Fire Protection Learning: Price vs. Access

I remember a very specific conversation with a Fire Protection Engineer I worked for at the time.

I was studying fire dynamics and smoke control in an online graduate program, and he specifically expressed his interest in those courses.

We both had undergraduate degrees in Architectural Engineering and were working on fire modeling for a couple of smoke control projects at the time.

Access to take those courses was always possible.

We explored what it would take for a non-degree-seeking student to take just a select course or two. At the time (if I recall correctly), he may have needed to apply as a non-degree-seeking student and the cost of attendance was in the thousands of dollars to take just those two courses (somewhere in the $5,000 range).

Based on cost and inconvenience, he didn’t apply or take those courses.

I remember thinking that it was unfortunate how high-level information is accessed.

What if you could learn whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted?

COST TO PRODUCE LIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
Traditional learning (pre-internet) has a long legacy of requiring in-person and live learning in order to get access to information and challenge ourselves in new ways.

When we came online, we still tended to teach and engage in live learning.

Both of those methods can still be powerful, engaging, and relevant to today.

But they’re also problematic in terms of cost and time. Reaching a world-class professional at the same time and for hours at a time is expensive.

Is charging $5,000 for two courses justified?

For a world-class institution and faculty in that form of educational delivery? Yes, it’s necessary for them to continue operating.

NEW OPTION, REDUCED COST
But, we have a third option now. And that third option is in well-developed, pre-packaged learning that doesn’t require the student and instructor to sync up or only deliver to a classroom of 15 students.

This isn't new to MeyerFire (of course). The instructor writes, develops, and teaches on their ideal schedule, and the student learns, engages, re-learns, and improves on their ideal schedule.

That fundamental switch is incredibly important because it means the cost to each of us can come down dramatically.

THE NEED FOR INFORMATION
The fire protection industry is desperate for access to vetted, quality, engaging, and impactful learning material.

We have a whole generation of experts who are retiring, and behind them, we have a new, younger generation with an entirely different level of expectation for their own mentorship and learning opportunities.

It’s not just mid-level Fire Protection Engineers who want it; it’s brand-new sprinkler designers, plan reviewers, inspectors, fire marshals, estimators, and so on.

We all want access to learn whatever we want to know about next.
 
And that’s the core issue.

It’s access.

THE NEED FOR ACCESS
If we want to grow and truly improve with impactful learning and do great things in the world, then we have to have access to the information.

It can’t be hidden behind $6,000 paywalls or $50 courses each time we want to learn a new topic.

I’m not mad at providers who charge that—it’s not that they are evil capitalists—it’s the real cost to prepare that level of information with that level of expertise. It’s a scale problem limited directly by the live teaching model.

Plus, we need live teaching. We need that offering as a multimodal way of learning, asking questions, and reinforcing concepts. It’s not one versus the other; it’s both working in conjunction to help us all be better.

We wouldn’t tell a new hire that they need to stop reading books because we have access to YouTube today. That’d be dumb. We have both and can use both.

Multimodal learning (in-person, live online, on-demand online) can work together to reinforce important concepts. Besides, delivery methods will work differently for each person.

NEED LOWER COST TO ACHIEVE HIGHER IMPACT
But access to the material is what is critical.

And we can’t get access if the material cost is too high.

In order for enough people to in the industry to learn, grow, improve, and impact the industry, we need enough people to actually access the learning.
 
If I can bullet-point where we are:

1. As a fire protection industry, we are desperate for vetted, quality, engaging, and impactful educational content.
2. We can’t make impactful improvements to the industry unless enough people get access to the information.

What if you could explore and tinker in areas outside your expertise? Truly grow in whatever direction you wanted?

WHAT UNLIMITED LEARNING COULD LOOK LIKE
In 2021, I thought a lot about this problem.

Selfishly, I wanted something like the learning ‘programs’ in the Matrix.

To learn something in the Matrix, Tank pops in a quick drive that downloads all the information you need to be competent in a matter of seconds – boom – you’re now an expert.

I’d love to be able to learn like that, but it’s called ‘science fiction’ for a reason.
 
The next best thing would be a library of hundreds of courses on wide-ranging topics, where I could pop in any one topic I wanted to learn that day and learn it—impactful, engaged learning on whatever topic I wanted.

ACCESS & COST 
Here’s the thing, though, about access and cost.

We need the value to far exceed the cost. That’s a given. We bundle all of our PDF cheatsheets, software, CEUs, and learning into one subscription – so very high value for the money.

We also need the cost to be as low as possible, so that we get the impact that we want.

We also need the cost to be high enough to keep us afloat and allow as much re-investment into more and more content as possible.

In essence, you, me, and everyone else plugged into the University platform are splitting the gigantic costs to develop exactly what we want—an unlimited library where we can learn whatever we want to learn, whenever we want to learn.

That would be incredible.

Is it going to happen overnight? Of course not.

But it will happen, and we’re well on the way there.
 
When we say the future of learning looks a lot brighter than what it is today, it’s because there will be options in learning (1) what you want to learn, (2) how you want to learn, and (3) when you want to learn.

Getting access to that level of education is going to be a game-changer for the way that we train and develop the next generation.

​And I’m so excited for what’s ahead.