During the first week of May, I attended a couple of presentations by students. One was Digital Stories by students in an Education class taught by Soo Hong on topics ranging from bullying in schools to multicultural requirements. The reason why some of us from LTS were invited was because we assisted in providing technology support for the production of these stories and also the class used a software called Mediathread from Columbia University. We also attended a presentation by students from CS 349A taught by Eni Mustafaraj who demonstrated a course recommendation system which uses a cosine similarity function to compare past history of classes taken by students to suggest courses of interest to other students. Both were very impressive and as I mentioned to some of my colleagues, I was pleasantly surprised by how well the students collaborated to produce the course recommendation system so quickly.

I am sure that all of us have heard about edX by now, a joint venture by MIT and Harvard to offer online courses for enhancing teaching and learning all around the world. In addition, earlier, we all heard about Stanford’s online courses and to a lesser extent, Yale’s Open Yale Courses. In a recent article in the Chronicle highlighting the company 2tor is also relevant to this discussion in that they are looking to extend their offerings and are talking to a lot of institutions. So, I thought, it is probably a good time for me to express my views on this subject.

There are way too many disruptions caused by technologies taking place in and around us to keep up with. Many of them appear totally random, uncoordinated, and not well thought of. These disruptions were initially directed at consumers and for-profit entities who are eager to adopt these changes. I am not going to list them all, but the tectonic shift in the way we purchase and consume music & movies, explosion in PDAs and mobile applications, the changes in the way we consume news which resulted in reduction in printed newspapers  are prime examples of disruptions that fall in this category. They all appeared at first where there were way more questions than answers on their long term viability, but somehow they have survived the tests and have changed our lives dramatically. In the process, several companies have been forced to close, several professions have been forced to change the way they conduct business and several people who spent lifetimes practicing their professions in certain ways have been forced to retrain themselves.

Higher Education has enjoyed the benefits of many of these revolutionary changes, for eg. moving the email and calendaring to Google Apps for Education or Office 365 from Microsoft, iTunesU, the use of YouTube videos for instruction, & cheap internet connectivity. However, until the financial crisis of 2008-2009, we have been immune to serious questions about cost of Higher Education and the need for fundamental changes to the way Higher Ed institutions work. Even the most prestigious institutions with significant endowments were hit very hard, resulting in significant budget cuts. Since then, discussions about the cost of higher education have taken the center stage and politicians are getting involved! All of this coincided with serious talks about how the technological innovations may help reduce the cost of Higher Education and  online education is referred to as a good example.

As a parent of two boys one of whom completed undergraduate education in 2007 and the other a sophomore, I have experienced first hand how fast the cost of education has risen. Having worked in Higher Ed for the past 26 years, I also sort of understand the reasons why. At the same time, I also agree that something needs to be done to address this. As always the “expert opinions” on this issue tend to state the obvious in that they say the typical things – “spending is out of control” , “costs have risen sharply“, etc. Then there are some interesting viewpoints on the problem such as the book “The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters” by Benjamin Ginsberg. The problem with all of this discussions is that no one has provided a plausible solution to the problem or are afraid to do so. Most people point to online education as a serious option for reducing costs.

As I mentioned earlier, Clayton Christensen is one of those who is advancing the idea that online education will be the true disruption in academia (indirectly implying that this will address the cost issue). As a technologist, I like the idea of “online education”, which is a broad spectrum of “things”.  Whereas it is not likely to reduce the operational cost of running colleges and universities – since they still have to pay their faculty and staff and have to still maintain their facilities at least for some time to come, the two major cost centers in any institution – it will certainly bring in more revenue. Well, sort of. The added revenue coming in for one institution will have a loss of revenue for some other institution.

So, is this what is motivating the Harvards and the MITs of the world to start edX like initiatives? Their claim is that opening the education to the world is a good thing. In these hard times, for even Harvard and MIT to plunk $60 million on edX seems like a significant commitment. MIT X did state that certain qualified applicants can pay to pass some of these classes to get a certificate degree (Please see the answer to the question “In MITx, what will be free and what will cost money?”  in this news item from before.  After merger with edX, I am unable to see references to this). So, in the long run, all institutions are advancing online education as a way to increase the revenue. Since the online education costs are significantly less than on campus education, it is possible that this revenue will be used to offset the increased cost of the residential education. No one knows.

If one were to draw a parellel with other disruptions, if this online education model is successful, it will result in consolidation and some institutions will be under tremendous pressure to merge or close down unless they are able to reduce costs significantly to show they still provide the value. A student who is eminently qualified to go to Harvard or MIT but did not get in for whatever reason, may end up taking some of these courses to supplement his/her classes elsewhere. Some may even simply decide to get a certificate from an edX or other prestigious offerings and decide to forego going to a college to get a degree (depends on the discipline, depends on whether this model is suited for the person etc. etc.). We have a long way to get there and not all institutions will be affected the same way.

It is critically important that all institutions tune into the development in online education and follow them closely. We need to make strategic decisions on how best these advances can be folded into what we each do best. The value that many students derive from a prestigious residential liberal arts education is extremely high (my two boys tremendously benefited from it and I am thankful to be able to support them through such a valuable experience) and there are no particular indicators that show that this will change in the short term. However, I remember discussions in the mid-90’s about learning management systems and how we heard arguments that for the way that the teaching, learning and research takes place in liberal arts colleges we really didn’t need them. 10-15 years later, this has become widely adopted and used to supplement the traditional methods.

I am not sure what the future holds, but it will be important for us to be tuned in.

P.S. At a meeting today of library & technology staff from Amherst, Brandeis, Middlebury, Wellesley, Wesleyan and Williams, this topic was a main one amongst the senior leadership. I began writing this over the weekend. Mike Roy from Middlebury referred to this report which I am yet to read, which is highly recommended – BARRIERS TO ADOPTION OF ONLINE LEARNING SYSTEMS IN U.S. HIGHER EDUCATION