Khan did the obvious thing for someone trying to make good use of his time: he recorded his lectures so that he wouldn't have to repeat them. This allowed him t

Khan did the obvious thing for someone trying to make good use of his time: he recorded his lectures so that he wouldn't have to repeat them. This allowed him to create lectures for most of the K-12 math and physics curriculum single-handedly and without government support in about five years. Khan is not a teacher by training nor, as far as I can tell, is he a member of the NEA (National Education Association. How much would a government-backed program to deliver 35,000 lessons per day on any of 800 topics have cost? How much is government paying now to do the same thing? What would education be like if it was completely consumer driven with no government support? Khan is serving a market for free that is already being served by government for billions of dollars. In other words, an entrepreneur would have a hard time in education because the government is already giving away so much for "free". My intuition is that there are great efficiencies to be gained in any industry that "benefits" from government support. Besides education, other industries that could benefit from innovation would be transportation (especially roads and bridges), health care, courts, corrections, and police. The reason why more innovation is not happening in these areas is that government support is removing the incentive to be more efficient. The people performing these services are not rewarded for drastically cutting costs. It could be the case that these industries are already operating at peak efficiency, but the fact that there is no obviously better way is not proof of this. Innovation is sometimes only obvious after someone with the motivation to look for it has implemented it. If someone had asked the department of education to make instructional materials for the entire K-12 math curriculum and deliver it to tens of thousands of students a day for 5 man-years of work, the dept would have said it couldn't be done.