Are underemployed PhDs the solution to crazy college tuition costs?

What if some of those surplus doctorates served as Oxford style tutors for small groups of students?

Sure a PhD might have specialized in evolutionary biology or economics but online there are a zillion resources, including open online classes on Coursera, Udacity and other MOOCs. A talented, curious PhD could guide students and provide a curated experience through the wild frontier that is the internet.

Imagine: our intrepid entrepreneurial intellectual ditching the staid, rigid confines of academic life could take students anyway across the globe. The teacher could offer 1-1 tutorial and small group seminars with students getting baseline curriculum from MOOCs.

There are also increasingly a variety of mechanisms for independently verifying student's learning through examinations. Such a model would be emphatically experimental though perhaps worthwhile for certain students.

Consider the following rough economics. Ten students at $10k a year is $100k, much better than a barista at starbucks for an aspiring academic. That's also much lower cost than a years tuition at a university or many private high schools.[1]

Such a price tag might make sense for students with rich parents looking to give them a leg up or a homeschooling co-op. In the not too distant past, such personalized tutoring was more the norm for figures like Theodore Roosevelt and others from that, and preceding, eras.

Why not try a digitally native version today?

[1] The Minerva Academy launched a decade ago offered a somewhat similar aspiration. The new online-first university promised to use the world's greatest cities as its campus and provide elite education for a fraction of the price, initially around $10k a year. Those rates have since risen closer to what's typical for private universities, around $50k a year including room and board.

What if some of those surplus doctorates served as Oxford style tutors for small groups of students?

Sure a PhD might have specialized in evolutionary biology or economics but online there are a zillion resources, including open online classes on Coursera, Udacity and other MOOCs. A talented, curious PhD could guide students and provide a curated experience through the wild frontier that is the internet.

Imagine: our intrepid entrepreneurial intellectual ditching the staid, rigid confines of academic life could take students anyway across the globe. The teacher could offer 1-1 tutorial and small group seminars with students getting baseline curriculum from MOOCs.

There are also increasingly a variety of mechanisms for independently verifying student's learning through examinations. Such a model would be emphatically experimental though perhaps worthwhile for certain students.

Consider the following rough economics. Ten students at $10k a year is $100k, much better than a barista at starbucks for an aspiring academic. That's also much lower cost than a years tuition at a university or many private high schools.[1]

Such a price tag might make sense for students with rich parents looking to give them a leg up or a homeschooling co-op. In the not too distant past, such personalized tutoring was more the norm for figures like Theodore Roosevelt and others from that, and preceding, eras.

Why not try a digitally native version today?

[1] The Minerva Academy launched a decade ago offered a somewhat similar aspiration. The new online-first university promised to use the world's greatest cities as its campus and provide elite education for a fraction of the price, initially around $10k a year. Those rates have since risen closer to what's typical for private universities, around $50k a year including room and board.