The educational business – Wisdom of crowds

[Sean Lew]

With the recent economy crisis, many universities are facing a huge drop in thier funding from corporate organisations and layoffs is somewhat common. In the most recent event, even Harvard is facing a tough time. Having spent alot of time in universities, I have found that many of the ideas I discuss with my professors years ago are becoming an industry trend now and first movers have become rich and famous. There’s money to be made.

When I was in University, and no offence to my Alma Mater, I did some really silly projects that had absolutely no value (financial or educational). Considering that most universities groom the future talents in their space and having many thousands of them on campus, I am pretty sure we can do something to optimise the usage of the brain power that is lying around. Not just from the professors or PhD holders but also from the young and energetic students. There is wisdom and knowledge in universities and there is also a huge crowd!

By leveraging this knowledge and the power of crowds, Universities could set up successful startups and once it starts making money, the money could then be fed back into the university as extra funding and benefit both the students and employees. As far as I know, Univeristies have been doing this and even some employees have came out on their own and implemented their own great ideas. Since this is the case why not make it bigger and better?



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