Can universities get in on the group-purchasing act?

[caption id="attachment_546" align="alignleft" width="180" caption="Image courtesy of DonkeyHotey (Creative Commons/Flickr)"][/caption]For a while now I've been flippantly pondering whether the group purchasing phenomenon led by GroupOn and the like could make its way into the education world as a means of attracting students. Not so much prompted by GroupOn, but inspired by a session I attended at SXSW that looked at trends in the use of online media in China towards forming online groups and using the purchase power of many to approach shops and other vendors (car showrooms, for example), I've thought about this many times over the past couple of years but never really developed that thinking.

This morning, however, I read on Eric Stoller's (@ericstoller) blog that National Louis University will be using GroupOn for an introduction to teaching course.

It was only a matter of time before someone did this. Eric rightly points out that this appears to be a bit of a PR stunt for them with the claim that they are the first university to use GroupOn in this way. This is one of those cases where the medium is being used as a message, rather than as a functional tool, I think. But there's a place for that kind of activity and hats-off to those who try these things first.

But is the GroupOn model really useful to Higher Education and is it, indeed, even feasible? In its current form, I think not. How, for example, do you assess the quality and qualifications of the individual purchasing their GroupOn voucher? Most universities have stringent standards about who they will accept on courses, so I think this model is only really going to work for courses where there aren't entry standards, such as short lifelong learning or 'leisure' courses. But there I can really see a huge opportunity for universities and colleges using this approach.

But I don't want to dismiss the group-purchasing trend altogether for Higher Education degree programmes. And the reason for this is that I don't really think the model is all that new. Universities providing training programmes and bespoke degrees for companies, for example, is nothing new and this is in-line with the group purchasing model. In 2005, for example, the University of Warwick (Warwick Business School) were commissioned by Network Rail to deliver their leadership training programmes. And now they deliver a specific MSc in Network Rail Project Management, on the basis that at least 20 Network Rail employees participate in the course. Universities themselves use group purchasing power to get the best prices for some of their products, forming consortiums to negotiate the best deals. So, why shouldn't this approach be applied by those wanting to study at your university?

I think technology might provide ways for us to form new and unique groups of people (individuals?) to come together to exert some group purchasing power over universities. With the heightened competitiveness that the UK/European sector is about to throw itself into, I think now is the perfect time for prospective students to start thinking in these terms too and testing the waters. But perhaps also universities need to be ready for this, and know how to benefit from such approaches. Afterall, one 'sale' to 20 students is a lot more time efficient that 20 individual 'sales'. And yes, to those in universities who don't like to think in terms of 'selling', it is a sale. And negotiation is going to be part of that.

What do you think?