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“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” – Albert Einstein

If you have ever discussed free-market alternatives to the current road monopoly, then you probably at one point or another heard someone ask, but without the State who will build roads?

Once in a blue moon I might actually discuss libertarian ideas in meat-space, primarily because the students in and out of my classes are not entirely open to this philosophy. Therefore why throw pearls before swine, right?

Last night, I met up with some candidates for admission in a service organization I am an officer in. It was a social at a dark and dank pool hall, but nevertheless, I somehow managed to find myself talking with a couple of peers on the topic of education, schooling and accreditation.

One of the guys works at HP as a full-time programmer (in addition to taking classes) and is perhaps the most computer and web-literate individual in the group (besides myself). Let’s call him Peter.

I’m not entirely sure how the topic came up; perhaps someone had mentioned that they needed to study or that they were wary of their degree plan. What did happen however was that I mentioned they could simply download a lecture from some other college, read lecture notes on the material from another school and otherwise proactively learn almost entirely for free via online resources – without losing the purported top-notch quality that is branded to a “college education.�

The responses were not entirely surprising. Peter scoffed at it, with a joking rejoinder: “yea, you go into an interview with some company and tell them that you listened to an entire degree worth of podcasts from Stanford. I’m sure they’ll believe you and consider you educated.�

One bystander, now known as Aaron, chimed in and said that there were a bunch of schools that now offered entire courses in podcast form. He then went on to explain to Peter that Apple had instituted a formal program called ‘iTunes U’ which includes Duke, Brown, the University of Michigan – among others - to develop these podcasts into a mature and reliable service.

For his part, Peter actually was a fair sport, in that he listened attentively to this and other factoids. In fact, I even mentioned the notion of a “mash-up� of OpenCourseWare (lecture notes, reading lists and tests) along with the audio and visual-based podcasts into a fully-comprehensive virtual product. He noted that while this was fun and games and could perhaps lead to a genuinely equitable education service, no one is printing off certificates of completion or mastery.

In essence, no one of acknowledged authority is giving you a gold star.

How do you fix this quagmire?

Well first off, let me note that I am not suggesting educational facilities such as libraries, training rooms, students, teachers or books are going to disappear anytime soon, if at all. I do make an argument based on specialization that the University as a residential institution will not survive, that it will have to strip it self of superfluous services such as housing, transportation and the myriad of other non-educational activities it preoccupies itself with.

When I talk about the destruction of the University system however, I am talking about a cartel and not the educational services it provides. Some criticism of this prediction however fails to acknowledge that semantic distinction. I think there will always be lectures, seminars, classrooms, researchers and the like. The question is how many? What is the pool of non-State interventionist alternatives? I am not talking about abolishing anything other than the cartel itself. As I mentioned in a comment earlier today, abolishing AT&T’s State-granted cartel did not destroy communications, therefore why is this distinction difficult to grasp?

To this end I have noted previously (1 2), numerous brick-and-mortar institutions which have increasingly adapted to this technologically changing landscaping – adopting web forums, email list serves, instant messaging, video web cams, voice-over-IP and all the other bells and whistles that are sometimes collectively called Web 2.0.

That is a good start, but there still exists a relatively expensive barrier to participate in this game of education and of becoming accredited as a customer (i.e. student) of the services.

I have discussed this topic with a number of individuals including economist Arnold Kling who pointed to a recent Eric S. Raymond piece that also discusses the Forbes article from computer scientist, David Gelernter. Dr. Kling mentioned that of late, this monopoly on accreditation would be difficult to crack. He suggests that one direction an entrepreneur could start from is by building a legitimate wedge between high school and college, perhaps along the lines of a vocational school – instead of trying to replace college entirely.

Another comment comes from a reader of David Friedman who proposed that universities are naturally more than one kind of business, somewhat in conflict with each other. Ideally, therefore, there would be examination organizations, certification organizations, and teachers would teach for a fee without needing to be employed directly by either of those (though of course firms of teachers would probably exist).

This would remove the conflict of interest that stifles competition to some extent in examination and certification, by unbundling those, and teachers would be free to make as much or as little as they were really worth.

This is of particular interest as one of the individuals that helped develop the University article also suggested a similar unbundling of services. The same unbundling idea is also making headway through large corporations who are being advised by authors such as John Hagel (see Unbundling the Corporation) to shed unnecessary operations and refocus around their core strengths (rather than overextend into many unrelated pies).

While George Santayana suggested that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, proponents of State intervention into the accreditation market are actually practicing insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results – and as a consequence, fulfilling the Santayana maxim.

Try something different. Go on a State-free diet. While you might not lose a few pounds around the waist, you could trim off some redundant layers surrounding the college tuition. You might even gain several extra inches on real-world applicability, enlarging your return-on-investment in the years to come.