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James Baker
First, I recommend that everyone read Marc Bodnick's answer: Marc Bodnick's answer to Why would e-learning kill universities if textbooks did not?
He does an excellent analysis of the issues, covering both the strengths and weaknesses of universities (and their high cost) and makes projections for the future.
However, I would like to respond directly to the question's comparison of e-learning to textbooks and then make a radical proposal.
First, it is very difficult to educate yourself just from textbooks. If you are smart enough and work hard enough, you can do it. But it is a lot of work and you need a lot of motivation to carry it through for a whole curriculum. For only a small fraction of potential college students is this a reasonable alternative. The competition from textbook-based self-instruction is not a threat to university's revenue share, especially since a textbook can't offer a degree.
Is it fair then to compare e-learning to learning from a textbook?
Maybe. Maybe not.
If the e-learning course consists of nothing more than videos of classroom lectures plus homework exercises from a textbook, then the comparison may be fair.
As an example, consider the free on-video that MIT offers for many of their courses. Is MIT losing revenue? I don't know, but MIT doesn't seem to be worried about it. There are several reasons for that. In particular, you learn a lot from direct face-to-face interaction with faculty and fellow students. That is also missing from textbook-based self instruction. In addition, although video lectures help a little, they don't solve the problem I mentioned above. It requires a lot of motivation and hard work for your to teach yourself an entire curriculum just from video lectures or video lectures plus textbooks.
However, a good e-learning course can provide much more than just videos of lectures. Furthermore, I think we could develop new methodologies, new delivery technologies, and much better supporting infrastructure. Thus, e-learning could become a more potent competitor in the future. Marc concludes that universities will last a long time, but that within 20-30 years they will be in substantial decline. I agree with that forecast if we extrapolate the existing trends.
However, I would like to propose a more optimistic scenario. This scenario is based on what I call a "Golden Rule" proposal. That is, under my proposal both universities and students will be better off.
Universities would still get the revenue they need to cover their expenses while offering top quality education. The net cost to students would be lower, and they would learn more and retain the learning better than at present. In addition, what they learn will be more relevant to their future careers.
If it is possible to achieve all these benefits, why isn't it already being done?
Actually, many of the pieces in my proposal are already being done. However, as a whole it will require a radical change, so it hasn't been done yet and can't be done overnight.
There are several things that universities need to do:
1) Universities need to adopt a business orientation in a certain sense which I will describe below. Universities have a very strong business orientation in certain ways, but it others they have no concept at all at what makes business sense. I know you don't yet know what I am talking about. I can't explain what I mean in this paragraph. I will give a longer explanation after I have finished this list and provided some context.
2) Universities should wholeheartedly adopt e-learning and become the leaders in creating the methodologies and technologies I mentioned above. I know that sounds against their own interests, but remember the Golden Rule and that this is not a zero-sum game.
3) Universities should increase the number of project-based courses, and the projects should be valuable real-world projects that generate something of value. This applies to humanities courses as well as engineering courses. In any course there are things of value that student project teams could produce. In particular, they can produce more and better e-learning materials. Such projects go hand-in-hand with universities taking the leadership in point (2) above. Also note that in doing these projects, the students will learn-by-doing and learn-by-teaching, which are two of the most effective learning techniques. Project teams can work over the internet and can include both e-learning and classroom students.
4) Universities should enable students to make money from the contributions to the value in their projects. This is probably the most radical change in my proposal. It might even require legislation to make it possible without jeopardizing universities' non-profit tax status.
In some cases it may take multiple student projects, perhaps spread over multiple courses and multiple semesters to make a Minimal Viable Product. There may be many contributors to a given revenue-producing end result. Universities will need to develop the infrastructure to track all this. On the other hand, if they can develop the infrastructure and integrate it with the grading system, it will have the added advantage of giving grades the credibility of real-world relevance.
The "business sense" that I mentioned above includes developing the value-tracking methodology, but it includes more than that. In particular, it will be necessary to be able to analyze market needs and design projects that will meet those needs. This process is just what any successful business needs to do. Each project will be like a mini-business and the university will be like the parent company that supplies all support and business analysis infrastructure that is not contained within the project by itself. Universities understand education as a business, but university education is a unique business. It is a big business with special characteristics. You need a completely different kind of expertise to make small scale entrepreneurial projects profitable.
Commercial partners can help with this process. They can propose projects that they will pay for directly and immediately. Not only will this give immediate revenue, it will validate the market. This is another positive-sum relationship. This will be so valuable to the commercial customers, that they may volunteer some of their staff as mentors and project leaders.
The students will be better off because they will be earning money to cover part of their college expenses. They also will benefit from learning the material better. The learning will be directly relevant to the work they will do when they graduate. The knowledge, experience and relationships that they build will improve their prospects of finding a good job.
The universities will benefit because they will be more effective in meeting the educational mandate. They will also benefit financially (even without taking revenue from the projects except for direct expenses) because it will be easier to attract the best students without lowering tuition because the net cost to the students will be less.
The faculty will benefit from the closer contact with industry and from having more engaged and motivated students.
If the universities can do this, they will have an e-learning program that will be very difficult for non-university-based e-learning programs to emulate.
The students, the university, the faculty, the commercial partners and the future employers will all benefit. It is a five-sided win-win situation. It will be hard to do, but it will be worth it.
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First, I recommend that everyone read Marc Bodnick's answer: Marc Bodnick's answer to Why would e-learning kill universities if textbooks did not?
He does an excellent analysis of the issues, covering both the strengths and weaknesses of universities (and their high cost) and makes projections for the future.
However, I would like to respond directly to the question's comparison of e-learning to textbooks and then make a radical proposal.
First, it is very difficult to educate yourself just from textbooks. If you are smart enough and work hard enough, you can do it. But it is a lot of work and you need a lot of motivation to carry it through for a whole curriculum. For only a small fraction of potential college students is this a reasonable alternative. The competition from textbook-based self-instruction is not a threat to university's revenue share, especially since a textbook can't offer a degree.
Is it fair then to compare e-learning to learning from a textbook?
Maybe. Maybe not.
If the e-learning course consists of nothing more than videos of classroom lectures plus homework exercises from a textbook, then the comparison may be fair.
As an example, consider the free on-video that MIT offers for many of their courses. Is MIT losing revenue? I don't know, but MIT doesn't seem to be worried about it. There are several reasons for that. In particular, you learn a lot from direct face-to-face interaction with faculty and fellow students. That is also missing from textbook-based self instruction. In addition, although video lectures help a little, they don't solve the problem I mentioned above. It requires a lot of motivation and hard work for your to teach yourself an entire curriculum just from video lectures or video lectures plus textbooks.
However, a good e-learning course can provide much more than just videos of lectures. Furthermore, I think we could develop new methodologies, new delivery technologies, and much better supporting infrastructure. Thus, e-learning could become a more potent competitor in the future. Marc concludes that universities will last a long time, but that within 20-30 years they will be in substantial decline. I agree with that forecast if we extrapolate the existing trends.
However, I would like to propose a more optimistic scenario. This scenario is based on what I call a "Golden Rule" proposal. That is, under my proposal both universities and students will be better off.
Universities would still get the revenue they need to cover their expenses while offering top quality education. The net cost to students would be lower, and they would learn more and retain the learning better than at present. In addition, what they learn will be more relevant to their future careers.
If it is possible to achieve all these benefits, why isn't it already being done?
Actually, many of the pieces in my proposal are already being done. However, as a whole it will require a radical change, so it hasn't been done yet and can't be done overnight.
There are several things that universities need to do:
1) Universities need to adopt a business orientation in a certain sense which I will describe below. Universities have a very strong business orientation in certain ways, but it others they have no concept at all at what makes business sense. I know you don't yet know what I am talking about. I can't explain what I mean in this paragraph. I will give a longer explanation after I have finished this list and provided some context.
2) Universities should wholeheartedly adopt e-learning and become the leaders in creating the methodologies and technologies I mentioned above. I know that sounds against their own interests, but remember the Golden Rule and that this is not a zero-sum game.
3) Universities should increase the number of project-based courses, and the projects should be valuable real-world projects that generate something of value. This applies to humanities courses as well as engineering courses. In any course there are things of value that student project teams could produce. In particular, they can produce more and better e-learning materials. Such projects go hand-in-hand with universities taking the leadership in point (2) above. Also note that in doing these projects, the students will learn-by-doing and learn-by-teaching, which are two of the most effective learning techniques. Project teams can work over the internet and can include both e-learning and classroom students.
4) Universities should enable students to make money from the contributions to the value in their projects. This is probably the most radical change in my proposal. It might even require legislation to make it possible without jeopardizing universities' non-profit tax status.
In some cases it may take multiple student projects, perhaps spread over multiple courses and multiple semesters to make a Minimal Viable Product. There may be many contributors to a given revenue-producing end result. Universities will need to develop the infrastructure to track all this. On the other hand, if they can develop the infrastructure and integrate it with the grading system, it will have the added advantage of giving grades the credibility of real-world relevance.
The "business sense" that I mentioned above includes developing the value-tracking methodology, but it includes more than that. In particular, it will be necessary to be able to analyze market needs and design projects that will meet those needs. This process is just what any successful business needs to do. Each project will be like a mini-business and the university will be like the parent company that supplies all support and business analysis infrastructure that is not contained within the project by itself. Universities understand education as a business, but university education is a unique business. It is a big business with special characteristics. You need a completely different kind of expertise to make small scale entrepreneurial projects profitable.
Commercial partners can help with this process. They can propose projects that they will pay for directly and immediately. Not only will this give immediate revenue, it will validate the market. This is another positive-sum relationship. This will be so valuable to the commercial customers, that they may volunteer some of their staff as mentors and project leaders.
The students will be better off because they will be earning money to cover part of their college expenses. They also will benefit from learning the material better. The learning will be directly relevant to the work they will do when they graduate. The knowledge, experience and relationships that they build will improve their prospects of finding a good job.
The universities will benefit because they will be more effective in meeting the educational mandate. They will also benefit financially (even without taking revenue from the projects except for direct expenses) because it will be easier to attract the best students without lowering tuition because the net cost to the students will be less.
The faculty will benefit from the closer contact with industry and from having more engaged and motivated students.
If the universities can do this, they will have an e-learning program that will be very difficult for non-university-based e-learning programs to emulate.
The students, the university, the faculty, the commercial partners and the future employers will all benefit. It is a five-sided win-win situation. It will be hard to do, but it will be worth it.
See Questions On Quora
Continue reading...
