A few days ago I was speaking to my
friend whom I shall call Intel.
Intel and I were schoolmates from
class 1 at Campion School way back in 1970. We have been friends for the last
47 years. After doing his engineering Intel went to the USA for his Masters and
he has lived there from 1985. He got married and had kids. Now his elder
daughter has just started college.
Intel spoke about how different
college was in 2017 as compared to when he was in college in 1985. I was
shocked at how much things have changed and how really different things are in
the US.
When Intel went to College text books
were a huge expense. He remembers paying up to USD 200 for certain text books.
Now, all that has changed. There are no more physical text books. You simply
download them. However, there is a catch. You need to pay a lot of money, of
course not in the region of USD 200, but a substantial sum to get the download
access codes. So, while the fact that there are no more physical text books has
changed, as now they are online, charging for access codes is where change has
come about. This is the new business model by which the authors and publishers make
their money. Look at it differently. No shortchanging on royalty by printing
say 1000 books and declaring that you have printed only 800, thereby skimming
the royalty on 200 books.
Another aspect that struck me as
brilliant is the sale of remote controls. How this works is like this. The
College will sell you a remote control, a very simple one, with 5 keys on it A
B C D & E. This remote is linked to the student. When the professor asks a
question in class, he will give 5 options. You as the student have to press on
the remote what you think is the answer. This answer is automatically fed into
the computer and you get your class marks/assessment call it what you like. I
was stunned at this ingenuity. How utterly clever and seamless. No cheating no
headache of paper and corrections and all that jazz. Excellent. Of course, I
write this in the background of our Bombay University and its inability to even
finish correction of exam papers.
The third thing Intel told me made
such perfect sense. We all know that the omniscient Amazon often sells products
cheaper than anywhere else. Students in college need several things, simple
things like printer cartridges, computer cables, paper and so on. The college
has a store but this is relatively expensive. For a student to have a car and
drive to a city store is often either not possible as they don’t have a car or
there are classes to attend or it is simply uneconomical to drive. So Amazon to
the rescue. Amazon has installed banks of lockers in the college. By lockers I
mean real lockers like bank lockers. You order products from Amazon, indicate
what time you want it delivered and where, the Amazon software will identify a
vacant locker from the bank and the ordered goods will be placed in the locker.
You are given an access code. You as the student simply go to the locker and
punch in the code and pick up your order. Gob smacking simplicity!
Can you even imagine this in India?
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