A Changing World: Trust and Education

 Airbnb disrupted the hotel business. Uber disrupted the taxi business. The beauty of these companies is that they did this all with minimal capital investment. Airbnb and Uber didn’t own the rental properties or the vehicles, they owned the relationship. You gain more power as you move closer to the customer. Why can’t this model work with education?

The purpose of the university is to play middle man and add authentication. Anyone can play middle man, the true value was in adding authenticity to an education. Universities had a serious moat around this and leveraged this moat into significant pricing power. Combine that pricing power with government funding and you get rapidly rising prices.

Hotels used to be the authenticator, but Airbnb commoditized trust. Taxis used to be authenticators, but Uber commoditized trust. Why can’t an education startup commoditize the trust just like Airbnb has? Both the student (GPA) and the teacher could be rated. Students no longer would be tied to universities, they could choose any professor they wanted. It might sound crazy, but so did getting into the car of a random person. It might not be quick and the government might fight it, but I think it will happen.

It’s easy to overlook, but the commoditization of trust is going to change many more industries. Get ready and get paid.