Cranking the numbers (2006.11.30)

Are there enough resources to create 1,000 texts?

There are about 8 million professors in the world according to the World Bank's statistics. Let's assume each book has 20 chapters. Therefore, we need 20,000 professors to each volunteer to write one chapter. In other words, 1 in every 400 professors needs to write one chapter, or 0.25% of the world's professors must volunteer. Clearly, there should be more than enough altruistic professors who have the discretionary time to each write a single chapter.

Furthermore, professors can engage their students in writing a chapter, or a book, because their work is for the benefit of world's community of 132 million university students.

The resources are there, so the next question is how to create the infrastructure to engage tens of thousands of professors and their students in this massive collective global endeavor.

Rick