Putting New Thinking on the Stand

One of the great things about the upcoming Education Industry Investment Forum is that it provides a platform for innovators and iconoclasts to debate the future of education.

On March 11, 2009, founder of Princeton Review John Katzman and Unigo.com founder Jordan Goldman will discuss the role of online innovation in the future of for-profit education.

Why? In short, because they are two people who know intimately what it means to be entrepreneurial. And they are engaging speakers.

What makes John Katzman fun to listen to is his tendency to call things absurd that he thinks are absurd, like his belief that the SAT is not an accurate measure of a student's abilities. He said this in a recent PBS interview.

We need objective measures. If all colleges had were grades, then every teacher, every high school teacher in the country, would have complete control over your future. At the same time, the idea that one test is a perfect measure for several million kids going to several thousand colleges is absurd. You need a flexible system where you can be tested in the things that you are passionate about.

Katzman has now teamed with the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California to run an online community that accentuates current degree programs in Education. It's entrepreneurial, gutsy and an assertive game-changer in the education space.

And Jordan Goldman? He was an early instigator of industry-changing business ideas.

At 18, Goldman created Student Guides, a print publication that gave insight on the college selection process.

He's now done one step better than that and decided to go online, for free, and let students make their own pitches for their own campuses.

He's young, and he's very bright. He sees a future in the social networking and web 2.0 model for college admissions and selection.

He was able to create a model that transforms the possible student population of a school, because it allows more information about that school to be given in a way that makes sense to the potential student. In other words, Unigo.com let's students market their own school to people most likely to attend it.

...in the case of Unigo, it means prospective students who previously couldn’t afford to go on campus tours all across the country, who weren’t able to grab a current student by the arm and ask them questions – now they have a way to find an amazing range of authentic information right from their living rooms. Prospective students have a way to interact with one another and ask each other questions about these schools. And they have the ability to see each college from the perspective of someone just like them. Sure, Columbia is a great school. But is it a great school for African American students? What about students from California? Is it the same experience for a wealthy student as it is for someone a bit less well-off? How about a conservative student, or a gay student? Those are questions Unigo can instantly help you find the answer to. We want to move the focus away from overly broad rankings that don’t tell you much of anything, and over to “What’s the college that’s actually best for YOU?”

You can join them March 9-11, 2009 at the Education Industry Investment Forum.

Register now to benefit from early bird discounts. Early registration

Humility

The bloggers at 2Tor have pointed out an enlightening instance of candor and humility in education.

Five Questions with John Katzman

John Katzman, CEO, 2Tor

New Speaker for Education Industry Investment Forum

EIIF is proud to announce that
John Katzman, the iconic founder of Princeton Review and the entrepreneurial energy behind the new 2Tor.com, will be speaking at the forum in March.

We ask him five questions about the industry:

EIIF: What act of strategic investment in the education industry by any player in the past five years do you admire the most, and what was its outcome?

John Katzman: Denver Public Schools investment in teacher comp reform. So far, so good—most teachers like it, and performance is up; I think this will prove a useful way-station.

EIIF: What industry genre will have the most influence in the future of education over the next five years?

JK: For-profit and hybrid colleges.

EIIF: If you could name any industry within education that requires the most change, what industry is it and what changes do you think it needs?

JK: Student finance. More transparency and simplicity.

EIIF: What inspirational idea outside of education has had a dominant effect on how you do business?

JK: Apple, which proves that product matters.

EIIF: For an education company or for profit school that is looking to grow, what is the one thing they need to be prepared to do before meeting investors or before launching their product or service into the marketplace?

JK: Explain how they will achieve both financial and educational excellence.

Princeton Review Founder to Challenge U of Phoenix

John Katzman, who founded Princeton Review and took on the standardized testing industry, will now take on the market that companies like University of Phoenix and Capella and Walden Universities, by launching an online Master's degree program with the USC Rossier School of Education, with his new company, 2Tor.

The story is:

2Tor is starting in a field with which Katzman is familiar, and where the need is great: teacher education. On Monday, 2Tor will announce that it is teaming up with the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education to create an online version of its master’s of arts in teaching, called MAT@USC. Within a decade, in Katzman’s grand vision, the online version of USC’s program — which now produces about 150 students a year — could produce 5,000 or more, helping not just California but many states meet the desperate demand for teachers in high-need (urban, rural, low-income) schools.

But it is not just about volume, say Katzman and Karen Symms Gallagher, the Rossier school’s dean. There are no shortage of teacher education schools, nor even of teacher prep programs offered online. But at a time when higher education institutions are facing significant pressure to increase the number of students they educate, and to be more innovative in how they do so, most of that growth and much of that innovation has been relegated, Katzman notes, to large for-profit providers (notably the mammoth University of Phoenix Online), niche for-profit institutions (Capella and Walden Universities) and ambitious but less prestigious nonprofit institutions, like Nova Southeastern University and the University of Maryland University College.

Katzman faces a challenge to build exclusivity and brand value in an education field where there have been few -- though remarkable -- successes.

What do you think of the technique, which appears to be linking with an esteemed partner to further both companies brands? Who will win in this deal? Is it the win-win that it appears, or more of a win, short-term for 2Tor?