Further Reflections on the Long Tail

For education how do you reduce the cost of niches?

Anderson talks about three powerful forces.

• Democratizing the tools of production
• Cutting the cost of consumption by democratizing distribution
• Connecting supply and demand

For education the tools of production have in fact been democratized. Desktop publishing and publishing to the web make the narrow juried approach an affectation of the scholarly guild. One wonders if a savvy person might one day use technology to subvert entities such as the Society of Biblical Literature and the Catholic Biblical Association. A website and or a podcast requires a winsome charm not a degree from a university nor standing in a professional society. So in that regard democratizing the tools of production cuts both ways.

Few things befuddle universities and seminaries more than the challenge of cutting cost by democratizing distribution. Often the attempt to do this in the recent past has been the deep discounting of tuition. Unfortunately even deep discounts have not stemmed the tide of other changes effecting enrollment such as increasing regionalism of both undergraduate and graduate students. So this remains probably the biggest conundrum for any school that wants to benefit from the long tail.

This leads naturally into the challenge of connecting supply of information and education with demand.