Consider chemistry 101 for example. By its nature, chemistry 101 must cover the same material whether it is taught at University of Kansas, Kansas State University, Pittsburg State University or Wichita State University. e.g. 4 colleges in Kansas. Certainly, the delivery of this course material is scalable. In other words, as the material is delivered to more and more students, the cost of delivery should decrease. Right? Wrong?
In education, unlike other services the cost of delivery is the same independent of scale, albeit the student cost at these universities per credit hour is independent of the size of the class. My conclusion is that we pay far too much for some education courses than we should. As a result, student fees keep increasing. And that is not all.
The tax payers give $35 billion to universities each year to develop new stuff. The university professors develop new stuff, patent it and university tech transfer departments license this stuff to corporations who pay royalties to the universities. Most universities receive less than a penny or two for each dollar they spend of the tax payer's money. As a result, student fees keep increasing and the taxpayers keep funding worthless research.
Education should be scalable. e.g. computer data storage is scalable, as we use more, the cost has decreased every year for the last 20 years. A gigabyte of storage today costs 1/100 of what it cost just ten years ago.
What is my point? A single professor could deliver an on-line course in chemistry 101 to every student in the state of Kansas for 1/100 of what it costs to teach the same material in multiple colleges at multiple locations. It makes no sense the way we do it now. Until our state legislators understand the economy of scale in education, universities will continue to price education out of the market for many people. And just think of the money on text books that would be saved?
Why are there so many colleges that teach the same thing? Because.
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