Universities have come to realize that online is not a fad. The question is not whether to engage in this area but how to do it.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Online education that leaves almost everybody behind except for highly motivated students, to me, can't be a viable path to education.
I think we can question whether degrees are antediluvian. Online learning has flexibility. Why not master courses in energy, writing, communications, and engineering and get a credential?
You cannot make thousands of universities or hundreds of thousands of professors, but with technology and the Internet you can have great courses and make a digital university.
The university is in danger of losing its monopoly, and for good reason. The most visible threat are the new online courses, many of them free, with some of the best professors in their respective fields.
In the universities, we teach you what we decide you need to know. And the employers find out when they hire people that students didn't learn what we needed them to learn. Online learning offerings, like the University of Phoenix, have relationships with employers and teach what you need to know.
I can see a day soon where you'll create your own college degree by taking the best online courses from the best professors from around the world - some computing from Stanford, some entrepreneurship from Wharton, some ethics from Brandeis, some literature from Edinburgh - paying only the nominal fee for the certificates of completion.
Online is such an important platform... it's all one giant melting pot of talents. The times are changing. It's just art now. You can share your audiences with everyone, and it's exciting.
Online education, then, can serve two goals. For students lucky enough to have access to great teachers, blended learning can mean even better outcomes at the same or lower cost. And for the millions here and abroad who lack access to good, in-person education, online learning can open doors that would otherwise remain closed.
The Internet will save higher education, but it may kill your alma mater.
My goal is that we should have a rich engagement online that caters to a general and scholarly audience and that can provide a seamless experience for people, whether they are up the road or on the other side of the world.
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