The best readers are those who take an idea (or bundle of ideas) to the next level. This is a super smart piece and you are right to focus on transaction costs as your bee. Subscribed! (Your other pieces are excellent too.)
In India, since getting into a good college is mostly to get good jobs (it's mostly about the money), I think future of higher ed will depend on how the corporations decide to recruit people.
Top institutes are probably safe for now since they still provide a measure of status in society (signalling).
I probably envision something like competition for the top institutes intensifying but after the cut-off there will be a dramatic drop (power law) and people will just enrol in a convenient college and focus on learning skills by using AI if they can see that their college name won't matter as much when applying for good jobs.
This probably happens even now but it will definitely accelerate in the future.
Yeah, and as economists, watching that acceleration, and its implications is going to be a whole lot of fun. Do the economics for the "convenient colleges" work out? What role for faculty in these colleges? What pricing power will they retain? If transaction costs reduce sufficiently, does it become cheaper for firms to have their own "colleges" (recruitment institutions might be a better word?)?
The best readers are those who take an idea (or bundle of ideas) to the next level. This is a super smart piece and you are right to focus on transaction costs as your bee. Subscribed! (Your other pieces are excellent too.)
In India, since getting into a good college is mostly to get good jobs (it's mostly about the money), I think future of higher ed will depend on how the corporations decide to recruit people.
Top institutes are probably safe for now since they still provide a measure of status in society (signalling).
I probably envision something like competition for the top institutes intensifying but after the cut-off there will be a dramatic drop (power law) and people will just enrol in a convenient college and focus on learning skills by using AI if they can see that their college name won't matter as much when applying for good jobs.
This probably happens even now but it will definitely accelerate in the future.
Yeah, and as economists, watching that acceleration, and its implications is going to be a whole lot of fun. Do the economics for the "convenient colleges" work out? What role for faculty in these colleges? What pricing power will they retain? If transaction costs reduce sufficiently, does it become cheaper for firms to have their own "colleges" (recruitment institutions might be a better word?)?