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Sunday, September 20, 2009

Not law but important - More on: "A Virtual Revolution Is Brewing for Colleges"

Updating this ILB entry from Sept. 12th, here, from the Sept. 14th Business Week, is a column from Kevin Maney headed "Next: An Internet Revolution in Higher Education - Web technology is poised to shake universities, the way it rocked newspapers and the music industry—with convenient, cheaper alternatives." Some quotes:

The idea of some kind of open-source, online, low-cost revolution in education has become a lit fuse, sparking and crackling its way toward an explosion. Here and there, in places ranging from Silicon Valley to Indonesia, a few bold universities and entrepreneurs are taking pokes at the concept. Start-ups such as StraighterLine and Knewton are offering online courses for college credit for hundreds of dollars, compared with thousands of dollars at most universities. Peer2Peer University is gathering buzz as an online, self-organizing, social networking approach to higher education.

"The economics of traditional schooling are so out of whack that there is an opening for new players," says Fred Fransen, executive director of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education, which helps donors more effectively give money to universities. From that perch, Fransen sees the typical university business model as prone to attack.

The vulnerability sensed by McNealy, Fransen, and others has a lot to do with a concept I've been writing about the past few years—the fidelity swap. In our everyday lives we constantly make trade-offs between fidelity and convenience. Fidelity is the total experience of something. At a rock concert, for instance, it's not just the quality of the sound—which often isn't as good as listening to music on a good stereo—but everything else, too, such as the show's ambience and the bragging rights that come with having seen the band live. Convenience is how easy or hard it is to get what you want. That includes whether it's readily available, whether it's easy to do or use, and how much it costs. If something is less expensive, it's naturally more convenient because it's easier for more people to get it. * * *

College is a high-fidelity experience. If you want a respected undergraduate degree, there is one way to get it: You have to get accepted to an accredited college, pay tuition so great that your degree will be one of the most expensive things you ever buy, and uproot your life to move—all so you can engage in a rich, all-encompassing experience for four years. * * *

For centuries the university model dominated because nothing else worked. No technology existed that might deliver an interactive, engaging educational experience without gathering students and teachers in the same physical space. In the past century, a powerful social bias set in: Only accredited universities were allowed to grant degrees, and most professional jobs required an accredited degree. Even though technologies emerged that might foster new models of higher education, the neat accreditation ecosystem locked out innovative competitors.

These days broadband Internet, video games, social networks, and other developments could combine to create an online, inexpensive, super-convenient model for higher education. You wouldn't get the sights and sounds of a campus, personal contact with professors, or beer-soaked frat parties, but you'd end up with the knowledge you need and the degree to prove it. The University of Phoenix which is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, is partway there, though it's a hybrid of online and campus learning. Other organizations, entrepreneurs, and governments are trying to develop super-convenient universities—often in places outside the U.S., including Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Canada.

The Harvards of the world won't go away. They will continue to be the high-fidelity players in the fidelity/convenience trade-off. But a large swath of the population might decide that going deeply into debt before even starting work is too high a price to pay for a high-fidelity education when a more convenient version will do. They will pull out of mid-level universities. Just as surely as many consumers gave up music CDs for Internet downloads, many students will soon decide to put aside a four-year stint at a traditional university for a cheap, easy, and good-enough degree delivered through laptop screens and smart phones. Schools in the middle of the pack—neither high-fidelity nor high-convenience—will have to adapt or suffer.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 20, 2009 10:52 AM
Posted to General News