Hi Blake,<div>I think it's really important that you brought this up. I've done a lot of reporting on the role of the private sector in the future of higher education.There is no doubt that the business community, including venture capitalists, consultants at Harvard Business School, and maybe hundreds of young entrepreneurs are very interested in new models of higher ed, to say nothing of the eight or nine publicly traded companies that control the for-profit higher ed market, with over 10% of all students, and still dominate the public image of online ed. There are some very scary players in this world, and if you're talking political lobbying, the Phoenixes and Kaplans are at the forefront in terms of dollars (not to mention the student loan industry, now demoted to student loan servicers, but still rich). </div>
<div> </div><div>However, in the cases you mention, I find it inexact to assume that the donations made by the nonprofit Gates Foundation and the personal enthusiasms of Bill Gates should always be considered identical with "business interests," much less those of the Republican Party. I've worked with the Gates Foundation and everyone I know there is committed to education access and to supporting public higher education, not at all advocating privatization. I've also met Sal Khan and his personal commitment is to free education for all. </div>
<div><br></div><div>Likewise with the Thiel Fellowship--Peter Thiel, as far as I've been able to tell from talking to the head of his foundation and several of his fellows, is acting out of personal conviction to make a statement about higher education being outdated and irrelevant. Whether you agree or not, he's donating money to these kids from his personal foundation, not making for-profit investments. </div>
<div><br></div><div>There are some great ideas and tools for transforming higher education coming from young entrepreneurs. They are often pursuing mission driven for-profit models because they find it impossible to innovate within the system. I haven't found it useful to make profit model a litmus test for whether something is a good idea but to evaluate people's commitment to openness and access on a case-by-case basis.</div>
<div><br>Case in point: this is one of the Thiel Fellows' entrepreneurial projects. It's a tool to make it easier for teachers to create multimedia lessons and upload them for their students and others to share. It's currently in private beta testing with about 200 classroom teachers.</div>
<div> <a href="http://www.opentheclassroom.com/">http://www.opentheclassroom.com/</a></div><div><br></div><div>a</div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 6:35 PM, Blake Stimson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:blakestimson@gmail.com">blakestimson@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">Dear colleagues,<br>
<br>
I have been following this exchange only sporadically so please accept my apologies if I am repeating something that has already been said.<br>
<br>
In addition to the generative potential of concepts like DIY higher ed, digital humanities, and hacking academia, it is also important to address the ways in which it is being aggressively pursued by various business interests. These range from the seemingly mixed, such as Bill Gates's sponsorship and repeated strong personal endorsements of Salman Khan (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM95HHI4gLk" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM95HHI4gLk</a>) to Peter Theil's paid dropouts (<a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/1755089/legendary-investor-peter-thiel-names-dream-team-of-whiz-kids" target="_blank">http://www.fastcompany.com/1755089/legendary-investor-peter-thiel-names-dream-team-of-whiz-kids</a>) to Jonathan Lebed's truly scary effort to bring crisis-capitalist profiteering to higher ed as a way to pilage college savings accounts (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpZtX32sKVE" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpZtX32sKVE</a>). Accelerating the privatization of higher ed through a DIY model is not yet an official part of the Republican platform as far as I know, but it is certainly on their radar and it seems reasonable to expect that it will get significantly more play soon, perhaps in the coming election (<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/18/pawlenty-daily-show_n_617766.html" target="_blank">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/18/pawlenty-daily-show_n_617766.html</a>).<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
Blake Stimson<br>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><b>Fast Company column</b> <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/user/anya-kamenetz" target="_blank">Life In Beta</a><br><b>Tribune Media column</b> <a href="http://www.tmsfeatures.com/columns/business/personal-finance/savings-game/" target="_blank">The Savings Game</a><br>
<b>Book</b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/DIY-Edupunks-Edupreneurs-Transformation-Education/dp/1603582347" target="_blank">DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education </a><br><b>Blog</b> <a href="http://diyubook.com/" target="_blank">DIYUbook.com </a><br>
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