Friday Medley 1.8.21

Inspired by the always brilliant and inspiring Nat Eliason, I’ll be starting a Friday Medley series on Medium to complement the writing I do elsewhere.

🎓 The World of Higher Education

On my main writing channel, Profit & Scholar, I began Q1 2021 with an outline of the higher education topics I plan to cover in the coming months. These include the history of credentialism, a behind the scenes look at college budgets, how institutional innovation is handicapped by policy, and much more.

Higher Ed Number of the Day: 119,618. That number represents the current total enrollment for Western Governors University — now the largest university in America. This year, they’ve seen a 30%+ growth rate, likely due in part to the pandemic. This number also places them in the exclusive 100k club, an elite group of universities which have surpassed over 100,000 enrolled students.

The reason this number, and the story behind it, is so interesting is because WGU is one of the few universities putting the economies of scale principle to work in education. This is also why I expect they’ll only continue to see their numbers grow in the years to come.

Did you know that coaches are more valuable to universities than professors? I promise this piece isn’t just clickbait. Rather, it’s a serious look at the economic incentives driving the billion-dollar budgets most tier 1 colleges deal with, and why it’s often at odds with education itself.