Have you noticed: it is getting crowded? Everyone is now starting to run digital courses. Then why on earth should you take my course? Could it be because I myself might be great, or even terrible, in practicing it? Maybe bench-marking the new Ed-company Masterclass can help us to find out what to do here.
Here is a rough calculation:
- How many universities can there be on the globe? Well, to be honest; No-one actually knows. Some claim it can be about 25 000 (like about 5000 in USA, 5000 in Europe, maybe 15 000 in Asia, Latin America, Africa, Russia and the Middle East etc). Others claim less. Yet, others claim it could be far more than 25 000. Google around for a while and you will realize that no-one really knows how many there is.
- But it is at least, lets say, 25 000. Let´s go for that, just for the fun of it so we can end up somewhere in the end here.
- Then how many of them have for instance Marketing-scholars employed and how many courses do each one of them give? Well, some of these universities, like my own, have several Marketing-scholars employed, and each one of them give at least 2-3 courses each per year (some far more, others less). Other universities have no Marketing-scholars employed at all.
- Then how many professional educators in the field of marketing can there be on the globe? That number is even more difficult to figure out. So, let´s just guess and say it is, at least, just as many as there are universities existing.
- Most of these professional educators are smaller than universities. But at the same time; it likely exist far more of them per country than universities existing per country. Lot of them are even singles-person companies. Experienced marketers running a consultancy firm in the field of marketing, and occasionally giving courses for their customers for instance.
Let´s sum up and use a low estimation and imagine it could be about 50 000 possible marketing courses existing on the globe.
Now; lets imaging if all of them, at this very moment in time, would run a course in the field of marketing via a digital channel of any kind. Covid-19 could be a reason for assuming that not to be totally crazy to assume at this moment.
Then there would be about 50 000 possible marketing-courses on the globe available for each one of us to take at this moment.
But let´s make this imagined case more reasonable. Let´s say only 10 000 of them are run digitally at this very moment. Or, 5000. Or, just 500. Meaning only 1 % of all educators heading online at this moment.
That, is, still; huge amount of courses in one specific field of interest.
Big competition was my point. Tremendously big. I just wanted to give a feeling on how big the education industry actually is, if we think of it on global scale, which we actually can do if we think of education becoming a digital service.
It is crowded out there.
Masterclass is a rather new digital educational actor, just 5 years old, an American company.
You might already have stumbled on Masterclass, simply because they obviously seem to spend a decent amount of money on advertising on spaces like Facebook and LinkedIn. At least I have seen them passing by in my different feeds more or less everyday during the last weeks.
There is an interesting thing to learn from MasterClass, and that is: They use well-known names. They use what they themselves call “the best”.
You can for instance learn cooking from Gordon Ramsey, film making from Martin Scorsese, Economics from Paul Krugman, creative writing from Margaret Atwood and Business Strategy and Leadership from Bob Iger.
Masterclass do have a point. Without doubt, these are well-known people in their respective field.
There is something obvious to learn from Masterclass. Well-known names creates Attention, and if competition is like thousands of possible alternatives; we got to have something specific to give to our audience, if we want them to enroll.
Just making people Stop in the digital flow of activities is a tricky thing. Well-known people can then be of use.
Well, to be honest; it could also be the case that a well-known person in a certain field is well-known for a reason.
They can even be great in helping the rest of us to learn how to be good in it to.
There is often a reason why young professional athletes strive hard in order to play with the best. Sometimes, you can become better yourself if learning from the best.
But how come professional athletes themselves then tend to use a trainer, in order to become even better than they already are? And how come these trainers not necessarily were the best athletes, ones they were active themselves?
Being a good teacher is not necessarily synonymous with being the best in practicing the topic at hand. Education is not necessarily about being great in something yourself, but instead being great in helping others to become the best in practicing the topic at hand.
So, maybe it is not about us. Could it instead be about “them”?
Disruptive Education 