Kevin Carey in his recent Chronicle article points to lower division classes as the weakness of the current public university system. Anyone can get a course of these type on line. He correctly points out the big private school brands like Duke, MIT and Stanford can afford to give away courses through iTunes to no impact on their bottom line. Why? Those schools are effectively in the business of vetting employees -- if you get in, you've reached a certain standard; if you get out, you have the stamp of approval (they call it a degree).
Carey's got a telling line on this: "People will pay more for better service, but only so much more."
He follows up with:
" . . . no-cost alternatives on the other side of the accreditation wall is growing. The longer the relentless drumbeat of higher tuition goes on, the greater their appeal."
This cuts two ways. It works against the quality of content as a driving factor in premium services (more on that later). But, it also opens more doors for people who want to learn, and not necessarily get a diploma. That is compelling in certain areas, but impossible in the "union card" areas of education.
For example, I could easily compose, create and put on-line a series of courses based on my years of expertise.
Sports Media Basics
Sports Media Relations (a course I taught in the brick-and-mortar here at UA)
History of Sports (a course I have developed, but can't get the B&M slot to teach)
History of Journalism (another syllabus and lecture set start unusued)
Gee, add a few more goodies like
Investigative Sports Journalism (how do you figure out what's really going on inside)
Convergence Sports
Technology for Backpack Sports Journalism
And real quick, you have a tool kit to enable a whole bunch of Net Media sports reporters.
Now, not a one of those that followed that would have any credentials, but like in space, where they can't hear you scream, on-line do you really need a J-School degree to be effective?
I'd still argue there are things that you can only get in the physical world, but we need to be ready to accept a tremendous virtualization of much of the education process. He quotes the Sloan Corsortium that found that 3.9 million people took an online course in 2007.
That's the REAL takeaway of Carey's warning for my particular area. Where next Columbus? Forward into the kind of world they are promoting on the Apple website (obviously, to sell more Apple computers) of the Arizona State Cronkite School or back to the future with the trades and guilds approach of taking young talent and teaching it the ropes of the 1920s through 1940s?
Carey's got a telling line on this: "People will pay more for better service, but only so much more."
He follows up with:
" . . . no-cost alternatives on the other side of the accreditation wall is growing. The longer the relentless drumbeat of higher tuition goes on, the greater their appeal."
This cuts two ways. It works against the quality of content as a driving factor in premium services (more on that later). But, it also opens more doors for people who want to learn, and not necessarily get a diploma. That is compelling in certain areas, but impossible in the "union card" areas of education.
For example, I could easily compose, create and put on-line a series of courses based on my years of expertise.
Sports Media Basics
Sports Media Relations (a course I taught in the brick-and-mortar here at UA)
History of Sports (a course I have developed, but can't get the B&M slot to teach)
History of Journalism (another syllabus and lecture set start unusued)
Gee, add a few more goodies like
Investigative Sports Journalism (how do you figure out what's really going on inside)
Convergence Sports
Technology for Backpack Sports Journalism
And real quick, you have a tool kit to enable a whole bunch of Net Media sports reporters.
Now, not a one of those that followed that would have any credentials, but like in space, where they can't hear you scream, on-line do you really need a J-School degree to be effective?
I'd still argue there are things that you can only get in the physical world, but we need to be ready to accept a tremendous virtualization of much of the education process. He quotes the Sloan Corsortium that found that 3.9 million people took an online course in 2007.
That's the REAL takeaway of Carey's warning for my particular area. Where next Columbus? Forward into the kind of world they are promoting on the Apple website (obviously, to sell more Apple computers) of the Arizona State Cronkite School or back to the future with the trades and guilds approach of taking young talent and teaching it the ropes of the 1920s through 1940s?
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