If you have ever written an educational book or sold educational material, the first thing you learn is that the market for actual mastery-level educational mat

If you have ever written an educational book or sold educational material, the first thing you learn is that the market for actual mastery-level educational material is infinitesimal. The only way to make money (without charging astronomical, university-enrollment-level prices) is to make content that appeals to a mass audience. Imagine you wanted to revolutionize higher education, so you build a big-budget website with excellent graduate-level CS content at an affordable price. How big is that market? There are only about 2,000 CS PhDs and 40,000 CS masters degrees issued in the US each year. That's a tiny market compared to the many millions of people who could benefit from learning basic programming to automate a boring part of their non-programming job. There are teenagers in India producing zero-budget PHP tutorials on YouTube in their bedrooms everyday that easily reach 10x your total addressable market. It's a business non-starter. And that's for a popular, lucrative field like CS - imagine trying to launch an educational product in a smaller, less lucrative field like Anthropology or Sociology. The only viable way to make something like MasterClass work is to aim it at adults with disposable cash who want to broaden their skillset while being entertained but aren't trying to become an expert in the field. There's nothing wrong with that. MasterClass (and the numerous similar products, from ad-supported YouTube content to many providers of paid courses) are often really great and entertaining.