 "Mike Feerick")
Mike Feerick was working as an assistant to Irish American multi-billionaire and philanthropist Chuck (Charles) Feeney when he realised that you cannot address the need for education globally through philanthropy and charity alone — you need a business model that is sustainable and profitably addresses the problem.
Feerick happened to know Feeney and he promised the latter he would create employment in the west of Ireland if Feeney gave him a peek into his world. The experience he got proved invaluable. Working with Feeney was both an eye opener and a privilege. “I’d see cheques for $1,500 million coming in and going towards education and it would still be a drop in the ocean,” he says. In 2005-06, Feerick proved as good as his word.
He started ALISON — a for-profit social enterprise headquartered out of Galway, Ireland — to provide free online workplace skills to learners all over the world. In India recently, Feerick spoke to Anjuli Bhargava on his journey so far. Excerpts:
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Tell me how and when the idea of starting ALISON struck you.
Around 2005, I realized technology was changing. Server costs were going down and the ability to monetize on the Internet was going up. I realized then you could put high quality education material on the Internet for free, wrap it with a little advertising and you could be making money. That said to me two things : what a great business and what high social impact you could have.
I owned a number of companies at the time including one creating content for Microsoft. I owned seven courses where we’d charge people to learn Excel, Word – local governments, schools. Then I decided I would put all that content online for free.
I knew I would lose a lot of money for a long time – so from 2007 to 2011, we were losing money but I had faith in where we were going.
Who's we?
There are a number of private investors although I hold the majority even now. We consciously stayed away from any venture capital.
Alison is a for-profit social enterprise. Being profitable will make it both sustainable and scalable. But our main interest is to make sure education is available free to all. If we had a venture capitalist on board, all they’d be asking me how much money we made everyday.
Some of our rivals like Coursera have that problem today. They have venture capitalists on board so the primary objective changes.
I have the pleasure of being able to think, act and plan long term because we are a self-funded business. It will be a long time before we make money in India but I don’t care. India needs what we do and in time we will more than get it back.
It took us five years to get our first million users registered online but it took us only one year to reach two million. It’s a snowball effect.
By 2011-12, we turned profitable and that was great. I had a professor at Harvard who used to write by chalk “happiness is a positive cash flow” at the start of every lesson. And we finally knew what he meant.
By 2020, we think we can have a 100 million users here in India alone. If without any great effort, we can have a million users in India, what happens if we start talking to government ? What happens if we start creating partnerships here ?
Aren’t there too many people – EDX, Coursera, Duolingo and even Khan academy – already doing this– trying to educate people across the globe online and free? I myself have met quite a few of late…..
One thing that is happening is that the market is so large that one doesn’t as yet feel the competition. This is a total mass disruption in the way education is delivered globally and it’s fine that there are many players.
Also, we are focused on work place skills. We are trying to teach people how to touch type, speak English, how to use Excel, how to do project management. We are at the bottom of the pyramid. EDX and some of the others you mention are in a different space.
We have 1.5 million people online in Africa and we are the single largest platform there. Half a million users every month are active. Today we earn almost 60 per cent of our revenue through certification and 40 per cent through advertising. This is also a reflection of the acceptance level of ALISON certificates.
We probably had our first learner from India within a week of starting but today almost 16-17 per cent of our total learners every month are from India. As I see it, there is too much fixation on certification in India; less on the actual learning.
Surprisingly, in Africa, it’s the exact opposite. People don’t care if they get the certificate or not. They are much more interested in the real learning.
What brings you to India now?
I want to understand India better and I want to meet our graduates. So, before coming here, we invited our graduates to come and meet me. Six people came and three flew in at their own cost.
One of our learners – a Keralite by the name of Amis Shipley - came by bus from Ahmedabad and it took him 16 hours. He said he came to thank me. He has a small private school of 25 children and he is using ALISON to teach them biology, chemistry and math. Material he couldn’t have had access to otherwise and certainly not for free.
A young student – Kushal Garg – came too. He said he was learning Python through ALISON and he was now the best student in his class so he came to meet me. He’s learning Python at school but at night he complements his formal learning through the Python courses on ALISON. As a result, he’s the best.
A judge in the United States to sentenced a drug offender to an ALISON course. Tell me more about it.
Yes, there is very little remedial action for prisoners in the United States. A judge in upstate New York was sentencing a drug dealer to jail but instead we were able to convince him to sentence him to an ALISON course this February. So he had to do a diploma in customer service.
Over ten people have now been sentenced to ALISON courses. It’s spread to Minnesota and other areas.
It’s a good example of how free online learning can be used innovatively. Education is good thing for people who have in the past been in jail but the problem for the state is that it is too expensive. The defendant is usually someone with very little means.
With free learning, the judge doesn’t have to worry. On ALISON, one can keep a track through the free learning management system. So if you have a 100 employees and you ask them to click and sign up for a course, you can see who did it and who didn’t, what they got right, what they didn’t…in other words, you can track the progress.
Would judges be interested enough to track something like this?
In rural America, judges are often elected and yes, it may sound surprising but some of them are interested enough.
