Thank you for this clarification. It's hard for me to wrap my head around focusing the latter without focusing on the former. I tend to think bloat will be taken care of through economic pressures. That is, tuition will reach a point where students demand a removal of the bloat. However, at places like community colleges there isn't much bloat.
I do agree that there is room for some disruption but I don't see there being room enough for someone to reach Paypal size. But I'm biased. My own ideas for disruption have not panned out and this possibly clouds my judgment.
EDIT: One thing for people to consider is that Google has mostly made access to knowledge and information free. They haven't mastered how to make learning mostly free but they nailed the information part. As far as I can tell Coursera is Google light plus letting people the pace and sequence of topics. Indeed, isn't this, from an information point of view, essentially what school is? Can the learning part be done with far fewer people (fewer teachers)? I don't know.
Is Coursera really creating content or are they being subsidize via either already created content or by the universities that support the professors making the content?
Tailoring the class into 2-5 minute videos and designing interactive questions and programming tasks should count as creation of new content in my opinion.
Besides, when a professor writes a book, based on a lecture they are paid to give, the university does not get a share from the royalties either, as far as I know.
I do agree that there is room for some disruption but I don't see there being room enough for someone to reach Paypal size. But I'm biased. My own ideas for disruption have not panned out and this possibly clouds my judgment.
EDIT: One thing for people to consider is that Google has mostly made access to knowledge and information free. They haven't mastered how to make learning mostly free but they nailed the information part. As far as I can tell Coursera is Google light plus letting people the pace and sequence of topics. Indeed, isn't this, from an information point of view, essentially what school is? Can the learning part be done with far fewer people (fewer teachers)? I don't know.