Comments on: Digital Economics is Transforming News Media; Are Universities Next?

By: Name

Name — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:15:35 +0000

Some of us saw this coming for a long time. See this:
http://www.ait.net/technos/tq_06/3perelman.php

By: Name

Name — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:15:35 +0000

Some of us saw this coming for a long time. See this:
http://www.ait.net/technos/tq_06/3perelman.php

By: Ferguson

Ferguson — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 04:09:01 +0000

I wanted to point out an interesting fact I personally noticed today. I'm a fifth-year engineering student who went to campus to check out book prices for my upcoming classes. There was a textbook offered for about $190 new, $140 used. And a third option... $150 for an "eBook."

With classes at $99 bucks a month, I could have a full courseload from StraighterLine at about the same quarterly price as the textbooks alone cost me in my current situation.

By: Ferguson

Ferguson — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 03:09:01 +0000

By: Timon

Timon — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:23:30 +0000

I am not saying anything bad about StraighterLine's teaching model -- my criticism of their offering precalculus applies equally to any school offering college credit for high-school subjects, or degree program requiring them. They sound like they do a good job at a lot of things, and the decline of academic standards isn't their fault. But they really shouldn't be bragging about a middle-age woman 30 years out of school, blowing through multiple courses in weeks, as proof that things are working (and I say this as someone who admires the hell out of older people who make their way back to school.)

There are 3 main products in the current education market -- 1) content or course materials including books and lectures, 2) personal instruction, and 3) diplomas, transcripts, ie accreditation or whatever you want to call the difference between following an OpenCourseWare class and getting an A at a city college. Right now you mostly have to get all three bundled, it will be a great thing if the internet disaggregates them and reconnects 3 with its original point of validating the effectiveness of actual learning. Ideally, no one would sell all three, you could for example get real specialization and efficiency of teaching from StraighterLine, and exams or validation from someone else. All I am saying is that if and when this change happens it is likely to come from public schools -- I have done it, I am seeing people do it, and my fees have been less than $99 a month. I looked and as far as I can tell local Jr college adjunct profs make $90/hr, about $7000 for a 5hr/wk course between 40 students, so whatever subsidy exists is not hugely distortive, especially when there will be no janitor bills. These institutions get the issues of scale, they shouldn't be counted out.

The bigger problem is that deep learning is not really the point of a lot of things that call themselves college degrees -- many degree programs (teaching credentials, Education Ph.D.s, many business programs, communications) are like a metastasized traffic school, where the point is just to do the time and get through it so that you can prove something to some bureaucracy. You can't disaggregate learning from teaching and accreditation if there is no learning or teaching, and it is disappointing to see new efforts to offer the same kinds of classes as the straight-up frauds, spammers, and student loan launderers that have already set online education back years.

vbt-

Point taken about the teachers' math -- a non-credit course in algebra and/or maybe one terminal analytic geometry and trigonometry class is fair enough. I agree in general that the push to get everyone into college is hurting both the colleges and the students -- maybe the best outcome from StraightLine's innovations would be for colleges to use them or people like them for all the remedial and scut work and take the opportunity to discontinue the kinds of classes that average adults breeze through.

By: Berin Szoka

Berin Szoka — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:34:52 +0000

I reached a difference conclusion, Timon: that e-Learning services like StraighterLine are simply starting with the “low-hanging fruit,”the content that has the largest audience and that can be provided at the lowest cost. This is precisely the pattern we see in all cases of disruptive innovation: new entrants start by “cannibalizing” the parts of the established players' market that are most vulnerable to competition and use that revenue stream and the experience gained in developing it to move down George Gilder's “Learning Curve.” So if e-Learning is anything like these other industries, I suspect we'll see them provide increasingly advanced and niche coursework even as their costs fall radically. With further competition in the market, consumer prices will fall, too.

By: mdb002

mdb002 — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:53:08 +0000

Most universities already offer online courses and degrees. I am matriculated in an online masters degree at Johns Hopkins. I have taken online courses at UMass. The cost does not compare to $99 dollar a month (even at UMass with in state tuition), but the I can't imagine how many students need to enroll in a class to make that profitable. Maybe it is like the large lecture hall classes I took as undergrad, but looking back those weren't worth $99 a month. Anyway universities will not be caught flat footed with this (like newspapers, music, etc.), and the price competition is good.

By: vbt

vbt — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:50:31 +0000

I still have my concerns about the quality of online education but the article touched on some really key points that Berin highlights.

Timon, the problem is that current models used by established schools are not providing the same cost savings that StraighterLine is trying to provide. Berlin and the author are questioning the entrenched nature of the ivory tower and the governments actions to perpetuate a potentially outdated model.

I agree that online education may serve best for introductory course with challenging material being taught more traditionally but the accreditation process prevents courses taken at certain institutions being transferred into a 4-yr institute. As noted in the article, the review done by Fort Hays was more stringent than what they would do for a community college yet the students/faculty continued to question the quality of the education.

I think the line comparing the debt-fueled tuition hikes to that of the real estate bubble is spot on and again similar to real estate, this debt-boom has been fueled in large part by government-backed loans.

Timon, your academic elitism "why should anyone get college credit for precalculus?" is a bit unfair. Their are plenty of careers that require a 4 year degree that precalculus would be sufficient math skills. You did not get credit at my engineering school for precalculus, but at the state school near by, math for teachers is plenty sufficient for early childhood education degrees.

Frankly, i think this drive to educate everyone has given education institutions the demand needed to drive up tuition and entrench itself. Plenty of jobs that require a 4 year degree can be completed by someone with 2 years and some experience. Let's get back to the apprenticeship model in some professions; k8 education being one I really support.

By: Timon

Timon — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 08:36:30 +0000

I think if anything the public institutions will be leaders in this — no one who has seen public school grads fulfilling their “quantitative reasoning” requirements with high-school sophomore algebra fails to grasp the advantages of automating as much of the process as possible. What will happen is that many institutions will offer mostly online versions of an increasing number of classes, charging the same as they do for the in-the-flesh version. For the big lecture classes the online experience is already better; you can pause, google phrases and confusing bits, do examples, look up equations and constants, go to the bathroom, sit in a comfortable chair, repeat things until you understand them, and the quality of professor is higher. Schools, especially the good community colleges and sub-flagship state schools will build up or a accrete a library of lecture materials that will be presented basically conterminously with what we now think of as a semester- or quarter-length class, with a few on-site tests and a mailbox for assignments turned in by students who can't yet scan to pdf. It is already changing 1st and 2nd year college into something you can do rather than somewhere you have to go — I have done a bit of it myself, at well-known, good state schools.

My interpretation from the article is that outfits like StraighterLine, while they have a good underlying workflow and idea, are inherently on thin ice because they are trying to teach intentionally undemanding subjects (why should anyone get college credit for precalculus?) at a profit, which is not a good way to build up academic credibility. The first people to pull it off will be non-profits like some sort of online Olin College or Cooper Union, with cross-registration agreements with known city colleges and state schools, and they will have to focus on challenging material — calculus to linear algebra, foreign languages, programming, etc., and adhere to much higher standards than the existing 2-year schools. If that kind of process succeeds in eventually disaggregating accreditation from teaching that's great — but then places like StraighterLine really shouldn't be filling both those functions any more than state or incumbent private schools should.

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Fri, 04 Sep 2009 06:13:39 +0000

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