Courtesy of Mish.
One of the things I staunchly believe is that the cost of education will drop sharply. It has to. The current path of graduating student loan zombies is simply not sustainable.
Eventually, online education will be both inexpensive and accredited. In turn that will drive down costs at brick-and-mortar colleges.
MOOCS Pick Up Steam
The Financial Times reports Teaching Revolution Gathers Pace.
Regina Herzlinger is a bit of a superstar. She was the first woman to be a tenured professor at Harvard Business School, and is now leading its march into Moocs – massive open online courses – which promise to revolutionise the world of higher education.
Professor Herzlinger, whose 11-week course on Innovating in Healthcare will start this month, is an advocate of this model of free online education. “I believe Moocs can democratise education,” she says. “It’s fantastic to reach so many people.”
Harvard, MIT Sloan, the University of Virginia’s Darden school and several other big-brand US business schools are experimenting with Moocs. The Wharton school at the University of Pennsylvania has gone so far as to put 10 per cent of its MBA core courses online for free access. Like Prof Herzlinger, Wharton’s vice-dean of innovation Karl Ulrich believes the social impact of these programmes is a central reason for promoting Moocs. He cites the example of one Wharton Mooc that enrolled more than 130,000 students. “There’s just a huge, huge take-up.”
In Europe, business schools such as IE in Spain and Warwick in the UK have taught online MBA programmes alongside their highly ranked full-time programmes.
Now, top schools in the US, such as Kenan-Flagler at the University of North Carolina with its MBA@UNC, are validating the online mode of delivery.
Prof Anandalingam, formerly dean at the Smith school at the University of Maryland, says the technology is “state of the art compared with anything I have seen in the US. Students get a rich learning environment”.
Khan Academy
Reader Philip writes …
Mish,
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