The Professors’ Big Stage — op-ed from the New York Times by Thomas Friedman
Excerpt:
I just spent the last two days at a great conference convened by M.I.T. and Harvard on “Online Learning and the Future of Residential Education” — a k a “How can colleges charge $50,000 a year if my kid can learn it all free from massive open online courses?”
From DSC:
While I think MOOCs have a ways to go, I continue to support them because they are forcing higher ed to innovate and experiment more. But the conversation continues to move away from traditional higher ed, as the changes — especially the prices — aren’t changing fast enough.
Besides President Obama’s repeated promptings for higher to respond and to become more cost effective — as well as his mentioning that the U.S. Government will be pursuing new methods of accreditation if the current institutions of higher ed don’t respond more significantly — here is yet another example of the conversation moving away from traditional higher ed.
I wonder…
How small/large is the window of time before traditional higher ed is moved into the “Have you driven a Ford lately?” mode…? It seems that it’s much harder to get customers to come back once they’ve lost their trust/patience/belief/support/etc. in an organization or institution. As Ford has shown, it can be done, but my point is that there is danger in the status quo and broken business relationships can take a long time to heal — while opening up opportunities for others to step in (such as Toyota, Honda, and others in the case of the automotive industry).
Again, we see whether in higher ed, K-12, or in the corporate world, the key thing is to learn how to build one’s own learning ecosystem.
With thanks to Stephen Downes for mentioning the item below in his presentation here.
Other examples of the conversation moving away from traditional higher ed:
Your Massively Open Offline College Is Broken — by Clay Shirky
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
This is the background to the entire conversation around higher education: Things that can’t last don’t. This is why MOOCs matter. Not because distance learning is some big new thing or because online lectures are a solution to all our problems, but because they’ve come along at a time when students and parents are willing to ask themselves, “Isn’t there some other way to do this?”
MOOCs are a lightning strike on a rotten tree. Most stories have focused on the lightning, on MOOCs as the flashy new thing. I want to talk about the tree.
…
Imagine picking a thousand students at random from among our institutions of higher education. Now imagine unpicking everyone at one of US News‘ Top 100 liberal arts colleges or universities. You’d expel anyone from the Ivy League, Stanford, MIT. Anyone from from Emory or Rice. Anyone from Vanderbilt, Clemson, Drexel. Anyone from the famously good state schools—UMass, Virginia, the California universities. After ejecting those students from your group, how many of the original thousand would be left?
About 900.
From DSC:
Houston, we have a problem.
Pressure mounts as MOOCs force higher ed to rethink — from centerdigitaled.com by Tanya Roscorla
Excerpt:
As massively open online courses continue to gain traction, they’re proving a disruptive force in higher education.
The traditional emphasis on in-person classes has brought universities to a price point that does not look sustainable, said Adrian Sannier, senior vice president of product for Pearson eCollege.
“Maybe for the first time in a really long time, higher ed is under a tremendous amount of external scrutiny,” said Sannier, the former vice president and university technology officer at Arizona State University. “There is growing awareness that the prices charged and the rate at which the prices are growing is simply unsustainable.”
Also relevant/see:
Governor Jerry Brown, Udacity announce pilot program for $150 classes — from edsurge.com by Kris Hattori
San Jose State University will offer students three online classes from Udacity
Federal report highlights the economic case for higher education — from educause.edu by Jaret Cummings
Excerpt:
The U.S. Departments of The Treasury and Education recently announced the release of a joint report highlighting the economic value of higher education achievement for individuals and the country as a whole. Entitled The Economics of Higher Education, the report confirms the continuing importance of postsecondary success to economic progress, including key findings such as the following…
From DSC:
Much of this is great — no doubt about it! Now, the question is, how do we make higher education more accessible/affordable yet still maintain the quality? Along these lines, see:
After housing and the stock market, is higher education the next bubble to burst? — from forbes.com by Avi Dan
Excerpt:
Few industries today have a worse business model than higher learning institutions.
Simply put, colleges are slowly pricing themselves out of existence. Tuition has consistently increased faster than inflation and household income, to the point that it is now four times more expensive to attend college than it was a generation ago. The result is that the average college senior carries $25,000 in student loans at graduations. The debt can follow students around for years, sometimes to the end of time, literally: $36 billion in loan debt is held by people over 60-years old!
Addendum on 12/14/12:
From DSC:
We had better step up the pace of innovating/experimenting – and move to do so quickly. But the problem is, moving quickly is not in the cultures of most of the more traditional institutions of higher education.
Also relevant:
From DSC:
Some reflections on New platform lets professors set prices for their online courses — from InsideHigherEd.com by Jeffrey R. Young
Excerpt:
Professors typically don’t worry about what price point a course will sell at, or what amenities might attract a student to pick one course over another. But a new online platform, Professor Direct, lets instructors determine not only how much to charge for such courses, but also how much time they want to devote to services like office hours, online tutorials, and responding to students’ e-mails.
The new service is run by StraighterLine, a company that offers online, self-paced introductory courses. Unlike massive open online courses, or MOOC’s, StraighterLine’s courses aren’t free. But tuition is lower than what traditional colleges typically charge—the company calls its pricing “ultra-affordable.” A handful of colleges accept StraighterLine courses for transfer credit.
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From DSC:
The power of online-based marketplaces. We’ve seen it in other industries. Are we now going to see more of this within higher education as the unbundling of higher education seems to be a possibility? Will there be an increased importance of professors’ individual brands? Could be.
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From DSC:
Congrats Burck & Co. on your continued innovative thinking and business models! Way to help keep a college education accessible to many!
Citing IT skills shortage, IBM wants to expand presence at universities — from wiredacademic.com
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
“We want to be the scale up partner of choice for these universities,” said Jim Sporher, head of IBM’s university programs. “We want to make sure they have access to technology and understand our strategy.” He also sees massive open online courses (MOOCs) as a mega-trend and will be considering ways for IBM to be part of the MOOC trend in the future, particularly as many of the MOOC providers such as Udacity and Coursera offer classes in computer science.
…
As a big blue-chip progenitor of the tech industry, IBM is worth listening to in many regards. For one, corporate computing trends often filter down into the education space. The corporate world often has the money to purchase and deploy game-changing technologies. IBM sees that it also works the other way too, where computing at the university level creates new businesses and ideas that move up into the corporate realm.
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From DSC:
I wonder…will the corporations develop their own MOOCs? Their own digital “playlists” and associated exams? (i.e. that someone needs to go through and pass in order to work for them…show me what you can do.) Hmmm…
Also see:
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Also see:
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From DSC:
I don’t think that what we know today as “MOOCs” are anywhere’s nearly fully-baked and ready for prime time. They will be refined, altered , and new systems/software will be further developed for them. But the idea of reducing costs, increasing access, and experimenting sounds good to me! As illustrated above, the idea of “Rock Star Professor” or “Super Professor” is gaining traction. Also, note the team-based approach here.
