In 2012 I wrote a blog post about the growing influence of Massively Open Online Courses, or MOOCs.
John Hennessey, president of Stanford, gave the CRA keynote address arguing that MOOCs will save universities. He puts the untenable costs of universities at personnel costs (faculty salaries) are making colleges unaffordable (not sure I fully agree). He argued that MOOCs will help teach courses more effectively. The hidden subtext: fewer professors and probably fewer universities, or as someone joked, we'll all be branch campuses of Stanford.
I ended the post "MOOCs may completely change higher education in America and around the world. Or they won't." A reader asked "Wondering what are you takes about MOOCS now?". Good question.
If you want a detailed answer I had chatty put together a deep research report. Here's my take, mostly from the US computing perspective. The term MOOC is rarely used anymore, but we have seen tremendous growth in online courses and degrees, particularly in Masters programs.
We've seen some major successes, most notably the Georgia Tech Online Masters of Science in Computer Science program that we started in 2014. By we, I mostly mean then-dean Zvi Galil's tenacity to make it happen. Zvi made the right moves (after some pushing), getting faculty buy-in, strong incentives for faculty participation, putting significant resources for course development, a very low-cost degree and most importantly insisting that we have the same if not better quality than our on-campus offerings. The program grew tremendously reaching about 10,000 students by 2020. Georgia Tech had to add a new graduation ceremony for students who finished the degree remotely but traveled to campus for graduation.
We've seen a plethora of new programs. Most domestic students can get a good computing masters degree at a fraction of a cost of an in-person program. On-campus Masters program in computing are now almost entirely international for on-campus programs can deliver something an on-line course cannot: A visa, and a chance to build a life in the United States.
These new programs vary quite a bit in quality, some truly strong, others less so. Some are outright misleading, making a deal with a university to use their name but otherwise having no connection to the school's faculty or academic departments. These programs often feature 'professional certificates' marketed under university branding but are actually developed and administered by third-party education companies.
While we learned to teach everything online during the pandemic, on-line degrees don't work as well for bachelor degrees where the on-campus experience almost matters more than the courses, or for research-intensive PhD programs.
We are not all branch campuses of Stanford but the story isn't done. Colleges continue to have financial challenges, artificial intelligence will continue to play new roles in education, not to mention the recent actions of the Trump administration. Hopefully MOOCs won't be the only thing surviving.
Your observation that on-campus programs are mostly international because they offer "A visa, and a chance to build a life in the United States." is quite a shocking and damning admission. We have the same problem in the UK: a growing concern that universities are making money by allowing people to obtain UK visas, and a lot of the students are not so interested in the course of study.
ReplyDeleteI like to view it more positively, that the students are learning skills that the marketplace demands, and the jobs they take after graduation add positively to the US economy. The university does benefit, but so do the students and the country as a whole.
DeleteIt is ironic that somebody who studied economics finds it hard to believe that the first thing people care about is economic opportunity to improve their lives.
DeleteThis education for immigration has become a major election issue in Canada. They needed to massively cut the visas that low quality colleges were getting.
Deletehttps://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/intl-student-cap-restrictions-reax-1.7328052
The study permit has been one of the most successful immigration paths where people integrate very well with the new country, learn about its culture, create a social network, get a degree that facilitates finding a job, ... but it has become massively abused by low quality colleges where you essentially pay the tuition too immigrate.
They estimate there are currently over 1 million foreign students in Canada, that is out of 40 million total population. That has put significant pressure on particular cities and their infrastructure like housing.