College 2.0

The Chronicle of Higher Education has the story of Salman Khan, a 33-year-old who has uploaded over 1,400 educational videos to YouTube on various topics.  The videos were at first meant merely to tutor his faraway relatives, but they’ve gone viral, and he seems to have tapped into a growing disgruntlement with conventional higher educations.  And now, his experiment is paying off, literally:

Mr. Khan said that several people he had never met have made $10,000 contributions. And last month, Ann and John Doerr, well-known venture capitalists, gave $100,000, making it possible for Mr. Khan to give himself a small salary for the academy so he can spend less of his time doing consulting projects to pay his mortgage. Over all, he said, he’s collected about $150,000 in donations and makes $2,000 a month from ads on his Web site.

Some of us have been complaining about the lack of innovation in theological education for some time now.  And some of us have even tried to do something about it.  Nothing we’ve tried has quite gained the traction of Mr. Khan’s experiment, but some more ideas are on the table.

It will happen.  Education, it seems to me, is the next major aspect of our society that is on the precipice of a major social-media-catalyzed overhaul.

HT: Brian McLaren