9/15/2019 Education should be like everything else.

An on-demand service | World Economic Forum

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Education should be like everything else.

An on-demand service

Notes from Netflix ... should we binge-watch our education?

Image: REUTERS/Mike Segar

27 Jun 2019

Nathan Schultz
President of Learning Services, Chegg

This article is part of the Annual Meeting of the New Champions

Education has long been linked to national economic competitiveness. Most debates have
focused on what subjects are taught - and many in the US correctly argue we need to further
invest in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) teaching. That is important, but we
also need to revisit not just the ‘what’ of education but how it is delivered, especially for the
modern student. In the US, 40% of college students are now over the age of 25, and – according
to recent data from Chegg’s State of the Student report – a quarter of students have a child.

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They also have different expectations. Today’s students order a Lyft when they want to go from
point A to point B rather than waiting for a cab. They stream shows on Netflix and songs on
Spotify, rather than wait for the next episode to air or their favorite song to come on the radio.
Today’s students are living in a system that is different from the one I grew up in – and our
educational system hasn’t caught up.

The fact is, 44% of recent college graduates between 22 and 27 work in jobs that do not require
a college degree. Few course curricula reflect the current trends in technology. Traditional college
programs are rigid and confining. For the 73% of students who work while in college (according
to Chegg data), attending class five days a week at a specific time is challenging, if not
impossible. Operating within a constraining educational system can be a bit of a culture shock,
especially for the younger generation who grew up in a time where so many things are available
on demand.

Image: NCES (2009, 2015), UCLA Higher Education Research Institute (2015, 2016), Institute for Women’s
Policy Research (2014); Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce (2015); Chegg estimates

Students aren’t studying in the afternoons after class or on weekends; our internal data shows
that the typical student’s primary learning time is 9pm. And while our data demonstrates that one
of the primary ways students access material is on their phones or mobile devices, many
professors still prohibit students from using these devices in the classroom.

Simply put, today’s educational system is incompatible with the needs of the modern student.

Online education has long been championed as a way to scale education to those who cannot
access traditional institutions. Students in India can take robotics classes at Harvard through
EdX, while rural villages in Ghana use video to access quality teachers. However, with the costs

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9/15/2019 Education should be like everything else. An on-demand service | World Economic Forum

of higher education continuing to rise, online education also represents an opportunity to

dramatically lower costs. Allowing students to learn when and where suits them allows them to
stop choosing between ‘learning and earning’, and lowers the burden on traditional institutions
that are not designed to cater to thousands of learners.

Most students go to college to become a positive contributor to society and an active participant
in life. But we’re letting them down. In the US we are expecting students to borrow tens of
thousands of dollars to earn a degree to go to a particular place at a particular time to learn. This
is in an age when everything in their lives, such as entertainment, transport and food, comes to
them at any time of day.

Rather than telling students to borrow the money and hope there’s a job that will help pay off their
debt, we should be using technology to both reduce their costs and to accelerate the time from
learning to earning with on-demand education and curricula that prepare them for the jobs of the
future. In many ways, the idea of going to a certain place at a certain time to learn seems
anachronistic. Why can’t we binge watch our education?

The millions of students who use our services do it because they can learn better, at more
convenient times, the way they want to. We need to realign the educational system to enable
students to learn the same way they do everything else in their lives.

As the US election cycle gears up, all candidates are discussing how college education needs to
be less expensive, more relevant and more productive. It needs to represent the diversity of
students we are serving today and must prepare them for the jobs employers need to fill, both
today and into the future. We need to reduce the cost of college so students can participate fully
and freely in society after they graduate. Technology is the solution.

Written by

Nathan Schultz, President of Learning Services, Chegg

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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