Distance Learning and the University Death Spiral

Coursera, EdX, Kahn Academy, Saylor.org, OpenCourseWare.

All are infinitely scalable, infinitely deployable, and infinitely cheaper alternatives to the bricks-and-mortar learning experience. How, where and who consumes a heretofore inelastic product - education - is being reshaped, unwrung, and disruptively transformed in ways not seen since the invention of the printing press. Today's world needs a highly educated, adaptable, technical workforce, capable of being retrained and redeployed from less productive to more productive industries. The prohibitively expensive (and slow!) 4-year residential education model is no longer suited to the modern, global economy. Thus it is this blogger's belief that we are about to witness the beginning of a Cat 5 university endgame: the emerging on-line learning colossus spawns a legitimate credentialing industry leading to collapsing tuition revenue from decreased enrollment, leading ultimately to many under-capitalized colleges and universities closing their doors.

As an advancement professional at a major US university, nothing gives me more hope than the potential for scalable on-line learning. For several centuries, admissions officers (yes, that's right) have been the gatekeepers for outstanding content and teaching, offering an product requiring experiential consumption for those who get their act together when they are between ages 14 and 18. The distance learning entrants listed above are veritable trustbusters out to break the monopoly on access to the best and most highly qualified teachers and practitioners in every field - for anybody, at any age - for free or for a mightily reduced fee.

But this emergence will likely cost me my job, or at least tilt the basic aims of my work towards fundraising for the most promising research ideas of our faculty. I expect and frankly hope for a redeployment of philanthropic investment away from the residential education experience, and towards a more flexible, highly scalable and deployable model with highly sophisticated credentialing mechanisms (frequent provable testing combined with real and virtual internships/apprenticeships, etc.); the sooner the American university world embraces the rate of change necessary to make this happen, the better off we'll all be.