Pearson goes nap
THE publishers of the Financial Times have taken a hint from my friend who had a runner in the Derby, financed by the fees from his prosperous college. Education, they realise, can be a great business. Spend- ing £1.7 billion to buy an American educa- tional specialist, National Computer Sys- tems, the Pearson group is getting deeper in. This must make a change from monitor- ing the progress of the euro, and Marjorie Scardino, who runs Pearson, calls it a move into webucation. It looks to me like a bet on some ideas whose time is coming. First of all, education is not a market where the state is a natural monopoly supplier, or, in this country and in the United States, a reli- able supplier either. Consumers (or rather, their parents as proxies) need a stronger bargaining position. They would like to monitor the system's defects and fill in the gaps. Education does not always have to be delivered by teachers, in schools, any more than financial services have to be delivered by clerks, in banks. A new generation of customers takes this for granted. For their suppliers who get it right, the sky must be the limit.
Previous page
