MOOC Mania

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MOOC Mania

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MOOC Mania and the Ambivalent Future of

American Higher EducationSean Andrews, ACLS Public Fellow and Director, NITLE

Shared Libraries

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Some premises

• Context is important• Determination is contextual– Raymond Williams: Determination

derived by the setting of limits and the application of pressures.• What are the key issues in the MOOC

debate?• What are the limits and pressures?• Why are we having this particular

conversation at this particular moment?

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Public higher

ed

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Meritocracy(of learning)

Commodity Degree

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Meritocracy(of learning)

Commodity Degree

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Meritocracy(of learning)

Commodity Degree

Public higher

ed

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Meritocracy(of learning)

Commodity Degree

Plutocracy

Public higher

ed

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Meritocracy(of learning)

Commodity Degree

Plutocracy

Public higher

ed

technology

MOOC Maniatechnology

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Myth of technological sublime

“Today’s world of new media is not the first to be christened with magical powers to transcend the present and institute a new order. But they also demonstrate that transcendence is not easy to sustain. [The] sublime eventually fades into the banality of everyday life.”

- Mosco, Digital Sublime

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“The lid of the classroom has been blown off, and the walls have been set on the circumference of the globe.”

[Thanks to radio,]

“every home has the potentiality of becoming an extension of Carnegie Hall or Harvard University”

- Radio Broadcast Magazine

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"Children in the public schools will be taught practically everything by moving pictures. Certainly they will never be obliged to read history again.”

- D. W. Griffith, quoted by Tim Wu in The Master Switch

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"I believe that 50 years from now, education will be as short and sweet as Twitter is today. It will be like an evening talk. And that will be a fantastic moment.”

- Sebastian Thrun, Udacity founderhttps://www.edsurge.com/n/2013-04-02-udacity-s-sebastian-thrun-on-the-future-of-education

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George Siemans

“The problem of education does not concern me as much as the solutions to the problem of education are starting to concern me.”

- in response to

something Jeff Jarvis said…at a TED talk.

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“Solutionism”

• “An unhealthy preoccupation with sexy, monumental, and narrow-minded solutions [. . .] to problems that are extremely complex, fluid, and contentious.”

• “How problems are composed matters every bit as how they are solved.”

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MOOCs as Solutionism

“The quick fixes it peddles do not exist in a political vacuum. In promising almost immediate and much cheaper results, they can easily undermine support for more ambitious, more intellectually stimulating, but also more demanding reform projects.”

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Meritocracy(of learning)

Commodity Degree

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Drag picture to placeholder or click icon to add

http://www.businessinsider.com/growth-in-college-tuition-vs-growth-in-earnings-for-college-graduates-2012-11

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This is why MOOCs matter. Not because distance learning is some big new thing or because online lectures are a solution to all our problems, but because they’ve come along at a time when students and parents are willing to ask themselves, "Isn’t there some other way to do this?"

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MOOCs as “Disruption”

• Dismisses any political or social answer to the problem.–MARKET, CONSUMERS, and TECH

primary

• Overlooks the political, social, and cultural elements to their vision coming to pass.– True even of Clayton Christensen’s

examples, e.g. disk drives.

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BA Premium

• US has one of the largest earnings premiums: Henwood and Featherstone– “Someone with a bachelor’s earns 77%

more than someone with only a high school diploma (or international equivalent) 24 points above OECD average. The college premium looks to be broadly associated with the general level of inequality, with Brazil and the US at the top, Sweden at the bottom.”

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Plutocracy

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PLUTOCRACY

Since 1970s –Rising inequalityStagnant wagesFalling public funding for higher educationRising student debt

Since 2007- Soaring corporate profitsLittle investmentStubborn unemployment

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Global Plutocracy

“The rich of today are also different from the rich of yesterday. Our light-speed, globally connected economy has led to the rise of a new super-elite that consists, to a notable degree, of first- and second-generation wealth. Its members are hardworking, highly educated, jet-setting meritocrats who feel they are the deserving winners of a tough, worldwide economic competition—and, as a result, have an ambivalent attitude toward those of us who haven’t succeeded quite so spectacularly. They tend to believe in the institutions that permit social mobility, but are less enthusiastic about the economic redistribution—i.e., taxes—it takes to pay for those institutions.” 

http://breakingculture.tumblr.com/post/41790069710/reflective-writing-and-expropriation

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Workers don’t lack skills, they lack workhttp://www.epi.org/publication/workers-dont-lack-skills-lack-work/

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“For full-time, full-year workers, the hourly wage declines from 2000 to 2012 represent a roughly $3,200 decline.”http://www.epi.org/publication/snapshot-wages-young-college-graduates-failed-grow/

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No jobs because no investment

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/liberal-arts-majors-didnt-kill-the-economy/272940/?fb_action_ids=10151520078370485&fb_action_types=og.recommends&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582

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Bruce Bartlett, in NYT

“many corporations are holding vast amounts of cash and other liquid assets, using them neither for investment nor to benefit shareholders. These assets are largely earned and held overseas, and not subject to American taxes until the money is brought home.”

“As of the third quarter of 2012 nonfinancial corporations in the United States held $1.7 trillion of liquid assets”

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Savings, not investment

MOOC Maniahttp://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/12/10/1308981/chart-corporate-profits-skyrocket-while-corporate-taxes-plummet/?mobile=nc

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Drag picture to placeholder or click icon to add

http://www.businessinsider.com/growth-in-college-tuition-vs-growth-in-earnings-for-college-graduates-2012-11

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All “perfectly legal”

• “Texas gives out $19 billion per year in corporate subsidies.”

• “To help balance its budget last year, Texas cut public education spending by $5.4 billion — a significant decrease considering that it already ranked 11th from the bottom among all states in per-pupil financing, according to recent data from the Census Bureau”– http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/03/us/winners-and-losers-in-texas.html?smid=fb-share&_r=2&#h[]

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Tech companies as tax dodgers

• “Apple deferred taxes on over $35.4 billion in offshore income between 2009 and 2011.”– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/04/business/an-inquiry-into-tech-giants-tax-strategies-nears-an-end.html?_r=0

• “Google Inc. avoided about $2 billion in worldwide income taxes in 2011 by shifting $9.8 billion in revenues into a Bermuda shell company, almost double the total from three years before, filings show.”– http://breakingculture.tumblr.com/post/37718667423/google-is-a-u-s-tax-deadbeat

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Public higher

ed• Not just “Public” schools, but how

and why we, as a society fund and support education.

• Cannot separate higher ed from k-12, which is also seeing many of the same threats/pressures• Private market more efficient• Testing to justify ROI of public funds• Technology = efficiency

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e.g.

• Florida - Now mandatory that all students must take at least one class online before graduating high school.– Led by Jeb Bush– Supporter of Academic Partnerships

• Virtual Charter systems in FL, Colorado, Virginia, and Texas among other states.– Teacher:student can be as high as 1:137–Widespread graft, little oversight.

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Stats

• US – Spends 1/3 more than OECD average on education, second highest of any country (exceeded only by Iceland)

• 41% of Ed spending on Tertiary Education, 15 points above average.

• 23% of Americans in their 20s are enrolled in some form of higher ed. 2% below OECD average

– Finland = 43%– EU Average = 33%

• 16th in terms of completion

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Obama Admin

• Leading world in BA by 2020• Higher rate of completion• Lower debt• Time to degree (three years ideal)• “Accountability”– Bush era Spellings report

recommendation

• Western Governor’s as model– Competency based; no tenured faculty;

all online; public, non-profit, lower cost.

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Not public vs. private

• Federal, state and local dollars subsidize education at all levels – because of our meritocratic ideology.

• Instead: –Who will use federal dollars to produce

more degrees/credentialed citizens?– And what kind of skills will they teach.

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Commodity Degree

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True disruptive innovation

• For profits – mining public dollars efficiently by exploiting underserved students who qualify for higher Pell grants– not technological – political economic– Spend< 25% of funds on education–More on marketing, recruiting, debt

peonage– 10% of ed market, 25% of federal aid– In some cases 85% of income from tax $

$– http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CPRT-112SPRT74931/pdf/CPRT-112SPRT74931.pdf

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http://americanindependent.com/218052/university-of-phoenix-fought-against-community-college-expansion

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As the share of enrollment in the for-profit sector increased from 6% in fall 2001 to 12% in fall 2010, the share of Pell Grant funds going to students in this sector increased from 14% to 25%. In fall 2011, for-profit enrollments remained at 12% of FTE students, and the sector’s share of Pell Grants declined to 21%.

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2011 Pell Grants = $37 billion

21% = $7.5 billion

+21% Stafford+23% Unsub. Stafford

e.g. University of Phoenix derives 85-88% of revenues from U.S. Government funding

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Pell helps colleges poach middle class payments

• “more than one-third of public colleges and nearly two-thirds of private colleges engage in “gapping” — providing lower-income students with aid packages that don’t come close to meeting their financial need. In the parlance of enrollment management, this is often called “admit-deny,” in which schools deliberately underfund financially needy students in order to discourage them from enrolling.”

• http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/pellprivates_test/Sheet1?:embed=y&:display_count=no

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Hmmm

• Tech industry investing in more training for people to build the robots to replace us– Udacity, GIT Computer Science MA

MOOC

• VC hoping to cash in on federal dollars set aside for this training– For-profits didn’t pan out, but maybe

rebranding of online will pay off.– Lots of money in this– And a lot of people to be served.

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Competency based credentials

• Southern New Hamshire University– Predicted to make $200 million in 2013-

2014– Fully online

• Governor’s State University– Amendment written in 2005 allowing

them to grant degree based on competency instead of credit hour.

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My Verdict

• We must do all of the above– Improve use of ed tech– Combat plutocratic abandonment of

education, decent jobs and wages, and – Ensure the future of the U.S.

meritocracy

• …Maybe we should do a MOOC on this

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Thank You

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