More on What You Won’t Get Out of a MOOC

My post on massive open online courses (MOOCs) generated a bit of commentary. Since I am busy with travel, a grant proposal, and a commissioned article on top of the usual research and committee work these days (I don’t teach in the fall), I thought I would summarize that commentary in lieu of a proper Monday post.

First came a post by Aine Seitz McCarthy, one of our PhD students whose blog also focuses on development. Aine (“pronounced like An-ya”) sees MOOCs as a threat to her future employment:

From a (hopefully) future faculty perspective, the impending imposition of MOOCs is ominous.  I can only hope that I will be lucky enough to become employed at an institution like Amherst, where the faculty voted against joining a MOOC program, and the administration and endowment were privileged enough to support that decision.

Aine also notes that, to her, the idea that education as a means of enforcing social norms, values and behaviors “sounded wacko.” I must say that claim sounded a bit odd to me too, until I thought about how Kansans and Texans would react if, say, the federal government were put in charge of what is taught in schools Kansas and Texas. Moreover, if you’ve read Eugen Weber’s Peasants Into Frenchmen, you know that modern France, une et indivisible, was built by imposing the same educational curriculum everywhere on the French territory. (Generally speaking, reading Weber’s book is probably the best thing a student of development can do for herself.)

Then, a friend commented on Facebook on my posting a link to Aine’s post above:

Marc, in your [MOOC] post, you wrote that “going to college … puts you into contact with people who are from very different social strata, who have opinions that may radically differ from your own, and who often grew up in cultures that are very different from your own.”

This is true in some cases, but also untrue in many others. People in college today often just go through the motions. I gave a guest lecture to some fourth-year students yesterday. I lectured about sex, a topic that I thought would interest the students. They barely paid any attention to me; half of them just played with the cell phones. There was no conversation amongst the students; no interaction at all. The instructor tells me this is becoming more and more common in his classes. Students just come, sit, listen passively (if at all), take a few notes, and leave. For many of them, it would seem that a MOOC would be more appropriate, and more cost-effective.

No doubt things are different in some schools (i.e., the more “selective” ones), but even then, I think that much of the social interaction you describe can be had outside of the classroom … I think we need to come up with some better arguments in support of traditional universities — at least for those non-elite’ schools that serve (poorly) the vast majority of students.

The gist of Aine’s post was also about privilege, so point well taken: it is indeed true that I have so far only taught at selective schools. I have little firsthand knowledge of what it’s like for students elsewhere. For students at a commuter school, it may well make sense to learn from MOOCs.

But I did attend a large (over 57,000 students at last count) commuter school as an undergraduate. In my case, most of the socialization came from interacting with others via extracurricular activities, hanging out in the econ students association lounge, and so on. Some sort of self-selection might eventually take place, with those who want that social experience attending a brick-and-mortar school, and those who don’t getting their degrees online.

Lastly, another friend writes, also about privilege:

I basically agree — not only does the state have it’s own interests, but students get a lot out of college other than the content of their coursework. Experience meeting deadlines, working with strangers, developing networks, how to write worth a darn (hopefully), etc.

But as public policy researchers, we should ask “compared to what?”

One of the huge flaws in the American educational system is that it perpetuates intergenerational privilege. And one of the mechanisms of that is all of this other learning that goes on. So perhaps MOOCs would act to level the playing field by both increasing access (lower cost) and by kneecapping the ability of all the kids of high-class families to develop their professional networks? … I think it’s incomplete to talk about who attends colleges, privilege, and MOOCs, without talking about the existing system’s role in reinforcing privilege.

I agree regarding lowering the cost of education. Regarding kneecapping the ability of high-class kids to develop their social networks, however, unless everyone gets their degrees via a MOOC, that is not going to happen, and I think it’s unlikely that we will ever live in an all-MOOC world, if only because competitive forces will push elite schools into offering brick-and-mortar degrees where you can pay extra for the socialization component.