“Why money can only buy third-class knowledge”

Higher Education disruption comes to China;

A professor at one of China’s top universities has quit what many academics would regard as a dream job after he gained celebrity status through an online “knowledge-sharing” platform.

Xue Zhaofeng, a former economist at Peking University’s National School of Development, has been offering a year-long course via the iGet app, which launched two years ago.

More than 250,000 users paid 199 yuan (US$32) each to subscribe to the service, which operates in the same way as a podcast with lectures being released every week between Monday and Thursday.

The figures mean the classes will have brought in a total revenue of almost 50 million yuan (US$7.9 million)….

Xue’s students and others educators say he has a knack for turning basic theories into understandable and relatable topics for the layman.

In his lessons, Xue cites stories from the American television drama Breaking Bad or stories about young men trying to attract women to illustrate the academic concept known as the Coase Theorem, while his experiences of buying an air conditioner helped to explain the concept of marginal cost.