The future of Online Education

I’ve always been passionate about education— I simply didn’t know I was. That passion started, mostly from a place of wanting a better version of what occurred for me growing up.

I was in special needs class until the middle of high school— during the day, I would be in school and because I simply didn’t fit in the box, had to force feed myself the ability to pass, while in the evenings, I would excel— eventually creating my first million dollar business by age 16.

At the time, I just thought it was stupid. In hindsight— it wasn’t stupid, it was a system that was designed to create an outcome, that I was never going to create.

Years have passed since then… and today, over half of The Wisdom Group’s businesses are in the education niche.

My belief is that over the next 20 years education is going to have a massive transition…

And I want to help create that change, further, I believe in the disruption of a massive industry, it’s a very smart bet.

Today, as the CEO of The Wisdom Group, there are 3 core parts of education that I’m deeply involved in:

1. Certifications / Accreditations: Learning that isn’t simply based on consuming content, but based on being able to have certification of a specific skill or process of doing something.

2. Experiential Learning: Learning that occurs in person, at retreats and is facilitated by experiencing and feeling something.

3. Content + Community Based Subscriptions: By bringing content, expertise, wisdom and community together, we’re able to over a long period of time create change in someone’s mindset, which causes a massive effect in their life.

My belief and thesis is simple: As we go into the future, people will learn from those who are both the true masters of their craft and from those that they respect and follow.

As this occurs, a secondary trend will meet it— or perhaps has already.

This trend? More and more people will be Entrepreneurs and Freelancers and instead of working for a single employer will work for 3-10 different businesses in the span of a year.

These people will train themselves and get help based on what’s needed in the market at the current moment. They will train themselves through a few flavors of doing so, which are the exact 3 investments we’re making.

Education will transition from memorization and self-learning to receiving coaching, mentorship and apprenticeship.

In ways, that are difficult if based on a physical campus, our online world, will allow for people to get better education by building the embodiment of what they learn, which can only be done by actually doing the work and being around those who are good at what they do.

Simply put— I believe education will have one of the largest pivots.

It will become more accessible, more affordable, more in-depth, easier to learn and easier to use the skills and knowledge, than ever before.

This trend has already occurred— however, we’re about to see the mainstream adoption occur even more deeply in the next few years.

And then… I saw this last week…

From BBC, there is an article about a life coaching company. Now, I don’t really follow the news and I only saw it because I was tagged and messaged about it nearly 50 times that day.

Without going into detail on Lighthouse— the reason I share it is this:

With the ability for anyone and everyone to sell a modern day “University” will come a time when regulation of education to occur.

I believe this will happen for a few reasons: 

1. All things eventually become regulated in the aim to “help save the public”.

2. Education companies have a massive amount of political pull.

3. The companies that benefit from traditional education will lose a lot of money.

If you noticed earlier, I said that I was investing and using our resources in 3 core places: Certifications, Experiences and Memberships.

My belief is that in the future, if you aren’t certified/accredited to teach what it is you do, then you won’t legally be allowed to do it.

I am not saying I agree with that— I don’t. However, I believe that’s where we’re headed.

We are heading towards many cycles that I believe will all converge quite quickly in society…

And those who are built for that moment, will do extremely well. It also helps that on top of building a part of our business that is oriented to do well over the next 10-20 years, I simply believe that education is the easiest way to help people gain a higher level of freedom and increase their level on the hierarchy of needs.

My bet: Education will change, we will continue to build brands that help people become better humans and we all win.

As a fun side note: This is where The Wisdom Group started before we had the Media or Software side of the business. It’s what I’m most passionate about inside of the group itself and the Media and SaaS side of the business was built to aid and help this side. Media to allow for us to gain exposure for our education and SaaS to help us build better systems of optimization for human beings.

With that… I’ll see you next time, friend :)

- Scott Oldford