The Changing Market Structure of Dreams

During the last couple of weeks I have been teaching the various Market Structures in Econ 102 Microeconomics. Also I have been searching and reading various business strategies out there. Another item of interest to me is the higher education world.  So it should not be a surprise that I was dreaming about "Barriers to Entry" and Higher Education last night.
Higher Education competes in a Monopolistic Competitive market structure. A pure competitive market will sell a homogenous product and will only compete based on price alone and nothing else. In a monopolistic competitive market the item being sold is differentiated, based on location, perceived quality differences, and quality of customer (student) service. This is why firms in these types of Markets do not compete on price alone.
One of the characteristics that help economists to identify the various market structure is the existence of Barriers to Entry.  In higher education the Barriers to Entry include class size, time, location, Accreditation and the reputation/qualification of the faculty. However, most of these barriers can be overcome by new competitors for example a new competitor can lure star faculty away from their current college.  The Accreditation barrier can be overcome by meeting certain standards and jumping through the various bureaucratic hoops. The only barrier remaining was location, and instructional infrastructure (Libraries, classroom seats).  
Now with the advent of online education new competitors have found they are not restricted by geography and they can invent ways to cram as many students into virtual classrooms. Thereby the explosion of Massive Open Online Courses more popularly known as MOOC.
Some of these new entrants ave gone into partnership with existing well known competitors such as Harvard, Stanford, and other well known Universities to overcome the reputation and faculty qualification barrier. They also have overcame the infrastructure and location barrier by providing virtual classrooms and Libraries. 
I could see the removal of the listed barriers, but I could not figure out how they plan to generate revenues. Last night in my dream I found the source of that revenue. It is testing, examination, assessment! Here is a testing company that is generating revenues from this model and using the existing infrastructure to generate revenue from the dreams and ambitions of our students.

How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America - The Atlantic (March 2010)

Here is an article that made me think about how I teach. How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America - The Atlantic (March 2010)
Here is a video that can be found in the article.

Russel Ackoff Management F-Laws

Here is an interview with Russel Ackoff on BBC. Mr. Ackoff raises interesting points that matches my experience of education. In the last part of the interview (13 minutes) he talks about how mistakes help us to learn, and schools penalize mistakes.
He argues for reforming schools around learning rather than teaching. He argues that teaching others helps one to learn.He argues that students should teach students and the teacher should be a resource. "what a student learns in school is irrelevant.... the important thing is how to learn."
A section in his book is called "Good teachers produce skeptics who ask their own questions and find their own answers"
If you do not like my version here is a better written synopsis of the interview.