Hi Fred, thanks for the comment. I'm not sure how you interpreted the music sales stats from the chart. Here's how I interpret it. First of all we shouldn't take CD album sales into account because CDs are not duplicatable while digital files are. So I'm only going look at digital albums versus singles. The chart is kinda misleading because it puts digital albums and singles on the same scale. The right way is to multiply the album sales number by the average number of songs per album before comparing with digital single sales. On this part you're right. After multiplying, the contrast of the two curves is not sharp at all (almost equal). But I don't agree that you said albums are more expensive than buying all songs separately. On the contrary buying the whole album usually costs a lot less than buying all songs separately (often 1/2 less on Amazon.com). So the revenue of digital singles is perhaps twice of that of digital albums.

But why should we calculate industry revenues anyway? I think the key is the customer experience. Are customers who buy digital singles more satisfied than those who buy albums? Do they listen to the singles more often than the songs in albums? Do they save money by buying singles rathe than albums? I think these are the questions that we should look at when we design distance learning programs.

The point I was trying to make by calculating industry revenues was that it's strongly in the education establishment's interests to resist this trend. When you couple that with their proven ability to restrict (rather than make more accessible) the educational credentials people want, I'm less optimistic about education customers seeing the kind of welfare gains that music customers obviously have.

Of course, all of this is outside the more practical discussion about how we should actually design distance learning programs, except insofar as it leads us to consider political and institutional obstacles.

I think some of that may also depend on the program and the major. My undergraduate program was very highly sequenced and structured where there was a clear linear progression from first semester to last (with a minimum of repetition). While there were certain electives I maybe wish now that I had taken (I had almost no room for electives with my major), I figure I can always just learn the materials on my own or take a class as a non-degree student for fun. Of course, that's where lifelong learning comes into play.

Rebecca, I do agree that some of that may depend on the program and the major, but the fact that it exists at all, is something that should be addressed and if possible prevented. I also think that just like you said, many students, even those who love their major and course load wish they had the opportunity to take even more electives and an honest overview of what a course is like would prove valuable.