by Brian Brady
Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL
Information can be a glow in the darkness. Traditional higher education models are losing market share to cheaper education delivery systems. Young people now have the opportunity to learn the very same principles for free that are taught to the people they may eventually hire to run their businesses. I think this free market trend will eventually overtake the traditional post-secondary education models. I wouldn’t be surprised to find a fully-funded college education available, competitive with some of the best traditional colleges, in the not-too-distant future.
I can see a future where the ultimate end-users of that education (private industry), see the benefit to developing accredited curricula, and offering them to current and potential employees, at a greatly reduced cost (maybe for free). I’m not just talking about an MBA from “Mutual of Omaha University“. Think “University of the American Way“, delivering bachelor’s degrees to the masses- graduates might receive checks from the alumni association rather than sending checks to it.
Education via extension isn’t a new idea. This ACC school has been granting degrees, to off-campus students, since the 1940s. Online education is now a pop culture phenomenon. If this educational delivery system grows like I think it will, how can the real estate brokerage or mortgage lending communities profit?
The idea that education can get cheaper (moving towards free) and more readily available will be an irreversible trend. No longer can we hide behind the phrase “proprietary information” or “specialized knowledge”. Consumers may educate themselves about how to get a VA condo complex approved and find that my “specific knowledge”, while helpful, doesn’t permit me to charge a one point premium to my lesser educated competitors. My specific expertise DOES drastically reduce my marketing costs, allowing me to retain more profit than my competitors.
Information can be exported inexpensively. Imagine holding a webinar online, explaining the benefits of owning a Costa Rican vacation property, to German pharmaceutical executives. Then, imagine holding a different webinar, to a group of retired Americans in Costa Rica, about investing in mortgages so that those Germans could borrow their money and buy from those properties. Would that add REAL value and be worthy of a fee greater than the fee for the traditional tract-home, owner-occupied purchase in Missouri? I think so and I think it behooves future real estate professionals to think of ways to earn income outside of this the traditional “model”.
Avocations could become vocations. I believe one of the great exports the average American has is entrepreneurial skills. Identifying and solving problems, in lesser-developed countries, could result in tremendous prosperity for those inhabitants while producing great wealth for the architect of the solution. Watch Rocky Turner (wife of former contributor Jeff Turner) as she educates an orphanage in Africa. Then, wonder if more African orphans could be educated by livecasting the third-grade curriculum from St. James Academy. Do you think some sort of margin might be built-in for the entrepreneur who facilitates and hosts this exchange?
Let’s take it one step further. Can we develop an education platform, while pursuing an avocation, for profit? Think future customers. Here are some suggestions for Unchained, Greg:
- Unchained won’t free the indentured servants; they don’t want to be free
- Rename it SplendorQuest
- Keep working towards the online delivery system, concluding with a scenius.
- Aim the SplendorQuest idea outwards, at the millions of first-time home buyers, of the year 2020.
- Change the world for the better.
I think SplendorQuest, as an avocational pursuit, could supplant the NAR by leapfrogging its message to future customers. Take the message of better shopping directly to the customers rather than trying to get the providers to reform.
Does this sound crazy? Perhaps but I think the collapse will affect the schools first (it already has). If Dad is unemployed, he might consider a year of homeschooling as a way to educate his kids better while he learns a more useful trade. A SplendorQuest curriculum might just appeal to Dad’s teenagers as supplement to Dad’s daily lessons.
The State might be divested of its monopoly on education: choice is weakening that monopoly but necessity will eventually do it in. While an Ivy League education will always be prestigious, I see opportunity in low-cost, high quality education and training systems for the future. If we’ve learned anything from the Progressives, it’s that education is influence. I might like the opportunity to be in a position of influence to some future customers. You might consider that idea, too.
This is the third part of The Dawn in America series. I’m offering thoughts about opportunities in the future:
Jim Klein says:
For me, Greg’s FAQ was like the earliest glimmer of light one sees, long before the Sun rises. And this post of yours, is what one sees when that Sun breaks the horizon. It’s nearly blinding, but sunglasses aren’t the answer.
That’s a long-winded way of saying that you sure titled your series correctly!
I’ve held for a long time that the single biggest thing that could happen in this country would be the displacement of every single drop of “public money” that goes into education, at every level. Without that, it would be a lot tougher to turn minds into mush, which ultimately is the problem.
Your ideas here are magnificent IMO, and go to show why our futures are /not/ to be decided by those who have nothing to use except guns and cages. It becomes so easy in these times to focus only on the terrible tragedies that occur, day after day to person after person. But the good simply will never die…never has and never will. As Greg understands completely, it’s just our nature; that’s all.
People love their kids and it’s only a matter of time until they understand what you write about here…that the best way to love your kids is to give them a mind with which to work. And no doubt there’ll be plenty of money-grubbing capitalists around, to give ’em exactly what they want! This is precisely as it should be and why, in the end, the good will edge out the bad. There is simply no other choice.
Thanks for a great dawn, Brian.
March 3, 2010 — 8:28 am
Brian Brady says:
Thanks for the nice words, Jim. More importantly, thank you for the supplemental commentary which enriches the ideas in my head.
I love your second to last paragraph. Parents should love their kids enough to want more than they’ve come to expect from the Monopoly. Now that the Monopoly is failing, parents can either: (a) wring their hands and scream about losing their “rights” (outstanding football facilities, AP classes, debating clubs, etc) or (b) do something about it.
We both know that teaching is one of the best ways to learn, Jim so why don’t we do it? Well, who the heck has the time, right? This is where I see some opportunity with new delivery systems. Webcasting lectures, with live chat and podcasted call in Q&A, could change the way minds are molded.
Looking forward to your continued thoughts and advice, Jim.
March 3, 2010 — 10:14 am
Don Reedy says:
Brian, IMO this is one of THE finest ideas ever to make its way into print here at BHH. At the last Bloodhound event I think we talked about creating a Bloodhound University, and even if that isn’t what you have in mind, it surely tickles my fancy.
A couple of examples:
San Diego Hospitals: Sharp Mission, Scripps La Jolla, Tri-City, Alvarado, Rady, Palomar, UCSD, etc. What if these facilities set up internet education (cool education) that not only educated about health first, care second, but also encouraged up and coming health care professionals?
San Diego Law Schools: University of San Diego, California Western State School of Law, National University. What if these schools taught real life torts, criminal law, contracts and the underlying legal structure, but also encouraged up and coming legal minds and entrepreneurs?
Real Estate Companies: Prudential, Coldwell BAnker, Remax, Keller Williams, Bloodhound. What if these companies educated from top to bottom, finance, legal, investment, philosophical; providing ordinary folks with a knowledge base from which they could securely and intelligently acquire and sell homes. By providing “street smarts to buyers and sellers, and building a following based on passion and commitment, each of these companies would be influencing a base of potential customers, while simultaneously building brand value.
Yes, what if? But I don’t see the lights on yet.
Enter Bloodhound University
Look at the contributors at the right side of this page. Professionals. Hobbyists. Parents. Entrepreneurs. Legals. Financials. Philosophers. SEO’s. Sales people. Trainers. Thinkers. Artists. Administrators. Communicators. Publishers. Marketers.
If there’s room out there for email blurbs from NAR and the various state real estate agencies that purport to educate and widen the abilities of their practitioners, and there seems no end to me. If there is room for the likes of Tom Ferry and Brian Tracy and various real estate training programs, and there seems to be no end to me. Then certainly there must be room for the knowledge, the passion, the breadth and expertise here.
Just one last thought.
What if at the end of a year or two I could know and know how to create sites, market to success, be a consummate expert in loans, SEO, photography, writing, selling, contracts and real estate law, technology, and have an alumni association with whom you would have established a working and even social relationship? What if what you’re suggesting isn’t a pipe dream, Brian? What if it’s a reality? What if the “Dawn of American” is us?
March 3, 2010 — 4:39 pm
Brian Brady says:
Look at the post, two above me, by Greg. Read the last line about salespeople:
“the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople”
I disagree with the author, Don (about all of it). Salespeople are alive and well on the internet; we’ve simply changed our role to being educators and facilitators. We have to pull rather than push in this world.
I like everything you’ve suggested, Don but I want to go deeper. I’m thinking of targeting the education at high school and college students. Consider the fact that AP classes are being cut by the California high schools and that college tuitions are rising. Do you think there is an opportunity to offer low-cost, high-quality courses to those students, so that they can test for credit?
I like the idea of positioning myself in fron of the Millenials before they buy a home…years before they buy a home.
I might be reaching but consider the link in the second paragraph. Why couldn’t alumni profit from recruiting students?
March 3, 2010 — 6:44 pm
Don Reedy says:
Brian,
Gotcha, and actually agree that reaching higher would be such a doable and grand concept, that why it’s not currently being done is beyond me.
Where to start?
March 4, 2010 — 10:11 am
Brian Brady says:
I think some companies are doing it but I think the demand far outlasts the supply. I’d like to see what the iPad looks like as a content delivery platform. If video, livecasting, and textbooks could sit on th iPad, it might be pretty darned easy to implement.
As with everything, demand drives solutions. I’m curious to see what courses would be in demand
March 4, 2010 — 11:05 am