[unreal37]

Lynda.com currently makes a $150 million per year in revenue. With all those free sources you mention, how are they doing that? Why are companies paying for education for their employees?

People pay for education. People will continue to pay for good education, forever. Education will never ever be free, because it has value.

Oh you can pick up some Ruby on Rails skills with a manual and some free tutorials. Not really what we're talking about here though.

[KaoruAoiShiho]

Really shortsighted to think of the value as in the cash extracted from the student. The real value is that more people are educated. Ways that an educator can see the cash from that created value are various. They can make job referrals, they can do credentialing signaling, they can do ads, they can sell premium tools while providing free education on how the use the tools. So yeah, education can be free, should be free, and will be free (and in most cases are already free if you consider public schooling).

[cmurf]

I'm curious what your position is on the value of air, and how much it should cost rather than how much it does cost. http://www.marketplace.org/topics/education/learning-curve/a...

[vtlynch]

This comment is a gem. Its not good. But its a gem.