The Cheapest Higher Education Ever

Let me recommend another Washington Monthly article, this one titled, “College for $99 a Month: The next generation of online education could be great for students—and catastrophic for universities.” An editor at National Review wondering what kind of stories to buy could do worse than using this piece as a model — in the course of telling an interesting story about an entrepreneur in Online education, it identifies the regulatory barriers that are stymying his ability to innovate, makes a compelling case for how the free market can benefit consumers, and weighs that against Burkean concerns that rapidly change in large societal institutions can exact unexpected costs.

When I argue that right-leaning publications would do well to produce a certain kind of carefully reported, well written narrative journalism, this is exactly the kind of piece I have in mind.