Yes, why can't we franchise a university? 1. One argument is that we already have franchised them: universities have access to textbooks of a higher-quality th

Yes, why can't we franchise a university? 1. One argument is that we already have franchised them: universities have access to textbooks of a higher-quality than they previously had. I'm sure we have more universities per capita than before the printing press... (though I haven't the stats). 2. You can set up a course today based on MIT resources. You have a professor (of lower quality), you have classmates (of lower quality). But the point about these things is that they still are greatly beneficial for learning, even if they aren't the greatest in the world. 3. McUniversity. The aforementioned trademark ("insignia of origin") aspect of a top uni: "Oh, you went to MIT?" etc. Franchising it dilutes it into a McUniversity (appropriately). 4. Facetime doesn't scale. Sure you can distribute face-time of a high-quality professor geographically with web-video etc, but such professors don't have enough time for all their students already. But... an interesting concept... and surely there are aspects that do scale well, and can be franchised better than before due to today's tech... and therein lies a startup.