{"id":67601,"date":"2019-07-06T10:27:49","date_gmt":"2019-07-06T14:27:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/?p=67601"},"modified":"2019-07-09T09:53:06","modified_gmt":"2019-07-09T13:53:06","slug":"reflections-on-clay-shirky-on-mega-universities-and-scale-christian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/2019\/07\/06\/reflections-on-clay-shirky-on-mega-universities-and-scale-christian\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on “Clay Shirky on Mega-Universities and Scale” [Christian]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clay Shirky on Mega-Universities and Scale<\/strong> <\/a>— from philonedtech.com by Clay Shirky
\n[This was a guest post by Clay Shirky that grew out of a conversation that Clay and Phil had about IPEDS enrollment data. Most of the graphs are provided by Phil.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Excerpts:<\/em><\/p>\n

Were half a dozen institutions to dominate the online learning landscape with no end to their expansion, or shift what Americans seek in a college degree, that would indeed be one of the greatest transformations in the history of American higher education. The available data, however, casts doubt on that idea.<\/p>\n

Though much of the conversation around mega-universities is speculative, we already know what a mega-university actually looks like, one much larger than any university today. It looks like the University of Phoenix, or rather it looked like Phoenix at the beginning of this decade,\u00a0when it had 470,000 students, the majority of whom took some or all of their classes online. Phoenix back then was\u00a0six times<\/i>\u00a0the size of the next-largest school, Kaplan, with 78,000 students, and nearly five times the size of any university operating today.<\/p>\n

From that high-water mark, Phoenix has lost an average of 40,000 students every year of this decade.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From DSC:<\/span><\/em>
\nFirst of all, I greatly appreciate both Clay’s and Phil’s thought leadership and their respective contributions to education and learning through the years. I value their perspectives and their work.\u00a0 Clay and Phil offer up a great article here<\/a> — one worth your time to read.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The article made me reflect on what I’ve been building upon and tracking for the last decade — a next generation ***PLATFORM*** that I believe will represent a powerful piece of a global<\/em> learning ecosystem. <\/strong>I call this vision, “Learning from the Living [Class] Room.”<\/a><\/strong> Though the artificial intelligence-backed platform that I’m envisioning doesn’t yet fully exist — this new era and type of learning-based platform ARE coming. <\/strong>The emerging signs, technologies, trends — and “fingerprints”of it, if you will — are beginning to develop all over the place.<\/span><\/p>\n

Such a platform<\/strong><\/em> will:<\/span><\/p>\n