

Why Online Education Won't Replace College — Yet - victorhn
http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Online-Education-Wont/133531/

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teeja
Conversations with other students and faculty are a critical part of a college
education. Certainly indispensible for sci-tech. Decades later I'm still
remembering valuable tips and tidbits that profs threw at me during out-of-
class discussions. If you come to class prepared, you can raise questions that
can double the effectiveness of a course.

People just there for a degree might manage with online courses. People who
love learning and are absorbing a discipline? Not so much. And thus, maybe,
higher education will once again live up to its best potential ... not
cranking spare parts on an assembly line.

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jln25
Not only are conversations and discussion critical, so is the feedback the
professor gains from the students. Many online-replacement articles are
student centric - I have not yet seen an article that analyzes the impact on
those who teach.

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waveman2
Disruptive technologies typically a) have weaknesses, and b) offer a product
that is inferior in some respect.

That doesn't stop them decimating the old industries. Online education is more
flexible, more accessible and far cheaper than traditional education.

Issues like "how to mark papers" are soluble. Cheating in exams can be
resolved the same way other organizations solve it: by running some exams in
controlled environments. Plenty of organizations do this now: the institute of
actuaries, the international baccalaureate, etc.

If I could short traditional universities it would be the trade of the decade.

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waveman2
One thing that concerns me about this is how will research get funded.
Currently undergraduate students cross-subsidize research.

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Turing_Machine
Increasingly what the tuition dollars actually fund is layer after layer of
bloated administration.

Teaching and research are generally the first thing to get cut when budget
cuts loom, never the hordes of junior associate vice subdeans.

Even when you get a research grant a large percentage of it (30-50%,
sometimes) gets chopped off for "overhead" (i.e., the aforementioned hordes of
administrators).

I don't know if MOOCs per se are the answer -- likely they're part of it, but
not the whole solution. However, I do know that higher ed is ripe for
disintermediation.

Basically, you've got a group of customers who are used to paying tens of
thousands of dollars for a service, while the people who actually produce the
service are getting paid a very small percentage of that. The situation is
especially striking when it comes to large lecture classes of the sort common
at the various campuses of Enormous State University. You've got sections of
250 students or more (maybe a thousand or more students across all section),
each of whom is paying on the order of a thousand bucks to sit in a large
lecture hall and listen to the professor. So maybe $250K per section, or a
million for the whole course. The adjunct professor teaching the course is
probably getting paid ~$2k-3k per section. If that reminds you of the
situation that formerly prevailed in music and book publishing, it should.

Accreditation is the sticking point. That's going to have to be revamped or an
alternative mechanism will have to be devised.

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kevin1024
> Computers can't grade everything... Papers are out of the question.

I'm currently taking a Coursera class where I write an essay each week. Then
my essay is reviewed and graded by 4 other students. I grade 4 other students'
essays. This works really well.

