17.1 Content is infrastructure  (Page 8/10)

Ken - I think that you’re absolutely right, we need to think creatively about the barriers associated with shifting the “culture” of the academy regarding free content. Personally - I don’t think competition is a bad thing in higher education - it does contribute to quality. Turning to the business world - the co-opitition model has been pretty successful. The notion of collaborating in order to compete better is not an alien business concept - Why are we reluctant to embrace this in the education sector? There is a strong value proposition in the free content model to produce learning resources faster, better and cheaper when compared to the closed model. A free content license permits individual institutions to add there own unique services to differentiate themselves in a highly competitive education sector. In my view, this is healthy.

The free software movement is a very “competitive” endeavour. Anyone is free to fork a software development and if they succeed in building better code that serves the needs of users, the community will grow. Forks that don’t do things better will not survive. A natural eco-system with strong routes in competitive behaviour. Similarly - I suspect that this will evolve in the free content movement.

I’m very optimistic about the prospects of the free content movement. I already see early signs of the critical mass required to sustain this global endeavour. We have the leverage principle on our side - for example, we don’t need thousands of faculty to build a free curriculum for a freshman course in education or chemistry. Ten or fifteen dedicated educators around the world could do the job. My point is that a free curriculum is certainly plausible. The strategic question for most organisations should be - How will the free curriculum impact on our existing business models ?

Ken - thanks for keeping this initiative going - An engaging and compelling blog.

11. ken udas - october 11th, 2007 at 5:11 am

To David’s point about taxes and tolls. There are different types of taxes and I wonder if this is important. That is, there are general taxes that are levied that do not directly relate to where the government invests the taxes that they have collected. For example, some general income taxes are spent on maintaining roads, even if the person being taxed does not use roads. I suppose that there is the assumption/rationale is that everybody benefits from public roads. There are also taxes that act something like tolls. For example, there are road taxes that are levied because you own a car (sometimes based on the market value of your car) and gas taxes that are earmarked for investment in roads. Here I believe is the assumption that when drivers pull up to the gas pump, they will use their gas purchase to drive a vehicle on the road. These two taxes, although more indirect than a toll for road use, are more directly based on a direct cost and benefit rationale thank more general taxes.

I am not sure if this is important, I just thought that it might be worth noting.