Tech hub as a two-sided market for the education of the future

‘’Education = outdated’’ is becoming an easy topic to argue in favor of. As a consequence, ‘’the future of education’’ is gaining value as a hot topic to speculate about. So what might this future look like? I propose to go through the anticipated shift in education as a shift from product based business model over to ecosystem sustaining model that works as a two-sided network of students on the demand side and companies on the supply side.

What have been the Western education model since Harvard establishment in 1636? General education same as subject specific undergraduate or so called ‘’liberal arts’’ education is a product aggregation – a bundle of different ‘’kinds of knowledge’’ of your choice – theoretical mixed with practical knowledge of general application. You would protest: ‘’How practical is it? Seems we are thought things we nearly do not use when later at work.” Some would argue that theorists shall go study in academic institutions – universities to get their under/graduate ‘’degrees’’ that solemnly put them in ranks of Bachelors, Masters or Doctors in their chosen field. Practitioners, on the other side, would go get professional education that should prepare them to tackle real tasks at their working place. However, even this group evidently overlooks some ‘’skills’’ when learning and under-looks others – one education program cannot evenly serve the needs of its differently interested students.

Hence, we have a problem at hand that entrepreneurial spirit shall inspire to resolve. How do we approach such an issue? By creating a more efficient market for matching demands with suppliers. Who are those actors here and what is the market? Those are digital education platforms like Coursera, KhanAcademy, EdX or Udacity, where many of the forward looking educational institutions like Harvard, MIT or Delft university upload online courses for their physically available courses or specially designed courses. Cool stuff and can work well, however, some reports show that student turnover is very high – portion of students who start the course but do not proceed with even 20% of it. Engagement and attachment to ‘’physical here and now’’ of the class is lacking that in turn negatively affects the motivation of the digital students. Do not rush from ”Place to Space” that fast, rather adapt the ”Place to Splace” strategy – explained later in the post.

Now, what is more important is the ‘’means and ends’’ dilemma of both digital and physical education as we have known it so far. The ‘’why’’ I learn and ‘’where’’ directly will I apply it, is still lacking as education is at best only the replica of real life problem solving process. Here is where the tech hub based education comes in. Essentially, it is founded on ‘’learn by doing’’ philosophy where companies/start-ups are physically aggregated in their office co-working co-living space (tech hub) – the supply side of the market. The demand side is represented by the students who came to the tech hub to meet their potential future employers and commit assignments for them while attending some of their informative workshops where they can learn about the company. This is combined with the previously discussed digital education that shall enable those students to learn the fundamentals and the underlying theory for approaching some of their assignments. An example for a ”Place to Splace” shift.

Such a two-sided market is argued to be more efficient – it can better satisfy the need of ‘’long-tail’’ tastes of students – providing more specific learning by doing in contrast to more generic education at the university that is designed to be of more use for any student on average but still lack a lot of specificity/realism when applied in the world. Positive cross-side networking effects are not only evident here but are rather one of the requirements for such a market to function. It is important that different tastes of students are well satisfied by good supply of companies and there is a match for all of them, otherwise demand side will shrink – ruining the whole market.

It is interesting to argue here on who should be the money or the subsidized side. In my opinion the demand side will enter the market only when there will be enough suppliers (companies) present to satisfy their varying needs. Thus, companies shall be subsidized. Which also makes logic sense, as for a company there are human resource – training costs involved as well as operational risks and uncertainty in the effort/capabilities of students.

All in all, the shift and realization of such a market will take place only when there will be enough ‘’adopters’’ who pose a question – ‘’Why am I going to university?’’ before actually going there. When the majority answers ‘’To better realize my ideas at work’’, their choice for the tech hub – learning by doing education shall become evident. Where else can you better be prepared to realize your ideas at work if not by doing that work at the real company?