I worked in academia for quite a few years. This is an industry that could really use disrupting, but I'm incredibly cynical about the possibilities of this ever happening (as far as changing internal software).<p>Just about anyone on HN could write a better lms than blackboard, and sell it for 1/100 of the cost for huge profit margins (okay maybe some exaggeration here, but not much). But blackboard is not unique, almost all institutional level software in universities is terrible and expensive.<p>This isn't a problem with bad vendors it's a problem with the institution doing the purchasing.<p>For starters the idea that "Cohen plans to sell Coursekit to professors instead of letting university IT departments slow him down." Is flawed on many levels.<p>Firstly it's no accident that university IT departments are unnecessarily central to purchasing decisions, they spent and will continue to spend much political capital on campus to remain that way. As soon as campus IT departments catch wind of this strategy, they will fight in every-way to make it as amazingly inconvenient as possible to go this route. Most professors are busy enough that it's not worth their time to fight campus IT over what is ultimately a minor part of their course.<p>Second faculty don't usually have budgets to purchase product like this for their classes (again institutions have deliberately grown this way to keep central departments powerful), they may have grant money but they would never spend it on something like this. So at a minimum it would have to be a departmental purchases, which mean that someone in the department will have to handle keeping track of making sure everything is paid for, students know how to use it etc. At which point departmental admins will just say "why not just let IT deal with it"<p>Additionally almost all professors I know already have their hands full with research and just teaching, let alone worrying about the burden of infrastructure. Most professors use Blackboard, not because it's useful, but because their campus IT departments have created university policies that make it a requirement or at least 'strongly suggested'.<p>I would love to see blackboard taken down, but in the end they're only a symptom of a much larger problem in higher ed.