<p>“you could buy courses the way we buy music (a math course from Yale, an engineering course from Purdue, etc.).”</p>
<p>Yeah, but it’s never that neat. When the internet first came out, people thought brick-and-mortar stores wouldn’t survive. Then somebody realized every answer is yes-and-no. Yes, there are some things some people will buy over the internet; no, not everybody will want to buy everything over the internet…there’s no substitute for strolling thru stores, trying things on, seeing their real color, feeling the material, looking at yourself in the mirror. Same with college…there are a few things that will go virtual, but until somebody figures out how to walk from an Irish pub in Boston to an Ole Miss tailgate party to make whoopee with a USC cheerleader on a beach in Hawaii, there will always be a need for campuses…if for no other reason than that they are more inspirational than your parents’ basement.</p>
<p>^But the economics of brick and mortar stores HAVE changed. Many are having trouble and some have gone out of business already–especially bookstores–due to competition from Amazon. People browse items in physical stores and then go home and buy them online. Even Walmart is having to rethink its strategy in the face of Amazon’s growing cost advantage. Of course, some will survive–those that adapt and find a way to make a profit with a new business model incorporating (pay)services that can only be enjoyed in person.</p>
<p>I tried a Coursera class and it was pure chaos, with 30,000 students enrolled. I have taken online courses with, say, 20 students as the upper limit, which I paid dearly for, and have enjoyed them a lot. Students cannot hide quietly in a corner in online classes: all need to participate in class. I don’t think mass online classes will ever work in the future.</p>
<p>As for a future when students can take classes at different universities, that is already the case. I have done that for years. Generally, it is necessary to be in residence at one school for the last 10-15 courses, with the exception of schools like Charter Oak, which requires two.</p>
<p>There are already plenty of ways to earn a degree, online, on campus, through low residency programs, CLEP’s and other tests, experiential learning and credit for life experience.</p>
<p>I think the real damage to the bachelor’s degree comes from the emphasis on the piece of paper for jobs (sorry, careers). When the end result is the point, not the process, quality suffers. Quick and easy online programs will only exacerbate this problem, and I think those who want a truly rigorous education will still attend college in the traditional way- if they can afford it. </p>
<p>The rest of us try to get the best quality we can in a way that is affordable, and online classes may help with that, but I doubt credit courses will ever be free.</p>
<p>On-line course materials are often quite sufficient for a motivated person who just wants to learn the course content on his/her own.</p>
<p>But it is the credentialing aspect of certifying whether someone has actually learned the course material that appears to be the “problem” here with on-line education. After all, the main purpose of a diploma or degree is to certify that the student has proven to the school’s instructors that s/he has shown the capability to learn a set of subject matter (some may consider the subject matter learned the important part, while others may consider the capability of learning the important part, while still other may see both as important).</p>
Some parents and even some students may think that a “hook-up” culture is a reason not to be on a college campus. I want my children to be happily married. Having drunken one-night stands is in opposition to this goal.</p>
There are high-stakes credentialing exams, given at test centers with proctors, for law, medicine, accounting and other professions, although those a degree is also required to practice. Students could go test centers for mid-term and final exams, just as they do now for the SAT. This would cost money, but I don’t expect online education to be free for credential-seekers.</p>
Public universities, especially in sparsely-populated states such as Nebraska, have been offering “distance learning” and “correspondence courses” for decades. Have they been hybrids?</p>
<p>Although I am enthusiastic about the potential of online courses, they have been around in at least some form for a long time. Patrick Suppes, now professor emeritus at Stanford, has worked on computerized online instruction since the 1960s, as documented at the [Collected</a> Works of Patrick Suppes](<a href=“http://suppes-corpus.stanford.edu/browse.html?c=comped]Collected”>http://suppes-corpus.stanford.edu/browse.html?c=comped) . Students at a Palo Alto elementary school used a terminal connected by phone to computers at Stanford to study math. He helped create the [EPGY</a> Courses](<a href=“http://epgy.stanford.edu/courses/]EPGY”>http://epgy.stanford.edu/courses/) that my kids use today. It is worth thinking about why most education is still conducted in person in a synchronous manner (all students in the class are on the same topic), when “programmed instruction” is an old idea.</p>
<p>The analogy to albums and iTunes songs is incredibly weak. That is moving from one recorded medium to another, where the product received by the consumer is essentially the same. A more direct analogy would be the way that digital technology, song sharing, YouTube downloading, etc. has undermined and destroyed live music performances … only that hasn’t happened.</p>
<p>Couple things. First, although I have some Excel experience through my work, I decided to sign up through our community college for an instructor-directed online Excel course. Very interesting stuff–no wasted effort, no mind wandering, no cancelled classes. Instructor is available via discussion chat room. I like it.</p>
<p>About a year ago, I accompanied D2 on some grad school openhouse visits. One school in particular said right upfront that about one-third of the classes were online. For what they were charging–upwards of $40K–I immediately dismissed it as a ripoff solely because the high percentage of non-traditional teaching.</p>
<p>I do think that, purely from a learning standpoint, depending on the subject matter you don’t lose much online. And with many college starting to feel the pinch financially, look for this trend to continue.</p>
<p>“Some parents and even some students may think that a “hook-up” culture is a reason not to be on a college campus. I want my children to be happily married. Having drunken one-night stands is in opposition to this goal.”</p>
<p>The point wasn’t the hook-up, it was that the transfer of information might increasingly be done online, but the college experience is much more than the transfer of information…it can be an intensely condensed exploration of academic subjects AND social and personal development.</p>
<p>Depending on the field, it’s not really good to dismiss things straight away like that. Many of the MPH programs I’m looking at are hybrids. One year on campus, one year online. They do this on purpose to give you the flexibility to do your practicum in places outside the immediate area of the school. Very, very high ranked programs are hybrids.</p>
<p>Yeah, romani, I’ve come to that reality. The one in question was Loyola’s Masters program in Dietetics. Very highly regarded. And this hybrid program eliminates a fair amount of commuting within the gridlocked Chicago traffic. I’ll let D2 make her own decision.</p>
<p>The credentialing aspect of on-line education becomes more problematic when the evaluation involves longer term observation than can be done in a final exam – presumably why the professions involved require the degree as well as satisfactory performance on the exam.</p>
<p>(No one reasonably expects testing or other evaluation to be free, of course.)</p>
<p>Many of the posters here would like MOOCs. I’ve completed five, and am totally addicted. </p>
<p>For the current free model, I don’t see the problem with the high drop-out rate. I’ve dropped out of two MOOCs because after a couple of weeks I found they were too elementary for me (not a criticism-- they were at a freshman level and I have a college degree), and dropped out of a few more at the start because I didn’t have enough time. So what? For MOOCs, rather than look at the drop-out rate I think it’s more useful to look at the raw pass rate. How many hundreds or thousands of people have completed this course that wouldn’t have been able to complete it at a brick-and-mortar school.</p>
<p>Spurster, I agree many of the the Coursera CS classes are upper-level courses. Lucky for us, isn’t it? Udacity has classes at a lower level, though I think they made a bad decision going to on-demand. I think cohort classes (where everyone does the class at the same time) work better for most people. Otherwise, it’s all too easy to put off until tomorrow.</p>
<p>I’ve already posted that I think this is a thought provoking article earlier on, so I don’t feel bad in the least interrupting here to say that every time I glance by this thread I see “The End of the Universe as we know it”. Blame it on my S3’s lighthearted fun with the Mayan Apocalypse. ;)</p>
<p>In 25 years the leaders of tomorrow will still be receiving their 4-year degrees from elite residential colleges such as Harvard and Yale, Amherst and CalTech and the like. And hundreds of thousands of poorly prepared high school graduates will still be attending the local CCs for a year or two of developmental education. MOOCs for the rest of us, but don’t expect them to be free or even low-cost. </p>
<p>That’s my prediction and I’m sticking to it.</p>
<p>I agree that a high MOOC dropout rate is not necessarily a bad thing, although any article that reports that 100,000 people signed up for course X should mention in the same sentence how many completed the course with a passing grade. Some colleges have two-week “shopping periods” at the beginning of a semester. If anyone who attended a session of a course but did not register for and pass the course were counted as a dropout, the course dropout rate at some colleges would be very high.</p>
<p>As MOOCs mature to the point where they count for college credit, the question will be how many college credits online students earn on average in a 5-month semester compared to commuting students and students at residential colleges. I’d guess that range of credits earned will be higher for online students, with some earning credit for 8 or more courses (compared to a typical 4 for residential college students) and a substantial fraction earning zero because they flitted around and never did much work for a single class.</p>
<p>I’d bet that when the number of free public libraries started to snowball, some people predicted the end of colleges…thinking, “Why would someone PAY for information they can get for free?” But colleges have survived…maybe because the classroom is a pretty good way to learn? Apparently it works better than reading library books by yourself. And we might find that it works better than staring at a computer monitor in the bedroom you’ve shared with your brother or sister for 20 years.</p>
Udacity has classes at a lower level, though I think they made a bad decision going to on-demand. I think cohort classes (where everyone does the class at the same time) work better for most people. Otherwise, it’s all too easy to put off until tomorrow.</p>