The online/open education revolution, or not

There’s been a lot in the news lately about online education and open education, which are two slightly different things.  Curt Bonk has a nice post that rounds up a lot of recent articles here; but I have been reading some slightly different things as of late.  I don’t know if there’s a clear connection between all these things or not, but I see at least a vague connection in my own mind:

• David Blake at TechCrunch argues for “Jailbreaking the Degree.” He argues in part that we ought to make education more like iTunes:  “Why buy a whole album when I only value a few songs enough to purchase? Why am I required to finance an entire degree only to be forced to take courses that I do not value? By bundling education into its most popular format, the four-year degree, we are inevitably adding low-utility courses that the consumer should be enabled to avoid.”
• In what is apparently a contest between major publications and outrageous headlines and claims about the importance of edX, there’s The Atlantic’s ‘The Single Biggest Change in Education Since the Printing Press’ (though to be fair, that headline is a quote from the president of the edX initiative, Anant Agarwal) and David Brooks, “The Campus Tsunami.”  Of course, one problem here is Brooks doesn’t appear to know what he’s talking about since he seems to confuse online classes and MOOCs– Joshua Kim argues this pretty clearly here.
• “Shaquille O’Neal Earns Doctorate Degree,” an EdD in Human Resource Development from Barry University.  I’m not entirely sure what that degree is for– other than to have a doctorate.

So, what to make of all this?

For starters, I think that Blake (and others who would take this ala carte approach) are missing at least two of the points of university degrees in terms of both teaching and credentialing.  First, in order to know what classes to not take because they would be a waste of time, one has to have quite a bit more life and educational experience typical of people starting college degrees.  It’s really easy to take a course and then after the fact say “well, that was a waste of time.”  Not so easy before you take the class.

Academics debate the point and amount of general education all the time, as we did vigorously a few years ago at EMU.  But I think the prevailing wisdom is it’s a good educational experience for everyone with a college degree to have at least some introduction to other fields of study– that is, other than a “major” or a “minor”– and there are some basics that most colleges believe students ought to know something about:  writing, math, “the humanities,” and so forth.

As for all of these hyperbolic claims about the revolution of online education and how it is going to change all the rules: we’ve seen this sort of thing before.  Many years ago, I did some research on late 19th/early 20th century correspondence courses– you know, through snail mail.  Without going into details about all that now, there were a lot of people back then who thought that courses through the mail were going to bring education to the masses and largely replace conventional college degree programs.  That turned out not to be the case.  So I’m not saying that online and open education aren’t going to change the way universities work– and I’m all for that.  I’m just saying that I don’t think college degrees are going to become any less important anytime soon.

After all, even Shaq thinks it’s important!  After finishing his undergraduate degree and finishing an online MBA from the University of Phoenix, and now this doctorate.  Why?  I’m not questioning O’Neal’s intelligence or sincerity in pursing a degree, but it’s not like someone is (or isn’t ) going to hire him because of this degree, and he could have just studied and learned on his own.  But the reason for him seems to be similar to a lot of others:  besides having a credential, a college degree represents a personal goal and achievement that is significantly more tangible than participating in a free and relatively anonymous educational “experience.”