This week, I was taken back in time to my interview for the PLA. Of course, this brought some initial discomfort (The nerves! The angst!), but once I was able to move past that, I returned to the question I chose to answer from that preselected list we were given before our interviews. The question was about MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses – and their implications for the future of higher education. As we continued our class discussions about the power of money and brainstormed how we can integrate our interests into our policy projects, I hearkened back to that question I nervously answered last March, and began to think about the power of money in higher education, specifically in terms of MOOCs…
In class, we talked a lot about the way money impacts us as human beings – does it change our values? Does it transform us into people we wouldn’t have been if we were penniless? I thought about these questions a lot, and eventually began to think about the way money impacts me on broader terms, how money might impact my future and the field of work that interests me most – higher education. As a prospective educator and a current student, there are multiple aspects of higher education that peak my interest, like the cost of attending college and the issue of student debt. However, this week I chose to put those more obvious concerns aside and focus on the financial implications involved in the less heated, though equally important debate about the financial implications of Massive Open Online Courses.
In my opinion, the sheer number of positives outweighs the negatives in terms of the scope and effects of MOOCs; however, the potential negative impacts carry a heavier weight from my perspective. But first, a little bit of background: As the name suggests, MOOCs are 1) massive – sometimes with more than 100,000 students enrolled in a single course; 2) open – no tuition, no admissions officers that screen potential candidates; and 3) online – access to the internet is all you need to get lectures and assignments (see this report for more on MOOCs). As this article from U.S. News suggests, MOOCs offer “Free, high-quality classes to students anywhere in the world.” They allow people to learn from professors at top universities and gain knowledge that may have been unattainable otherwise. Sounds like a pretty good deal, no?
While MOOCs sounded appealing to me at first, I began to wonder about the effect they could have on my role as a future professor (…assuming that I do in fact get there one day). In reading the comments of articles online, I noticed concerns that MOOCs could devalue the worth of professors and other educators at institutions of higher learning, especially those that teach lower level courses required across the board for students in a certain major. For example, if a MOOC servicing thousands of students were offered for a class like Econ 101, the lecturers and professors that typically handle that course could be out of a job. As someone that sees themselves teaching introductory Speech Communication courses, classes that already have developing online options here at Penn State, this is concerning.
Of course, there’s another side to the case; some could argue that MOOCs increase the efficiency of higher education by streamlining the process of disseminating knowledge and reducing a university’s costs by lowering the number of paid faculty members. I suppose this is possible, but I value the one-on-one interactions that small classroom settings provide, and would hate to see that phased out. Not to mention the fact that I, along with the already existing crop of professors, don’t want to miss out on a paying opportunity to teach the subject I love.
Finally, there are possible financial repercussions of MOOCs for universities overall. That same U.S. News article asks an important question: “As students turn to MOOCs taught by Ivy League instructors…will regional and less-selective schools lose their student base?” And by extension, a significant portion of their financial support?
I’ll be the first to admit that these concerns about MOOCs are a bit far-reaching. It’s possible that none of them will manifest themselves, but it’s certainly possible that they will; that’s why it’s an important issue for all of us to consider right now. The consequences of any issues with MOOCs are down the road, but I think they could arrive sooner than we think. As I brainstorm ideas for the policy paper, I realize that my thoughts continually return to the theme of education. Though I understand that I probably won’t cover MOOCs, thinking about the issue has helped me realize that there are a lot of less-examined subjects under this umbrella that are worth taking a look at. I’ll carry that lesson with me as I continue to narrow my interests and hone in on a topic.
Sources Cited:
Click to access 2014_Almanac_Saltzman.pdf
http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2013/05/14/explore-the-mooc-controversy
Sources Consulted:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/26/moocs-skepticism_n_2191314.html
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