Mesothelioma and the future of learning

I want to talk about mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is the lung disease caused by asbestos exposure. Mesothelioma is a horrible disease. Mesothelioma is also a very lucrative disease for some trial lawyers and Google Ads. Actually, I don't know how much income Google derives from mesothelioma, but I understand that mesothelioma is a high paying keyword, that is the people who advertise mesothelioma services pay something like $10 a click through as opposed to just pennies a click through for other words. What this tells us about the nature of mesothelioma in the American economy, particularly in the face of looming health care changes, is surely a subject of interest to more than just mesothelioma specialists and those that have mesothelioma or those who have friends and loved ones suffering with mesothelioma. Yes, mesothelioma is interesting in a real life and death way.

But I'm more interested in what this little fact suggests to us about the future of higher education. As I sit at the nexus of various players in the higher ed economy, where the state, the textbook giants, the open source and closed source startups meet, I wonder what the business model for the future of higher education is.

To some speaking about the business model of higher education may be anathema, but I mean it in the broadest sense: in our current human ecosystem in the US, with changes in technology, culture, and resources, what will happen to humanities teaching after the state is done preparing our children to be good citizens and consumers in the 21st century.

There are a lot of us looking to the future and wondering how we will educate in a generation, and it is 3-dimensional chess. Yet while we discuss the "Classroom of the future" a meeting I was button-holed into yesterday, who is involved from the professorial class to consider what sustains our enterprise? It's not something we professors are good at I suppose, but I do know we are good at thinking outside the box. Right now we don't even have a box, but a bunch of competing boxes open and attracting students (if you can excuse the tortured metaphor). Will the future be made of online departments of "Mesothelioma studies". If the ads at right show up with that magic keyword, and you click on them, perhaps it will.