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Being a teacher is taking up all of my time and energy right now, and I am thoroughly enjoying the process. At the same time, I still intend to continue pursuing my other interests, primarily on data science and linguistics.
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My wife and I have discussed about me enrolling in a part-time study. However, my reservation against it is that I’m afraid that it won’t work on me. It never did.
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I’ve tried different kinds of online learning platforms in the past. First, there’s the Netflix model such as Skillshare where you pay a fixed subscription fee to get access to all of their content. I wouldn’t as far to call their content trash, but they aren’t exactly great either. Just like Netflix, their business model is based on having one or two gems to cater to your niche, and the rest of the catalogue are just fillers – they are either mediocre or aren’t within your interests.
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There’s also the marketplace model such as Udemy. The quality control here isn’t great either, but at least it’s not a subscription plan. After you have accumulated three or four unfinished courses in your library, that is usually a good sign that you should stop shopping.
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Recently, I was introduced to Coursera’s bespoke facelift, with big name collaboration such as Google, IBM, and Yale. There’s a subscription plan for all of their content and then there’s also a subscription plan for individual courses. There’s an emphasis on taking the course at your own pace, which is great for people with a high degree of self-organization. But it’s hard to not be cynical when you know that it is in their best interest to keep you procrastinating as long as you keep paying. I’ve tried the Data Science course though and it was indeed of high quality, so I give them that.
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(LinkedIn Learning is a slight exception, although not necessarily in a good way. Their content is as mediocre but they have a more convoluted business model where their premium account is bundled with other perks for recruiters and job seekers. But I digress.)
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But dark design aside, I don’t think my lack of success with online learning stems from these platforms being profit-oriented. Even the altruistic Khan Academy would still fail on me.
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My issue with it, I think, is that these curated syllables just don’t appeal to my brain anymore. Not even if I were to enroll in a conventional university.
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Okay now, how about universities, what is their business model? There’s a video from Good Work that made an interesting point on how, for these higher learning institutions, their clients are actually the corporations with the students being the product. That made a lot of sense.
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I mean, universities are great for young people, they equip you with a broad enough skillsets within a specialization, so you can have some signposts on where to go when you first step into the working world. It worked for me when I first graduated.