Mary Meeker’s Internet Report

Take a few minutes to look at Mary Meeker’s deck on Internet Trends 2015.

 

 

1.  The number of Internet users has increased from 35 million in 1995 to 2.8 billion in 2014. Only 19% of Internet users are in the US.  What percentage of the students at your institution are from outside of the United States?  

 

2.  From 1995 to 2014 the number of mobile phone users went from 80 million (1 percent of the population) to 5.2 billion (73% of the population). Does your college have a global mobile education and outreach strategy?

 

3.  The market capitalization of the top 15 Internet companies has increased from $17 billion in 1995 to $2.4 trillion in 2015. If education is increasingly delivered on the same platforms as consumer services, how in the world is higher ed going to keep up with the ability of consumer technology companies to invest and improve the end-user experience?

 

4.  Meeker thinks that Internet has only impacted education at 25%, where the consumer sector has been impacted 100% and the business world 75%. How long will it take higher ed to catch up with other sectors?

 

5.  The average US adult spends 5.6 hours a day on digital media, up from 2.7 in 2008. Most of that time (2.8 hours) is now spent on mobile devices.  How much of that time is spent on educational apps and sites? How would this breakdown by age?

 

6.  87% of young people say that their smartphone never leaves their side, day or night. Have we really thought out what it would look like to build a smartphone specific education platform that is designed for very small interactions throughout much of the day?

 

7.  The average household spends 33% of their income on housing, 18% on transportation, 14% on food, and 11% on insurance. By contrast, the average household spends only 2% education.

 

8.  E-commerce accounts for 9% of retail sales ($300 billion in spending), up from <1% in 1998. What will this percentage be in 2025? Does online learning follow the same trajectory as online shopping?

 

9. How Mary Meeker does not talk more about education? How come we in higher ed don’t have a Mary Meeker equivalent?