I'm in my third year as an undergrad at Yale. I have to say, all the talk of MOOCs "disrupting higher education" is a bit misleading. Top universities are not going anywhere, nor is their prestige. If that were the case, why would MIT/Harvard/Stanford/Yale publish their courses in this manner? They wouldn't.
The reason top universities are not only willing to publicly release their courses, but competing with each other to do so, is simple. The mission of these universities is to educate. Publishing courses as MOOCs accomplishes enables that mission. It also has the added benefit of creating publicity for the school.
To say that MOOCs are "disrupting higher education" implies that the universities are commoditizing their education. They are not. They are commoditizing the academic portion of their education. In my experience at Yale, the academic portion of my education has accounted for no more than 10% of it. Academics are not what universities are in the business of teaching. That's why you can't replace a university education with a set of online courses.
My daily life consists of no more than 2 hours of class. Yet I wake up at 9 and go to bed at 12. That's 13/15 hours in the day NOT spent in class. During that time is when I'm reaping the benefits of a Yale education. They are largely intangible, but very obvious in retrospect. They are skills for navigating through life. Yale teaches you strong social skills, encourages you to step outside your comfort zone, introduces you to what can only be described as an absurd network of people, and how to manage all of that in the course of a day. I've learned more about myself the past three years than I ever could have through online courses. And THAT is why MOOCs will never disrupt the traditional higher education system.
Yale, Harvard, and MIT don't need to worry (for now, anyway). The universities that need to worry are the Southeast Directional States, particularly the ones that try to do undergraduate education on the cheap. A MOOC isn't really that much different from a lecture class with 1,000 students. In both cases, your interaction with the professor is going to be minimal.
Top universities are not going anywhere, nor is their
prestige. If that were the case, why would MIT/Harvard
/Stanford/Yale publish their courses in this manner? They
wouldn't.
Do you think, if university administrators thought online courses could bring quality education to billions of people worldwide while making their costly offline courses obsolete, they would move to block academics from experimenting with online courses? That's a rather cynical view, don't you think?
Elite universities tend to teach a lot more classes in small groups anyway, an experience that can't really be replicated online the way a 200 person lecture can.
Comments
I'm in my third year as an undergrad at Yale. I have to say, all the talk of MOOCs "disrupting higher education" is a bit misleading. Top universities are not going anywhere, nor is their prestige. If that were the case, why would MIT/Harvard/Stanford/Yale publish their courses in this manner? They wouldn't.
The reason top universities are not only willing to publicly release their courses, but competing with each other to do so, is simple. The mission of these universities is to educate. Publishing courses as MOOCs accomplishes enables that mission. It also has the added benefit of creating publicity for the school.
To say that MOOCs are "disrupting higher education" implies that the universities are commoditizing their education. They are not. They are commoditizing the academic portion of their education. In my experience at Yale, the academic portion of my education has accounted for no more than 10% of it. Academics are not what universities are in the business of teaching. That's why you can't replace a university education with a set of online courses.
My daily life consists of no more than 2 hours of class. Yet I wake up at 9 and go to bed at 12. That's 13/15 hours in the day NOT spent in class. During that time is when I'm reaping the benefits of a Yale education. They are largely intangible, but very obvious in retrospect. They are skills for navigating through life. Yale teaches you strong social skills, encourages you to step outside your comfort zone, introduces you to what can only be described as an absurd network of people, and how to manage all of that in the course of a day. I've learned more about myself the past three years than I ever could have through online courses. And THAT is why MOOCs will never disrupt the traditional higher education system.
Yale, Harvard, and MIT don't need to worry (for now, anyway). The universities that need to worry are the Southeast Directional States, particularly the ones that try to do undergraduate education on the cheap. A MOOC isn't really that much different from a lecture class with 1,000 students. In both cases, your interaction with the professor is going to be minimal.
> The universities that need to worry are ... particularly the ones that try to do undergraduate education on the cheap.
this is a good thing - bad universities that suck up money should be replaced with "free" ones that perform a better job.
Elite universities tend to teach a lot more classes in small groups anyway, an experience that can't really be replicated online the way a 200 person lecture can.