They Can See the MOOC Coming But What Will They Do About It? (January 28, 2013)

In the January 25, 2013 issue of  Science Norman Augustine warns the university sector must take into account immediately the changes that are being brought about by modern information technology or higher education will degenerate.

The following day Thomas Friedman, writing in The New York Times under the banner "Revolution Hits the Universities" sees the glass half full:

[O]ne big thing happening that leaves me incredibly hopeful about the future, and that is the budding revolution in global online higher education... Nothing has more potential to unlock a billion more brains to solve the world’s biggest problems. And nothing has more potential to enable us to re-imagine higher education than the massive open online course, or MOOC. Two weeks ago, I went... out to Palo Alto, California to check on them... [L]ast May, about 300,000 people were taking 38 courses taught by Stanford professors and a few other elite universities. Today, they have 2.4 million students, taking 214 courses from 33 universities, including eight international ones, [and] since May, some 155,000 students from around the world have taken ... a nonprofit MOOC that M.I.T. and Harvard are jointly building — edX’s first course, an M.I.T. intro class on circuits.

Mr Freedman agrees that the percentage of individuals completing the course is small and they are principally "from the middle and upper classes of their societies". Nevertheless, Mr Friedman has a vision of how MOOCs might change foreign policy: "For relatively little money, the U.S. could rent space in an Egyptian village, install two dozen computers and high-speed satellite Internet access, hire a local teacher as a facilitator, and invite in any Egyptian who wanted to take online courses with the best professors in the world, subtitled in Arabic."

M.I.T. president, L. Rafael Reif , installed in June 2012, told Mr Friedman he believes that as we look to the future of higher education, something that we now call a “degree” will be a concept “connected with bricks and mortar” — and traditional on-campus experiences that will increasingly leverage technology and the Internet to enhance classroom and laboratory work. Alongside that, however, Professor Reif ‒‒ one of the principals founding edX ‒‒ foresees many universities offering online courses to students anywhere in the world, in which they will earn “credentials” — certificates that testify that they have done the work and passed all the exams; although he agrees that the "process of developing credible credentials that verify that the student has adequately mastered the subject — and did not cheat — and can be counted on by employers is still being perfected by all the MOOCs".

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