED community creating and shaping how TED can use its resources to enhance education. Become part of the Brain Trust to share your ideas today.
And if you missed last week’s links, check them out here.
In this article by Scott Adam’s, creator of Dilbert (love his comic), we look at how education often takes the approach of one-size fits all, when this shouldn’t be the case. More importantly, we get an inside look at how Scott truly learned, while he was in college.
Neil Parsicha, blogger turned author, shares his story of the three A’s of awesome, in an inspiring TED Talk. Neil is most well known for his blog, 1000 Awesome Things, that shares with the world the smaller things in life that we truly enjoy.
Both makers and managers have value, but the real key is finding the balance between the two. In this article, Seth Godin explores how such a balance can be established. Also check out the essay by Paul Graham that inspired this article.
In this short video from Fast Company, memory expert Bob Gray talks about some tips on how to remember peoples names, as well as how valuable this skill can really be for business and networking.
Another piece related to developing your personal skills, this article from Work Awesome discusses how to improve your ability to persuade. One of the tips is remembering people’s names, seems like its a pretty important one.
And if you missed last week’s links, check them out here.
I recently came across this infographic from USC that put together some interesting numbers about how we compare to the rest of the world. The focus of this comparison is on U.S. annual spending on education, which is at $809.6 billion compared to the next closest spender being Japan at $160.5 billion. So with this knowledge that we clearly spend the most money on education, here’s what we get:
99% Literacy Rate (9 out of 12 of the countries rated are at this level or higher)
Math Test Scores 474/600 (ranked 10th out of the 12 countries rated)
Science Test Scores 489/600 (ranked 9th out of the 12 countries rated)
So what does this tell us about our education system? First of all we’re spending a hell of a lot of money on education, yet were still not leaders according to these tests, which I suppose exposes some problems. What I’d rather focus on though is how these tests are really not a good indication of what our students are capable of, nor is it what our students should be focused on. There is a shift occurring from the more left brain approaches mostly found in schools, towards more right brain, unconventional thinking. Characteristics such as creativity, soft skills, leaderships, conceptualization, design, and emotional intelligence are the areas that we need to be focused on, not whether or not we can score well on a test. So maybe we no longer have the best test scores, but we also need to realize that that’s no longer what’s important for the future (complete infographic below).
