We know that education makes people more productive but that obtaining education (particularly advanced education) can be quite costly, if not prohibitive. But what if that education were free? What if, as a society, we adopted a distance education format that was open and free to everyone with access to the Web? For instance, the Krebs Cycle is the same whether we learn about it in Bergen, Santiago, Vancouver, or Adelaide. Similarly, we can learn calculus, economics, and many other subjects in one part of the world and be fairly confident that people in other parts of the world will be able to understand us.

When you look at different subjects, you can see that in essence, the basic concepts of any discipline are universal and don’t change that quickly, ¹ and those concepts are in the public domain. While there’s bound to be some cultural differences in how the material is presented (e.g., using local examples to make the concepts more relevant), the principles are the same.

And if we look at how these concepts are currently transmitted, we see that there’s a lot of duplication and inefficiency. Professors (at various universities) and textbooks explain the concepts in slightly different ways, and students begin to incorporate and apply these concepts. But if the basic concepts remain the same, do we really need all of this duplication of effort? Wouldn’t society be better off if, rather than using resources to recreate and recycle information that changes very little, we put more effort into putting the information into a consistent form and making that information widely available? ² By doing this, society could spend more time working on discovering new knowledge, and if Hockbein’s assertion that increasing the store of information/knowledge creates wealth, then we could make all of humanity better off.

If we look at the Web as a means of storing and transmitting [a portion of] human knowledge, then we see that anyone who has access to the Web is able to (in principal at least) access all of human knowledge and to build upon that knowledge. And because it allows us to distribute information to anyone else able to connect to it, the Web has tremendous potential to transform the way that people learn and can provide a low-cost means of educating the masses. ³

Now while I think the case for free advanced education (i.e., open education) is sound—it raises labour productivity at a low marginal cost—the real problem is implementation and addressing all of the questions it raises. For example, how do we encourage people to create quality educational content? How do we accredit students (i.e., ensure they have the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities)? How do we settle on what content should be in course? Your thoughts? Questions (and possible answers) I haven’t thought of?

Most people would like to be rich. Maybe not like the richest people in the (think Bill Gates and Warren Buffet), and maybe not even a multi-millionaire, but wealthy enough to live comfortably and enjoy life—maybe retire early, own the house and car, and go on extended vacations. Now while most people want more money rather than less, getting (and saving) that money can be a challenge—and studying English (or any language for that matter) can help to overcome that challenge.

So how can studying a subject that most people hate taking in college or university help you to get rich? Well, as I suggest elsewhere, English is really an information technology and about manipulating information. In The Origin of Wealth¹, Eric Beinhocker gives a number of examples that show that as the quantity of information that a society produces, so too does its standard of living. What Beinhocker is really suggesting then is that all wealth ultimately comes from the manipulation of information. And if we accept Beinhocker’s conclusion, then we see that at the very least, being able to manage and (re)organize information is critical to our daily lives and our long-term wealth.

Since managing and organizing information is essentially what English is all about—finding ideas from different places (either from books or more commonly today, search engines such as Google), critically analyzing those ideas, and then organizing them into coherently written essays (or blog posts). While literature may be the subject of interest in an English class, studying English gives you the writing and associated skills that are critical for manipulating the information that wealth depends upon. And mastering those skills can help you to get rich.