'Conventional' online universities consider strategic response to MOOCs

Steve Colowich:

Online education not only gave nontraditional students a chance to enroll in collegiate programs from afar; it has also given universities that historically have not enjoyed the prestige of the Ivies a chance to build a reputation on fresh territory and build reliable revenue streams.

But, now that higher education's traditional heavyweights are creating online courses and offering them for free to anyone who wants to register, those universities that have made names for themselves in the market for "conventional" online programs are trying to sort out how these high-profile "MOOCs" (i.e., Massive Open Online Courses) could affect their own positions in an online market where many have staked their futures.

One strategy for established online players would put them in the somewhat ironic role of making sure students who have passed Harvard-level exams deserve college credit.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at August 3, 2012 1:38 AM
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