Clay Christensen, author of The Innovator's Dilemma and a Harvard business professor, is coming out with a new book that's sure to create a buzz in the K-12 space, Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. Its headline-grabbing assertion is that by 2019, half of all high school classes will be taught online. (At least that's the thrust of this Ed Week article, which provides a nice overview.) Christensen thinks that this development is a good thing, and his arguments will surely spark a debate about the merits (and demerits) of online learning. (He also thinks that online innovation will come from outside the traditional public education system--which is almost surely true, though this view might hurt his speaking tour potential.)
But it's his conception of "nonconsumers" that has me most intrigued. In The Innovator's Dilemma, he explained how a litany of products (such as transistor radios) appealed to people who couldn't afford other mainstream products at the time. Upstart companies succeeded not by stealing market share from other companies, but by selling to people (nonconsumers) who weren't in the market to begin with. Now he applies that theory to education. As explained in Ed Week:
New providers are stepping forward to serve students that mainline education does not serve, or serve well, the authors write. Those students, which the book describes as K-12 education's version of "nonconsumers," include those lacking access to Advanced Placement courses, needing alternatives to standard classroom instruction, homebound or home-schooled students, those needing to make up course credits to graduate--and even prekindergarten children. By addressing those groups, providers such as charter schools, companies catering to home schoolers, private tutoring companies, and online-curriculum companies have developed their methods and tapped networks of students, parents, and teachers for ideas.
It's fun to think about other ways to apply this "nonconsumers" idea to the education space. My favorite: instead of competing directly with traditional public high schools that provide classes from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., why doesn't someone offer classes from 5:00 p.m. to midnight? No one is "consuming" a high school education during that time (save for doing homework). Surely many teenagers would prefer learning at night, online, over pulling themselves out of bed at 7:00 a.m. and dealing with the many little indignities of high school life. These teens could work a job during the day, or volunteer, or do internships.
What other "nonconsumers" could new education providers reach?
P.S. The Philanthropy Roundtable website has an article by Christensen about his education ideas, a response from Gisele Huff of the Jaquelin Hume Foundation, and another from Dennis Cheek of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, all worth reading.
