My article on Tech, Business and Design education published by Business Insider on 04/11/2013. 
(http://www.businessinsider.in/IsThis-The-New-MBA/articleshow/25207983.cms)

How relevant is the MBA in a world of game-changing startups founded by increasingly younger teams and workplaces where traditional job titles and responsibilities are becoming obsolete? Social media managers, growth hackers and data scientists are positions that have come into demand not just in the newly minted Internet companies, but also in 100-year-old behemoths. How does the MBA, in its current avatar, cope with this dramatic shift in skills from generic to specific? How does it adapt to a climate of self-motivated learners turning to new learning platforms and educators that provide these new skills?

Applications to Wharton's flagship MBA programme declined by 12% over 4 years. GMAC, the body that administers the GMAT, has highlighted a steady decline in full-time MBA applications with the steepest fall of 22% in 2012. A reason attributed to Wharton's slowdown is that the school did not move fast enough with student interests shifting to entrepreneurship and technology courses. While MBA programmes have been the route, albeit an expensive one, to a Wall Street career and many corporate jobs that demand a degree, running or even working in start-ups require specific skills.

Arguments about incubators and accelerators becoming the new alternative to the MBA is narrow, considering that it is still a minority comprising those who have already become entrepreneurs. Technology, Business and Design (TBD) schools, on the other hand, focus on teaching these skills through a structured curriculum - not just to entrepreneurs but to regular people as well.

Take the case of General Assembly's (GA) success in New York. Its stated goal of 'transforming thinkers into creators' has resulted in more than 70,000 people getting trained in TBD courses in less than 2 years. GA's statement perhaps best sums up the ideology of this new generation of schools and their target customers. Whether they are entrepreneurs or employees, people always tinker with one idea or the other. And now, they have the opportunity to give it a shot.

GA, Hyper Island and other similar initiatives coming up around the world help these aspirants acquire skills - be it in coding, digital marketing, raising capital, mobile development, user experience design or product management - for making that shift to become entrepreneurs or take up jobs relevant to the domains they have specialised in. Ranging from weeks to months, these are short-duration, high-intensity courses with specific outcomes resulting in demonstrable projects.

The start looks promising. General Assembly has opened 9 global campuses since its launch in 2011 and has recently shut down its co-working space to make room for its fast-growing education business. Dev Bootcamp, a coding-focused outfit, is sold out till March 2014.

We need more of such schools. We need new retail models that make this kind of training available to people not just in large cities, but in smaller towns as well. Only then this can be a true democratisation of new skills and not one restricted to a small population reaping its benefits.

Coding has become the universal language for creating new business models and changing existing ones. Design has become the very basis on which companies compete. Running a business is no longer about increasing sales and profits alone, but understanding the art of letting go of short-term gains for long-term impact. Are MBA programmes doing enough to include these new skill sets as a part of their core curriculum? It might be worthwhile to re-assess the curriculum, duration and intended outcome of the traditional programmes in light of these changing or rather, changed circumstances.

This is, by no means, taking away the value of a B-school education, nor is it a claim that these new learning systems are replacements for an MBA. But it certainly is an alternative and a real one at that. The success of some of these programmes is the growing proof that learners see value in spending $30,000 a la carte for these skills against $2,00,000 for a generic MBA programme - 15% of the cost. It is especially attractive in an uncertain job environment with student loans crossing the $1 trillion mark and more importantly, in an era where everyone has that fighting chance of being a part of the next big start-up or has the possibility of becoming the next Zuckerberg.

When large corporations are being overturned by upstarts and struggle with the transition to a more social, open and connected world, TBD schools give us a glimpse into what could be a new form of business education.
Source: WSJ1, WSJ2, Venture Beat, Forbes

Coursera today announced a network of Learning Hubs in 30 global locations offering free access and support from facilitators. This is welcome in the MOOC and online education world currently plagued by issues surrounding retention and drop-out rates. Through this move, Coursera also seems to have laid the foundation for becoming an end-to-end player in the higher ed value chain. 

Felt like a soothsayer reading the news this morning about Coursera's Learning Hubs. Six months back, I had posted my two cents around this opportunity under Fred Wilson's post on online education.

Of course I am not the only one who saw this coming. Coursera appears to be taking important steps towards solving key issues and creating new opportunities in the online education space:

1. Improving completion rates through the use of facilitators in classes and the impact of a community of like-minded learners coming together, helping and motivating each other. The current completion rate for MOOCs hovers around 10% and is touted as the main reason why some call it a 'fad'.  In-person intervention with timely assistance, it's believed, can help learners stay motivated and disciplined.

2. Bringing real-world classroom effects to a pure virtual environment - right from face-to-face discussions with peers and the social constructs around classrooms leading to debates, knowledge sharing, partnerships and meaningful relationships among learners.

3. Co-opting local stakeholders - educators and institutions, assuaging the alienation some feel about new learning platforms.

4. Experimenting with new models in blended learning, industry-academic partnerships, accreditation structures and customer acquisition. A retail presence offers flexibility to adapt product offerings for geo-specific opportunities.

These hubs have potential to become meeting grounds for future entrepreneurs, artists and thinkers to collaborate on new projects versus working in silos.

The opportunity for Coursera.
Coursera's Learning Hubs open up a new revenue stream and distribution opportunity for the company. Partnering with large institutions/colleges and keeping access free of cost while a good start, sustainability and scale could come from creating a more robust, for-profit services model built on top of the core (free) content. Centres could charge learners and companies an affordable a la carte fee for a range of ancillary services such as supplementary classes by experts, individual/corporate memberships for access to the facility, and placement support - just to name a few.  With the model maturing over a period of time, professional educators in the locality will also see value in offering services in these centres on a revenue/profit sharing basis with Coursera.  

In the medium to long term, it might not be presumptuous for us to expect the company appointing Learning Hubs run by credible edupreneurs with local market know-how and not just large institutions. This could be based on various licensing models (product/geographic-wise) and corresponding revenue/profit share structures. 

So while the naysayers lament MOOCs being another bubble riding on the wave of internet success stories, brick-and-mortar centres lend yet another higher-level of authenticity for education's online evolution making it seem more 'accessible', real and acceptable in the ecosystem - to learners, teachers and corporates. 

For an organization that's been around only for over a year now, Coursera seems to be making all the right moves for bringing credibility to online education, akin to what Amazon did for e-commerce in its early days. I wouldn't be surprised to see a Coursera centre in my neighbourhood in the near future.