Felix Salmon of Reuters published a perceptive article today about how people can get re-inspired by education. Salmon equates what the Metropolitan Opera has done to make its “content” accessible to the direction higher education is taking.
The Met offers a Live in HD series, radio broadcasts, and YouTube clips—all in addition to its premium product at Lincoln Center. People can get a taste of opera before deciding they enjoy it and splurging for tickets to a live performance. Salmon believes, and I tend to agree, that the same thing can happen in education. People can take a computer science course on edX for free before deciding to enroll in classes at a local college. Salmon writes:
After all, my intuition is that people are more likely to want to go see a performance at their local opera house after seeing a Live in HD performance from the Met. And the more Leonard Susskind lectures you watch online, the more you might want to take a proper course at your local college.
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