An online college revolution is coming

Danielle Allen:

If you care about college costs and educational quality, you should care about MOOCs, or "massive open online courses," which deliver college courses digitally and just might revolutionize higher education. With MOOCs, a lecture course that draws a couple hundred students on campus can be converted to something that draws tens of thousands from around the globe. A seminar for 40 on campus can be reorganized to teach 800 when each on-campus student is deputized to be a virtual seminar leader for 20.
Whether for good or ill, MOOCs augur a disruption of the relationships among students, colleges and trade schools, and the credentials those schools offer -- a relationship that has stabilized higher education for at least a century. Yet if done right -- a big if, as recent events at San Jose State and Colorado State universities have shown -- they may help address the quality and cost of higher education.

What's the nature of the disruption?

For the moment, providers of MOOCs make their courses available to anyone. There is no admissions process. As in a video game, anyone can start, but you have to master levels that can include very difficult work. For the10 percent who get to the end, the learning is real.

The range of subjects that might become available to everyone through MOOCs is potentially as broad as the array of specialties represented throughout the professoriate at all institutions. Already some of the most successful MOOCs involve not science and technology but rather Greek mythology and modern poetry.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at July 30, 2013 12:00 AM
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