[olalonde]

What does HN think of my prediction?

Within the next decade, we will see the rise of the teacher superstar. They will have salaries/compensations comparable to movie stars except their performance will be teaching online to massive amounts of students.

We can already see a beginning of that trend with Salman Khan or Peter Norvig teaching an AI class online.

[FelixP]

Optimistically, I think it'd be a great thing if this (or even some portion of it) came to pass.

Two thoughts come to mind:

1) Salman Khan is arguably this already (although he's not a "teacher" in the narrow, institutional sense) - he's managed to educate thousands of students rapidly, and he's raised a significant amount of capital for Khan Academy (not to mention attracted quite a bit of media attention)

2) The best private schools, I suspect, house many potential "superstar" teachers. The problem is that the schools have most of the reputational value and reap almost all of the financial rewards. In a lot of ways, it's an information asymmetry problem; I attended such a school and had what I would imagine to be a very disproportionately high number of superstar teachers, but I didn't know which teachers were superstars until after I had enrolled in the school and taken their courses.

[gojomo]

I like it even with doubts whether it will come to pass.

I can buy the fame for sure; the salary is harder: movie stars may be able to more effectively withhold their appearances/endorsement. Educators have more constraints on their withholding/spinning/endorsing behavior. But maybe!

[freshhawk]

I think you're probably on the right track with that one.

How about a further prediction:

Once there are teacher superstars and they are considered a normal part of our culture the pressure to pander or appeal to the masses will result in the most famous being pretty crappy educators. It will be like politics and acting, superstar attributes are more important than teacher/leader/actor attributes.

Unless we get a really good way of measuring student performance somehow. If we can get that good enough then it becomes like sports, the superstars are actually among the best at what they are supposed to be doing. This is the optimistic prediction.

The first one is the realistic one.

[thisisnotmyname]

I love the idea and hope it happens. Day[9] springs to mind, he's a former pro starcraft player who teaches the high levels of the game to other players in a weekly stream. He appears to be at least ramen profitable. I wonder if he serves as a model for this kind of approach. It would be great to see a Day[9] for every subject, even something as far flung as tennis instruction. Access to coaches is limited to highschoolers or those with gobs of money.