
Will MOOCs Destroy Academia? - erensezener
http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2012/11/156587-will-moocs-destroy-academia/fulltext
======
eli_gottlieb
No, but they are exposing an internal contradiction of academia. Academics
want to research, students want them to teach. Simple, fine. But society wants
teachers with research-frontier-level knowledge, so it unified the two
functions in research universities. Unfortunately, society wants to _pay_ at
the level of free-to-cheap, both for tuition _and_ for public investment.

So we get ever-rising tuition driven by state cutbacks, ever-rising student
debt, ever-tightening research funding, and MOOCs. A reasonably good
institution (research academia) is destroyed because nobody really believes in
its original mission (uniting teaching with research) anymore, and just want
its members to specialize in one aspect or the other.

~~~
lmg643
I'm also struck by academics willing to give away their content for free,
rather than hoard it for the students who might be going into lifelong debt to
hear it in person. this makes me think the lecture model of learning is more
of a status raising ego-trip for the professor, rather than the most efficient
way to transfer information to students.

governments should be funding universities because R&D has social and economic
benefits. However, the paying customers of universities (students) are
primarily interested in the job market, so universities will have a role as
long as companies continue to use them as hiring filters. since direct
aptitude testing by corporations is a legally tricky area, i predict the
current credentialing system is unlikely to change for a while.

~~~
lambast
The academics in question might have little choice but to give away some/most
of the content for free, as it is often mandated by university- or department-
level policy. At least as far as internal use of the courses is concerned, the
incentive here is clear for the university: reduce your dependency on a given
superstar prof leaving (very slightly, admittedly).

As for the ego trip, I doubt it (in most cases): research gives you the
recognition of your peers. There is a clear trade-off in allocating your time
towards stellar teaching or stellar research. Few professors manage both. And
stellar teaching tends to get much lower recognition from the peers.

------
cdcox
MOOCS are nice as a kind of podcast when they are on a n interesting subject.
That being said I don't see them replacing academia until three big problems
are solved.

The first is the value added problem, at the end of the day they aren't better
than normal lectures and are actually a bit worse. It's funny that even the
most innovate institutions have accomplished little more than putting lectures
up online. Lectures are about on level with books when it comes to retention.
A much better model would be adopting something more like code academy with a
good balance of interactivity and theory.

The second and probably most important problem is the depth problem. You don't
go to college to take general ed requirements. You go to take the high level
sophisticated classes in your field. These classes are rarely delivered in the
form of a lecture and often have extensive lab courses and student teacher
interaction. I've yet to see a MOOC that can replace this effectively.
Similarly, there is no good model for students to come in and pick up lab
classes or lab materials. I'm sure there is a volunteer system that could do
it, but it doesn't exist yet.

The final problem is of course credentialing. While many classes provide you
with a certificate at the end the value of this is really up in the air. For
most people, a certificate is unnecessary, the value is in the material, but
if they plan to replace colleges they need to solve this problem.

I think MOOCs are the future. Just more like the 10 or 15 year future over the
5 to 10 year future.

~~~
VLM
"at the end of the day they aren't better than normal lectures and are
actually a bit worse"

True, however I see the value in replacing horrible lectures. I haven't seen a
MOOC with truly awful video lectures, yet.

However I personally attended classes where both the prof and the TA for all
practical purposes didn't speak English. Given a well written syllabus and a
non-MOOC lecture series like the MIT OCW calculus where you can search and
skip around and pick the lecture to match your syllabus, you don't really need
an English speaking prof or TA...

"if they plan to replace colleges" higher ed was originally an aspirational
good where the smart and non-rich aspired to hang out with the rich. I don't
think allowing any idiot to watch videos for free is quite the same business
model.

Also I think it weird that most of the people discussing MOOC credentialing
have clearly never heard of technical certificates. You can always identify
the "insider techies" vs the "outsiders" by how people who don't know what the
acronym CCNA stand for are mystified by how credentialing could happen, in
contrast to the guys who got their CCNA in the 90s consider it merely business
as usual and roll their eyes... another "future is already here, just not
evenly distributed". Its hard to believe around a decade ago I was doing CCNA
and CCNP tests online at prometric or whatever it was called. I see no
particular reason prometric or whoever cannot offer a 32 test package where
you get a BSCS equiv if you pass them all. If you eliminate the education and
stick to training, thus eliminating the liberal arts classes, and skip the
"see spot run" intro classes, a BSCS training equivalent is probably more like
10 to 15 tests not 32.

One big problem is Cisco tests used to be something like $250 and that kind of
credentialing cost is rapidly approaching old fashioned school tuition.

------
riveteye
MOOCs combine the INCREDIBLE FREEDOM (and efficacy) of self-directed learning
with the benefit of access to discipline-leading educators, scaleable web-
based interactivity, and active participatory online community.

Even given all that, nothing can replace the educational value of a 5 minute
meatworld conversation with someone more knowledgeable than you.
Unfortunately, this does not describe 99% of university experiences. I get
better (more productive) conversations at my local hackerspace than I ever did
during my undergrad years. And I'm the kind of person who is not happy unless
I am learning.

I'm never going back to academia because I need relevant, active learning to
be an every day thing.

Academia is really only appropriate for people who want to produce original
research, (and also want that research to be taken seriously.)

And that's only because we haven't figured out a better system of peer review
outside of academia with sufficiently high standards of ethics, quality,
credibility and adherence to scientific methods.

So yeah. Even if you don't consider the depreciating real-world value of
university degrees, academia is in trouble.

IMHO if academia wants to survive it needs to take a serious look at the real,
tangible value it provides society and focus on that (and only that.)

Aside: There are plenty of shitty MOOCs, plenty that don't suit my learning
style, but there is also a handful of golden MOOCs that have absolutely
changed my life, and shape how I view the world. The difference between a
shitty MOOC and a shitty pre-requisite or required university course is that
you can leave the MOOC, stop participating and learn the content elsewhere.
You are never locked into an unpleasant learning experience. Shitty MOOCs will
either have to get better or die. In the shitty university course, you either
suffer or fail. It's not a hard choice to make, given a choice.

------
_delirium
Many in Europe are eyeing it as a possible opening. If U.S. academia implodes
over its teaching-related parts (tuition/etc.), perhaps accelerated by MOOCs,
will it take the research dominance of U.S. academia down with it, too?

As least in Scandinavia, we don't feel MOOCs are a huge threat to us, because
there is no tuition, so there is no real financial reason for students to
prefer MOOCs. Maybe some will out of personal preference, and some might take
some extra MOOC courses as enrichment, but it seems unlikely that most
students will choose to forgo a university degree. Therefore they will
probably damage U.S. academia but not ours.

If so, is this an opening for Europe to take over world leadership in academic
research, through a mixture of internal cultivation and hiring away distressed
American faculty? The recent addition of English-language degree programs (and
increasing internal use of English) removes some of the practical problems
that used to be in the way of doing so.

~~~
ajross
I only skimmed this article, but I don't see how this argument works. US
"academia" (in the sense of the top handful of universities in any given
field) isn't supported by student tuition in any meaningful way. It's
supported mostly by government grants to the science departments and by alumni
giving (typically buffered by a large endowment foundation) to make up the
slack. Only schools with no graduate programs (i.e. pretty much "not academia"
by typical definition) need to get by on tuition.

US academic institutions are dominant because they have more money (largely
because of historical government policy), not because of any monopoly position
enjoyed over the students. I can certainly see European or Asian institutions
taking over this lead, but certainly not because students want to attend
"MOOCs". If you want a top-tier university go and buy one.

~~~
a3camero
"If you want a top-tier university go and buy one"

You mean like this?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Abdullah_University_of_Sci...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Abdullah_University_of_Science_and_Technology)

$10 billion endowment:
[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1204482...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120448256).

~~~
ajross
Pretty much. Though this particular institution is (IMHO) going to have
trouble effectively spending that endowment because of the difficulty of
recruiting top-tier faculty willing to live in Saudi Arabia. That's a
disadvantage that Tokyo or Amsterdam aren't likely to have, so I'd look
elsewhere for a good existence proof.

~~~
a3camero
Oh no, I agree entirely. I'd say this is proof that you can't buy a world
class university although time will tell. They haven't been around long enough
to establish a reputation.

~~~
ajross
But there are other data points. Stanford's rise to prominence in the 1960's
(people forget that for quite some time it was a tiny college with no
notoriety at all) was driven by almost exactly this kind of thing: they came
into a huge endowment and embarked on an affirmative program to recruit top-
tier talent in a big list of fields. And it worked.

Obviously details matter. A university in Riyadh is going to be disadvantaged
vs. one in Palo Alto, but the idea that professors can be encouraged to move
by big paychecks shouldn't be controversial.

------
tjr
I took a class on Coursera. In that particular instance, I found no value in
the online discussions (which seemed often pretty off-topic), and mainly I
just watched the videos. I don't know how common this is for Coursera classes,
but it left me with the impression that they might not need to be "classes" at
all: just make educational television programs (or YouTube videos, or DVDs, or
whatever).

This spring I am participating in the MIT Media Lab class on Learning Creative
Learning, which is running online in parallel with an on-campus class. Between
the combination of live videos from campus, readings, relevant online
discussions, and assigned activities that we share with others in the class,
to me, this class feels much more vibrant and engaging than my Coursera
experience.

If future of MOOCs is more like this Media Lab class, then I'm looking forward
to it. If it's more like Coursera, then I'd just as soon read a book in many
cases.

But do either of these topple the existing world of academia? Coursera, sadly,
might be a fine replacement for huge standard classes in which students are
lectured at, and a Media Lab-style class could probably be a good replacement
for many other classes.

I think though that the students need to take the classes more seriously for
it to really work out. It seems to me that students are more likely to make a
reasonable attempt at learning if they are paying tuition and risking getting
bad grades on their record at a physical school than they are in a free online
class which offers no particular negative response if they just totally blow
it off. While we see huge numbers of people registering for MOOCs, it appears
that a much smaller number of people actually complete the classes in any
meaningful way.

------
k2enemy
Books accomplish pretty much the same thing as moocs, yet the academy survived
the invention of the printing press. I'm sure moocs will have their place, but
I think fears about the destruction of academia are a little exaggerated.

~~~
bayesianhorse
Moocs are in the majority better than corresponding books.

Generally books are more detailed (and expensive) than most students would
need or benefit at a "first read". When I pick up a university-level text
without the need to study for an exam, I usually don't follow through. Mostly
because I get stuck somewhere. With Moocs that doesn't happen.

Moocs are currently only scraping the surface of what is possible with
computerassisted instruction. They offer quizzes. But in the future I fully
expect interactive Tutoring software that would for example be able to "nudge"
you towards the solution of a problem, train you in a particular skill through
repetition or even check a proof for a math problem.

------
wwosik
I've found MOOC to be a real new hobby of mine. I believe they have more value
for a lifelong learner or a professional than for a bored 20-something.

I hold especially dearly edx courses (though I'm doing something at udacity
and Stanford), which are "semi-self-paced", i.e. there is freedom, when and
where you want to listen to them, say a bathtube after a long day. But there
is also a stick in the form of (rather hard) homework and exams with a long
but hard deadline. Maybe I'm too little self-disciplined, but those deadlines
do help me with following the course. BTW, I've totally failed CS50x where
deadlines are voluntary.

With my professional work and family duties I would never be able to attend a
normal course during the day (in addition to a transatlantic travel to
Boston). In addition, I don't need to engage in 4/5 courses at a time like I
would have to at the university. On the other hand, the cost is not that much
of the problem for me and I would probably be able to pay for the course or at
least the final exam, which is how I suppose they are willing to monetize in
the future. Of course, provided it's nowhere near $27k tuition ;)

To sum it up, I think there are rather few people that choose an MOOC instead
of going to the university providing the MOOC, where "choose" means a real
choice of people that could afford it and would be admitted. However, for the
rest of us it is of an immense value.

------
ctdonath
Such is the natural supply-and-demand backlash resulting from promoting
excessive demand for overpriced supply. Telling every kid "you must go to
college" and then persuading them to sign up for absurdly huge loans cannot
end well. The end, then, is MOOCs, and whether it is well, well, the author
seems to think it isn't.

Charging some $3000 per class when many classes are little more than the
content of a borrowed $30 book will, with a little social media technology,
culminate in a teacher loaning the books to 100x his usual class population,
charging 2% the usual per student cost, and coming out of the session with
more money, more successful students (though perhaps a lower percentage), and
the ire of anyone else who didn't pull off this stunt first.

The long-term consequences of prolific government-promoted-and-backed loans &
grants skewed the educational economy so much that the correction will be
dramatic and dire - and the correction, however many may dislike it, is
unavoidable thanks to the nature of supply-and-demand. Such economic meddling
should be avoided in any market for exactly such reasons: there will be a
correction to the natural norm, and the longer that correction is held off and
the process distorted, the more destructive the correction will be ... but the
correction _will_ happen.

------
JulianMorrison
The argument goes:

\- we suck

\- we have no money

\- and yet we cost too much

\- MOOCs suck

\- MOOCs are cheap

\- MOOCs are going to eat our lunch

\- we preserve intellectual heritage

\- if we go, it goes

\- therefore kill MOOCs

And really, there are at least two important counter arguments:

\- if you suck, how can you preserve heritage?

\- do not MOOCs also preserve heritage at least as well?

Also, the despair and lack of alternative here to the "recession" (actually,
it's not a recession any more, it's a hugely unequal wealth distribution) is
striking.

------
barry-cotter
Closing sentence: _If I had my wish, I would wave a wand and make MOOCs
disappear, but I am afraid that we have let the genie out of the bottle._

Don't bother reading it.

~~~
ryanmolden
I'm confused, are you actually advocating only reading things you agree with?
Or is this last line supposed to be indicative in some negative way of the
overall quality of the article?

~~~
tomjen3
It shows that the author is only interested in preventing the free market from
cutting into his position.

------
khuey
As long as employers continue to care about credentialing rather than actual
knowledge academia will be fine.

~~~
betterunix
Credentialism is destroying academia. Professors have been under pressure for
decades to lower their standards, avoid making their courses difficult, and to
teach things with obvious vocation relevance. Humanities departments are being
slashed. General education requirements have been weakened.

Eventually, employers will realize that two-year degrees are as good as four-
year degrees when it comes to vocational training. If a four-year degree
represents nothing more than vocational training, why bother requiring one
when a two-year degree generally suffices? By catering to credentialism and
caving to student demands for vocational training, universities have set
themselves up for a disaster.

~~~
jurassic
> If a four-year degree represents nothing more than vocational training, why
> bother requiring one when a two-year degree generally suffices?

Because a debt-laden employee is a docile, loyal employee? If you need the job
badly to meet your basic obligations, you'll probably make fewer demands on
the employer.

------
nchlswu
It's interesting because (in Ontario, Canada) there is an ongoing trend to
adopt online classes because of the touted lower costs.

Since there is an explosion of demand of students who primarily see post-
secondary institutions as job training grounds (and don't necessarily
understand academia), the institutions wan't to adopt these online courses to
help deal with demand and attract students with the appeal of 'remote'
courses, all at lower costs.

If MOOCs can be credentialed and recognized by employers, I think it's logical
that they'll steal a lot of the undergrads from universities, which are the
primary revenue generator for these institutions.

------
sonabinu
In my experience MOOCs don't replace the academic experience of being in a
classroom, and interacting live with students and teachers. It does not
replace lively discussions and debate. It does have a place in continuing
education and supplementing coursework especially in technical subjects. I
finished a Coursera class last month. Here is my experience
[http://datagrad.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-most-recent-mooc-
exp...](http://datagrad.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-most-recent-mooc-
experience.html)

~~~
VLM
"... the academic experience of being in a classroom, and interacting live
with students and teachers ... "

What does it do the the argument that traditional hybrid schools started
granting credentials to online students who don't do any of the above about a
decade ago? I graduated from a regional college in a program like that almost
a decade ago. You can't even tell from transcript, much less the diploma, that
I took systems analysis online vs in person.

Also I suppose it depends on the level of your fellow students, but before I
switched to mostly online, I took plenty of classroom classes, and I found
that most lively discussions and debate were either students who didn't bother
doing the reading and didn't mind displaying their ignorance very
inconveniently and publicly, didn't have the horsepower to figure it out, or
were trying to get into heaven by stubbornly insisting on some religious
interpretation.

If merely making kids talk to each other resulted in brilliance, then
discussions at bars, parties, and on facebook would be worthwhile... but they
just aren't, not even close. I mean, realistically, what fraction of 19 year
olds have anything to say worth hearing, especially about esoteric advanced
topics, and then whats the odds of having one of those people in your class
(pretty low, indeed). Frankly even after completing the class and doing pretty
well, more than a decade later I still don't have anything intelligible to say
about diffeqs or bode stability plots.

------
kyllo
I don't see MOOCs and universities as fulfilling the same purpose at all.

Universities are for institutionalized learning, research, and credentialing.

MOOCs are for supplemental learning afterward.

A person really should continue taking classes and learning for professional
development and personal enrichment throughout his or her career. MOOCs are
fantastic for that. I don't really see them as ever being a suitable
replacement for an undergraduate education, though.

------
samsolomon
Massive Open Online Courses won’t replace college. It may be part of the
puzzle, but there is no replacement for having peers and mentors to go to and
ask questions.

However, I think MOOCs will start to replace textbooks. These Courses-as-a-
Service (School-as-a-Service?) serve as supplementary material to those
already trying to learn something new. Signing up for one of these courses
serves a similar function to purchasing a textbook.

Some are doing this better than others. Take Treehouse, which is offers some
of the better online programming courses, they offer engaging videos, and
projects that go with them. Treehouse is more like a TV show, or a weird
YouTube channel than a class.

I read somewhere that about 80 percent of those that sign up for a class drop
out (Ill look for the source). That doesn’t surprise me. I haven’t finished 90
percent of the programming textbooks I have. The reasons are the same – I own
more than I have time to complete, and I use them as a reference.

EDIT: Spelling

~~~
marknutter
> Massive Open Online Courses won’t replace college. It may be part of the
> puzzle, but there is no replacement for having peers and mentors to go to
> and ask questions.

You can have peers and mentors to go to and ask questions online just as well
as you can in real life. Better, in fact, since your pool of mentors and peers
is much larger. Take the programming industry. If you have questions about a
particular programming concept, library, language, framework, etc. you can
easily find a dedicated, knowledgeable group to bounce questions off. There's
no reason why this couldn't work in other fields.

------
short_circut
I feel like MOOCs are part of a Universities cost cutting measure aswell as an
advertisement for it. Many universities are moving their introductory courses
to online. By using MOOCs they don't have to have as many students in class,
they can schedule alot more classes to cover more students who say have a day
job, and they can get away with hiring less people. The publicity is excellent
because it is a good way to get self motivated people interested in the
school. Notice that very rarely are entire academic programs put online. This
is nothing but good for the university who sees decreased cost and increased
student quality (potentially) and increased interest in the school. Once it
stops helping the school profit then the MOOCs will go away. I doubt that will
happen anytime soon.

------
epsylon
They won't destroy academia, but I certainly hope that they will destroy the
"grand lecture" format. There is no point in having an average professor
lecture painfully for 2 hours when you can have the same content delivered to
you by an energetic, world class expert on a video that you can watch at any
time you want, wherever you want and speed up, slow down or replay at your
convenience.

The time and money saved by having lectures prepared on video can be spent
towards more office hours, labs and workshop where the teachers and TAs can
directly interact with the students and help them dig beyond the lectures by
completing assignments and projects.

The University's job is to provide guidance, supervision (including for exams
that give credit) and interaction with other students.

------
programminggeek
Well, they could destroy academia if the credentials start to mean something.
There is no reason that a university is some special place to learn things.
There are three things colleges seem to do fairly well - knowledge transfer,
credentials that mean something, and research.

Knowledge transfer can happen online or anywhere if done right. Credentials
that mean something is possible if there are reasonably good standards behind
them that are provable. Say, some kind of standardized test/certification.
Research could happen outside of the way Universities do it now.

For now those things are all tied together, but there is no intrinsic reason
they have to be.

------
vellum
College debt is getting out of control. I could see MOOCs cannibalizing some
lower tier options, like University of Phoenix, which IMO would be a good
thing. But I don’t think Harvard’s going anywhere. To become more popular,
MOOCs need to do a better job of marketing to employers that their credentials
are just as good as some lower or mid-tier state university. Some MOOCs are
already doing this, like Udacity with their plans for offline proctoring. For
now, most MOOCs are basically TIVO for lectures.

~~~
bayesianhorse
Tivo doesn't have Quizzes and exercises.

For the most part though, the Moocs' credentials aren't the same as from some
on-campus course, and there is not one bachelor program that is fully
available from Moocs. Udacity seems to aim at such a credential, but they are
at least 75% shy of that.

------
bayesianhorse
Moocs don't aim to destroy or even replace Academia.

The way they are currently used and enjoyed is as a combination of edutainment
and for developing skills when no university program is feasible.

------
chrisdevereux
I'd be more worried about MOOCs as a teaching-led institution than a research-
led institution.

"Learn from the best people in your field" is just as good a pitch with MOOCs
as without. But it becomes much harder to see what justifies the fees at a
mostly teaching (or mediocre research) university unless the quality of
tuition is excellent.

------
shitlord
I doubt it. Most people go to a university to get a piece of piece of paper
that says they made it through. For most people, unis are just modern-day
trade schools. Unless MOOCs can offer something that people will take
seriously (i.e., a degree), little will change.

------
mrcharles
"The answer to every article whose title is a question is almost always 'No.'"

------
aoetr
Yes, hopefully.

Schools make no sense.

