If selling education was like selling a car...

Sex aside (which sells anything) the similarity between education and a car ends there. When you buy a car, you drive it away from the showroom full of pride and... it works (unless it's a Toyota, in which case you might have trouble stopping). What happens when you buy education? The showroom experience (before you actually get your hands on the product) is not too bad. Lots of new faces! (some of them attractive) You fill in forms. You try hard to avoid the strange looking people handing out free condoms and lollipops. There is a possibility you might get drunk in the first week. 

In your second week, you get your hands on the 'product'. The course. This is where you realise that unlike the car, which worked out of the showroom, with education what you've bought is a do-it-yourself kit. All you have are 'instructions' for how to eventually make your education product 'work', and these instructions are only given out at particular times of day in particular places. Furthermore, none of the instructions you are given carry any guarantee of comprehensibility. Instead they carry threats of sanctions... if you fail to show you've understood the instructions so far delivered, some of the essential parts of your education product will be removed, only to be replaced if you follow new instructions (delivered at a particular time and place).

But everybody's in the same boat, struggling to build their education products. But be careful not to help anyone else because there's a deadly sin called 'plagiarism' which will see your education product go to the crusher! But if you begin to wonder that the 'educational product' wasn't such a good purchase, make sure you've read the small-print before you put pen to paper.

This is because buying an education product isn't really like buying a car. It's more like buying the most expensive mobile phone contract you could possibly imagine. Once you've signed your contract for £9000, deciding you don't like the product is like dropping your incredibly expensive mobile phone down the toilet. No insurance and no refund. You're stuck. You have to pay. Of course, this doesn't make you feel too good, so you start skipping some of the instructions to make your education product work. Consequently, much more than your education product is broken.

The student's problem in all this is that nobody can help them negotiate the risks of buying education. I suspect the first educational business that makes an offer to potential students that does this will revolutionise the market. I think when it happens, it will be such a simple business model that we will be astonished as to why it took so long to happen. Unfortunately, it may take a few bad product reviews before any real appetite for change develops. Only then will the sector wake up to the first rule of business: understand your customers.