Outcome-Based Education

Fareed Zakaria's knowledge economy keynote recognizes that people's ability to earn a high wage is dependent on their possessing valuable skills that command a pricing power. Though these skills vary from industry to industry, the one thing that's consistent across most professions is that continuous learning is necessary to acquire them.

Companies are now expressly looking for the demonstrated ability to acquire new skills. Thanks to the information revolution, continual change is going to begin happening in many different industries, even ones we don't normally associate with fluctuation.

The only reason universities are able to charge as much as they do is because employers believe a university degree is the single best filtering mechanism when it comes to hiring. However, if employers begin to recognize the worth of accreditation, the overall nature of education will change. Specifically, shifting the system from a process-based model (like university) to an outcome based model (like accreditation) will put a huge pressure on the current pricing models.