“I think this is a special time for technology in education,” he began. But then he immediately cautioned, perhaps in light of some less-than-successful early Gates-funded initiatives (such as small high schools within high schools), “we try not to be naïve about how complex it’s going to be.”
On cost. During the last wave of interest and investment in education technology in the 1990s, Gates said that “it could cost several hundred dollars to store an hour of video on the Internet.” The balance in the money equation has now changed, and that same video storage costs pennies, he said.
But although most costs for educational technology are coming down, “Internet access is the most expensive piece” of edtech — even more so than student hardware devices. That, he said, has to change, since Internet access is not just important in the classroom, but for learning to continue at home.
On investment. Despite concerns over whether the recent increase in investor and tech press interest in edtech and startups may be overheated, Gates said the question should be if the investment in education is commensurate with its importance: “I would say absolutely not.” Instead, he contended not enough money is going into education R&D compared with other important sectors. “It would,” he said, “be rational for society for it to be a lot larger.”