Plus a whole lot of other interesting articles and documents in our eduFire Content section. Check it out!

Pissed because people are selling education out of one side of their month and doing everything short of stealing money out of the other side of it. I’ve spent a lot of time over the last year studying the inner workings of education and it’s amazing how shady many of the companies who operate in it appear to be. Sure, most people know about diploma mills. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. From artificially raising tuition to the student loan cap to schools doing whatever they can to scoop up stimulus/taxpayer dollars, it’s some pretty gnarly stuff. So I think it’s time we did something about it.

When it comes to education, it’s time to start taking the power back.

Too many of us have been sold a bill of goods that just doesn’t cut it. We’ve paid too much for degrees that aren’t worth enough. We’ve taken on an insane amount of debt that we’ll spend years (decades?) paying back. And the thing is…it doesn’t need to be this way. There *are* alternatives. And I’m not talking about crappy, “get what you pay for” alternatives. I’m talking about ways to gain a world-class education for a fraction of the cost that marketing-driven educational machines are trying to shove down our throats.

The guy who really got me thinking about is Josh Kaufman over at PersonalMBA.com. Josh is brilliant and part of his brilliance has been to promote the scandalous notion (I joke, but only partially) that a world class education doesn’t have to cost an insane amount of money. He’s been doing so for years at PMBA and more recently wrote a must-read article “Hacking Higher Education, Part 1: How to Obtain an Accredited Undergraduate Degree in 1 Year for $4,000” (follow-up articles here and here, all must-reads). While I’m not convinced that Josh’s recipe for getting a degree in 1 year is the right thing for most people I think what it speaks to is the larger opportunity to save significant money while pursuing your degree. And more importantly, to take the power back.

Hey Mr. University, want to raise my tuition 32 percent this year?! That’s fine. See this whole CLEP thingie over here?? I’m just going to do that and you can keep your little ol’ tuition hikes!

Students (and parents of students!) sick of paying insane prices for tuition need to start demanding alternatives. And we’re not talking ultra-low-quality alternatives. We’re talking about the opportunity to get a high quality education at a lower prices. Every year your mobile phone gets better and the price gets cheaper. Why shouldn’t your education? Instead, it’s quite the opposite. Every year it gets about 8% more expensive and at least according to many, every year it gets a bit worse (check out Kent Pitman who makes this case way better than I could).

We started offering online CLEP courses at eduFire to give people an opportunity to take the power back. Learn from some of the most engaging and brightest instructors but save 80-90% of the cost of taking the same number of credits at The University of Phoenix. And we’re not the only ones helping people to take the power back. Look at people like Chegg, BookRenter and Flat World Knowledge who are helping students take the power back when it comes to textbooks. Check out sites like AcademicEarth, Peer2Peer University and University of the People are helping people who simply want to learn without money standing in the way to take the power back.

I’m all for education period. But I’m more for education when the number one goal is helping the student succeed. Optimizing profits at the expense of students? Not cool. Playing tricks on students to force them into unnecessarily buying new editions of textbooks? Lame-o. As Umair Haque would say, these are classic cases of thin value creation.

The era of playing games with our education is over. Pink Floyd woke up a generation of kids and young adults with their rallying cry “Teacher, leave them kids alone.”

Our generation needs a new rallying cry around education.

Perhaps that one should be “Take the Power Back“.

(I’ll be back with Part 2 of this in a little bit. Excited to hear your thoughts in the comments.)

So we’ve spent a lot of time thinking how we could contribute to what I truly feel is a renaissance period for entrepreneurs. It’s with great pride that I’m excited to announce today the launch of the eduFire Business Channel. We are really fired up about the possibility of bringing world-class entrepreneurs and investors to anyone who is interested in learning from them. We’re launching today with 20+ fantastic people who have graciously agreed to share from their experiences building companies as both operators and investors. And we plan to add many more very soon.

Here’s a sampling of some of the rock stars who will be teaching classes on eduFire in the coming weeks. I can’t wait for their classes.

Sean Ellis – Sean’s track record is growing start-ups in unparalleled. He’s been involved with helping to grow companies like LogMeIn, Eventbrite, Dropbox and Xobni. We’ve been working with Sean since May and I can tell you that he brings a very unique perspective to the startup world.

 
 

Neil Patel – I’d call Neil one of young up-and-comers but I think that would be doing a disservice to him. This guy has already arrived. He’s the co-founder of two kick-ass companies (CrazyEgg and KISSMetrics) and one of the smartest guys I know. His SEO knowledge is incredibly valuable and I’ve personally benefited a ton from my interactions with him.

 
 
Avinash Kaushik – I first learned about Avinash when I read his book Web Analytics: An Hour a Day. He knows his stuff and as a long-time reader of his blog I wonder if there’s anyone out there who actually knows more about web analytics than Avinash. Given how critical web analytics is to almost every business these days this session is one that I think everyone will benefit from (I will be taking copious notes!!).

 
 
Mark Dowds – Mark is the consummate entrepreneur. He’s been a part of helping to start numerous companies and I’m very fired up about what his current company (Brainpark, Inc.) is doing. Mark is also an extremely funny guy so if you like to laugh while you learn you’d be hard-pressed to find someone better for that than Mark. His class promises to be both engaging and enlightening.

 
This is just a start. We have more classes currently posted to the Business Channel now and more to come soon. And if you’re interested, we’d love to have you teach a class too. My dream would be to have thousands of entrepreneurs from all around the world teaching and inspiring millions of people to start a company or make their company even more ass-kicking.

Entrepreneurship is the engine that drives innovation and gives all us awesome stuff that makes our lives better like Google, Twitter, Facebook, ZipCar, Mint.com and Scribd (and thousands of other amazing companies). By helping each other out and teaching each other from our knowledge I truly feel we can change the world. If eduFire could play a small role in that I’d be incredibly happy.

P.S. I’m teaching a series of entrepreneur bootcamp classes and donating all the proceeds to Kiva. Classes will run every Thursday in October at 6 PM PST. I hope you can make it!!

Education is mired in all sorts of problems. The cost of education is increasing rapidly (the total cost of a year of college at many schools now is about $50K/year) and recent evidence suggests that higher education might, for the first time ever, provide a negative ROI.

Education is a raw deal for many teachers too. Most teachers take home a small fraction of the revenue that is generated every time they teach. I saw this first-hand when I worked for Kaplan and took home about $15 in pay for every $100 in revenue that Kaplan generated from my teaching services.

What we’ve built and are taking live today is eduFire SuperPass and here’s how it works. For $29/month you receive unlimited access to any SuperPass class on eduFire. Right now there are over 80 SuperPass classes on eduFire and we expect that number to increase greatly in upcoming weeks. These are live classes with actual instructors, not simply self-paced, computer-generated classes.

We feel that eduFire SuperPass delivers its primary value on three fronts:

Convenience – In talking with students one of the primary concerns they shared with us was that taking traditional classes just didn’t work for them. Perhaps it was their busy schedule or that they were traveling all the time or any of a number of other reasons why getting in the car and driving to a building to sit in an uncomfortable chair and listen to a professor seemed so old school (no pun intended!). With eduFire, they were able to sit at home (or their office, hotel room, etc.) and learn virtually any hour of the day.

Cost – Taking a traditional language or test prep class runs hundreds or even thousands of dollars. In boom times perhaps this worked but let’s face it, these ain’t exactly boom times. Saving money is on just about everyone’s mind these days and eduFire SuperPass is a great way to do it. We wanted to price our service at a point that made world-class education accessible to as many people as possible and where you didn’t have to take on the huge burden of student debt to learn.

Quality – Of course the biggest question we get about eduFire is about the quality of the classes. After all, most people go to places like Berlitz and Kaplan and The Princeton Review because they’ve been told that these companies have the highest quality instructors. So that would seem to be a good reason to go there instead of eduFire except for the fact that eduFire also has instructors who’ve taught at places like Berlitz, Kaplan and The Princeton Review. And I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret: Not all those folks who teach at places like Berlitz, Kaplan or The Princeton Review are great teachers. At least at eduFire you’re given full access to all the feedback on the instructors (try getting that at a tradition school) and you can review a whole heckuva lot of information on them before deciding whether to take their class.

We also feel eduFire SuperPass is a great deal for teachers. As a teacher you’ll pocket the majority of the money that we collect from SuperPass subscribers. We already have teachers making $50-$100 an hour teaching on eduFire and at our current growth arc that number is likely to be $100-$300 an hour (or more!) by the end of the year. That gets us excited, not because it’s all about the money but because those types of numbers are likely to attract into teaching people who’ve never taught before. You know, the really smart kids who go off to Harvard Law or to work on Wall Street. Maybe they’ll stick around and do what I think might be the most noble thing you can do with your time. Teach.

You see, at the end of the day, it’s not all about the money for us. $29/month helps us create a sustainable company and helps our teachers make a living doing what they’re most passionate about. In our view, education is the foundation upon which the rest of society is built. And, as we’ve written about numerous times before (e.g., here, here, here & here) we think there’s a real (and massive) opportunity afoot to completely revolutionize how people around the world learn. We’re far from the only ones who are working on this. There’s a great group of companies and organizations out there who are seeing a world that doesn’t exist and asking, in the words of George Bernhard Shaw, “Why not?”

So I’ll encourage you to give SuperPass a try (we’re offering a 7 day trial for only $1 to get you kicked off). Or if you decide SuperPass isn’t right for you do me a *huge* favor and drop me a line (jon at edufire dot com) and tell me what would make SuperPass something you would sign up for. We’re just getting started here and your feedback will be invaluable in helping us create something that thousands (and ultimately millions) of people someday use and get a ton of value from.

Thanks for bearing with me here. I tend to get a little excited about this stuff.

P.S. One more thing before I forget…I’m teaching a special series of Entrepreneur Bootcamp Classes. They’re normally $20 per class but they’re included in SuperPass so those classes alone should be worth the price of your Pass. Hope to see you in class!

A few benefits of a summer internship with eduFire:

#1 – Work alongside some sharp people and learn a *ton*. Trust me on this one, you’ll probably receive an MBA’s worth of education in a single summer (and this is coming from someone who received an MBA from a Top 10 school).

#2 – A great name on your resume. We’re funded by a Sand Hill Road VC so you’ll have a good name to add to your resume. Can’t hurt in this economy!

#3 – Super convenient! We’re located in SOMA in SF, incredibly close to Cal-Train and a # of bus lines and walking distance from BART. A great commute for anyone in the Bay Area.

#4 – Free eduFire classes, tutoring sessions, etc. If you’re looking to learn a language, prep for an exam, etc. we’ll hook you up with vouchers to take free classes and tutoring sessions on our site. Not a bad perk!!

#5 – Meaningful work. If you’ve read our blog you know that we’re about trying to change education for the better. What could be a better use of your time between school years than trying to make the education system itself a little bit (or a lot!) better?

We’re mostly looking for people who are local although we might hire an exceptional candidate who is remote. We’re looking for all sorts of backgrounds but the ideal for us would be people with experience in marketing (especially social media) and customer experience (especially usability). If you feel you might fit the bill shoot an email and a resume to jon at edufire dot com and title it “eduFire Summer Internship”.

Looking forward to hearing from you!!