[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [xmca] The business of education

Hello,

This just came out:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-big-data-taking-teachers-out-lecturing-business


Wagner

On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 10:30 AM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> And lots of people marvel at the progress, Helena.
> bait and switch.... and pay taxes like Apple!
> :-)
> mike
>
> On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 10:23 AM, Helena Worthen <helenaworthen@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Hello -- the letter from Meister is really worth reading. It explains why
>> MOOCs need the CSU system (and other public higher education connections)
>> more than CSU needs MOOCs.
>>
>> Although short-term, the linkup with Coursera to offer MOOCs in various
>> disciplines appears to solve the immediate problem of how to expand access
>> to already crowded, booked-up, high-tuition face to face classrooms, it
>> solves a different problem for Coursera and other big MOOC companies.
>>
>> That problem is, long-term ‹ and this is an important problem, since
>> Coursera, like the other MOOC companies, is a private company, like
>> Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo,  Amazon, etc. -- how to make money. Right now
>> MOOCs are free, or at least some are free. How can they figure out how
>> much to charge? How much are they "worth" --?
>>
>> The  simplest way to figure that out would be to hook up with a state
>> university and say, "Our class is worth three credits at San Jose State,
>> and tuition at San Jose State for three credits is $2,400, so our class
>> should cost $2,400."  But it can get much, much  more fine-grained than
>> that, since all kinds of personal information gets collected when someone
>> enrolls in a class.
>>
>> Bottom line- without the hookup to established institutions, all the MOOCs
>> offer is celebrity teachers doing what are essentially TV shows or
>> audiotape classes (you may have noticed that the price on Great
>> Teacher-type audio tapes have crashed from $299 to less than $100
>> recently). So no matter how celebrated a professor is, it's the hookup to
>> an institution that makes it possible to establish market value. And make
>> huge money in the long run.
>>
>> Which is basically gutting the public education system and transferring
>> its authority to  exchange credits for tuition to a private company.
>>
>> Another argument for free public higher education -- the only way that
>> public education can compete against a for-profit system.
>>
>>
>> Helena
>>
>>
>>
>> On 5/11/13 1:30 PM, "mike cole" <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >The following letter from the UC faculty association president seems worth
>> >distributing. Fraught futures.
>> >mike
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >CUCFA President Meister's Open Letter to Coursera Founder Daphne Koller
>> > http://cucfa.org/news/2013_may10.php
>> >
>> >......
>>
>>
>> >http://cucfa.org/news/2013_may10.ph<http://cucfa.org/news/2013_may10.php>
>> >__________________________________________
>>
>>
>>
> __________________________________________
> _____
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca