Well, I’m an EA and I’ve scaled+secured funding for large-scale edutech ventures. My only comment would be to provide a compelling reason for someone to apply to DI. In edutech, I find there are 3 approaches:
Securing funding from other institutions. By far the most common approach. Actual user experience becomes secondary if you can somehow convince schools/workplaces to sufficiently fund this, and you essentially secure a captive audience. Obviously, incentives skew here.
Be fun and engaging to use, and then offer premium features.
Present a viable alternative (in at least one niche area) to traditional education certificates
I have previously tried out an idea similar to yours. Singapore has the Skillsfuture program that subsidises job skills retraining. In theory, this is a forward-thinking move. However, in practice, the vast majority of the funding is given to the best marketers, not the best teachers. Mid-career tech transitions (usually forced) are an absolute bloodbath, and I suspect people in this job search are less receptive to adopting EA principles than they would be early in their career. After a while, the brain kind of goes into “I need a job regardless of whether it aligns with any principles”, if that makes sense.
That said I don’t know your context and future predictions based on past trends are notoriously bad, so I certainly encourage you to try.
thanks for commenting! Yeah, I’ve heard the “marketers win over experts” argument and I think it is a good one. But my “strategy” here is that in Germany we value work with values at least in theory relatively deeply. Like it is literally our culture with our poets etc.
In that sense education PLUS values would be a competitive advantage, but I don’t know if the market sees it like that.
Well, I’m an EA and I’ve scaled+secured funding for large-scale edutech ventures. My only comment would be to provide a compelling reason for someone to apply to DI. In edutech, I find there are 3 approaches:
Securing funding from other institutions. By far the most common approach. Actual user experience becomes secondary if you can somehow convince schools/workplaces to sufficiently fund this, and you essentially secure a captive audience. Obviously, incentives skew here.
Be fun and engaging to use, and then offer premium features.
Present a viable alternative (in at least one niche area) to traditional education certificates
I have previously tried out an idea similar to yours. Singapore has the Skillsfuture program that subsidises job skills retraining. In theory, this is a forward-thinking move. However, in practice, the vast majority of the funding is given to the best marketers, not the best teachers. Mid-career tech transitions (usually forced) are an absolute bloodbath, and I suspect people in this job search are less receptive to adopting EA principles than they would be early in their career. After a while, the brain kind of goes into “I need a job regardless of whether it aligns with any principles”, if that makes sense.
That said I don’t know your context and future predictions based on past trends are notoriously bad, so I certainly encourage you to try.
Hi Minh,
thanks for commenting! Yeah, I’ve heard the “marketers win over experts” argument and I think it is a good one. But my “strategy” here is that in Germany we value work with values at least in theory relatively deeply. Like it is literally our culture with our poets etc.
In that sense education PLUS values would be a competitive advantage, but I don’t know if the market sees it like that.
Only one way to find out, I guess.
Cheers
Ben