I think investing in online and new forms of education is a good instinct, but I don’t think the investment market for the newest innovators is ‘there’ quite yet.

John mentioned some of the problems the big names in for-profit education have had. Along with those problems, they have a credibility issue among a lot of people who would be looking for alternative forms of secondary education. That alone would make me very wary of investing in those companies.

Another problem is accreditation, both of the schools and their graduates. The general education standards right now are degrees, though as Jack has mentioned several times, we’re starting to see the growth of nanodegrees (Udacity is the first place I saw that term). Udacity is essentially ‘accredited’ by its backing from tech giants and the clout of its leadership. Coursera and edX are ‘accredited’ by their connections with prestigious universities. Future growth is going to be dependent on having some sort of standards to ensure rigorous educations are offered, and we’re just not there yet.

Lastly, this world of alternative education is set for explosive growth.. but right now it’s still in a very nascent stage as far as funding is concerned, and no one is near the ability to seek investment in the public in terms of stock offerings. A quick check of Crunchbase shows these companies have raised the following:

Coursera $146.1 million
Udacity $160 million
Pluralsight $162 million
etc. etc.

If you want to see all 1600 of them, search for EdTech on Crunchbase. These are respectable numbers for startups, but they’re not big yet (DeVry is worth over $1 billion even after its recent stock tanking), but a clear path to making money has remained elusive so far (excepting maybe Udacity).. and after the tech bubble, the housing bubble, and today’s traditional education bubble, I don’t think anyone’s racing to take a bunch of these companies public to see what sticks.

I think the best thing to do is look at a lot of them. Become familiar with what they do. Take some classes, even. Learn about the industry, both the burgeoning alternative sector and the withering traditional sector (Glenn Reynolds’ The Education Apocalypse is awesome). At some point it will be time to jump in and profit from the change, just maybe not yet.

Excellent bit on dichtomy, opened my mind up. On criticism I have is that you frightened the kids and the dog here when your blood presure rose, I had to mute the audio a few times then we lost valuable bits of the podcast. The bit on car dinemos electricity was also useful to me.

Thanks Alex! I’m able to awe and amaze my friends by off handedly knowing trivia and dates. I think a coffee table book is a great Idea, I would definitely buy it

Thanks Alex. It compliments TSP and is a part of every episode i look forward to. I will be sad when it runs out…..

Also where can I find all the Greg Yows Revolution Rock and Roll songs? The site isn’t there anymore.

To Jeffrey,

The issue of gun control isn’t that the oppressed people are going to use guns to somehow fight the police. That’s lunacy. It’s that people should have the right to defend themselves against criminals. If you remove the ability for people to defend themselves, then they’re forced to rely on the police – giving the police even more power. This also gives the government more power because a scared, helpless populous will happily hand over more and more rights for the “protections” granted by the government. Since we don’t have guns to defend themselves from criminals, we need laws to defend ourselves.

If you need any evidence of this, just remember back to when some Korean store owners defended their shops during the 1992 LA Riots. They didn’t need to kill anyone, just having the rifles was deterrent enough.