“School is broken and everyone knows it.” Clay Shirky puts it rather baldly in this essay on The Awl, pointing out (complete with chart) that even as tuitions at four-year colleges have risen (up 72% at public colleges since 2000), graduates’ earnings have declined (down 14.7% in the same span). “Things that can’t last, don’t.”
Enter MOOCs — Massively open online courses, “a lightning strike on a rotten tree,” in Shirky’s terms. “Most stories have focused on the lightning, on MOOCs as the flashy new thing. I want to talk about the tree.”
The problem with the debate about MOOCs and how disruptively innovative they really are, he says, is that most of us are picturing the wrong thing being disrupted: 18-year-old valedictorians heading off to Swarthmore. In fact, the majority of college students today are over 23. Most of them are attending community colleges, and many pursuing something other than a bachelor’s degree. They’re not living in dorms; they’re commuting. And they want a more convenient, cheaper way to get an education.
Reading the full piece is a good exercise for any strategist or innovator; you can’t help but wonder how many of your assumptions about your own industry are wrong.
FLOCKING TOGETHER IS FOR THE BIRDS
When Cliques Hold You Back, and When They Help (INSEAD Knowledge)
For a working paper called “Does Homophily Affect Performance?” INSEAD professor Martin Gargiulo and Singapore Management University assistant professor Gokhan Ertug studied 1,746 investment bankers (a field they chose because of its reliance on knowledge-transfer between workers). Their conclusion: early on in your career, homophily — hanging out with people like yourself — can be helpful, perhaps because we’re more likely to share information with our peers. But after your first promotion, the value of hanging out with similar folks declines; we need more diverse information from a more diverse crowd to continue to succeed. Gargiulo’s advice: actively manage your network. The higher up you go, the more diverse it should be.
Long Live Email (CFO)
Marketers may be pigging out on social media, but it’s email that still brings home the bacon. That’s the conclusion Taylor Provost reaches after reviewing the data. For instance, Forrester tracked 77,000 transactions over two weeks and found that 30% of them began with the customer via an email. Just 1% came through social media. Not only do more of us spend time in our email inboxes, but email analytics are still far superior to social media tracking, letting marketers refine their search and target us with ever-more-relevant offers. Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a cashmere sale at J.Crew I need to get to.
The Power of the $pinoff
iPad Accessories Now Include a Longbow (FT.com)
Another Book Deal for Twilight Fanfic (Jezebel)
Before Every Movie Was a Sequel: The Decline of the Spec Script (Vanity Fair)