Megan McArdle on the recent announcement that MIT will be offering online programs (at lower cost than regular courses) and if this is a sign of the future (as it almost certainly is) what changes will occur in the realm of higher education:
I can see all sorts of factors that might combine to preserve the status quo, from signaling and status and networking, to the desire of college students for a four-year debt-financed semi-vacation. On the other hand, disruption never looks inevitable until it suddenly is — if you’d told someone in 1955 that GM was going to have its lunch eaten by some Japanese upstart, they would have laughed until the tears came. So it’s interesting and maybe even useful to contemplate what the college system would look like if this sort of distance learning becomes the norm.
1. Education will end up being dominated by a few huge incumbents. [. . .]
2. Online education will kill the liberal arts degree. [. . .]
3. Professors (course developers) will be selected for teaching instead of research brilliance. [. . .]
4. 95% of tenure-track professors will lose their jobs. [. . .]
5. The corollary of #4 is the end of universities as research centers. [. . .]
6. Young job-seekers will need new ways to signal diligence. [. . .]
7. The economics of graduate school will change substantially. [. . .]
8. Civil society will have to substitute for the intense friend networks that are built at college. [. . .]
9. The role of schooling in upward mobility will change. [. . .]
10. The young will have a much lower financial burden in their 20s. [. . .]
11. The tutoring industry will boom. [. . .]
12. If the credentials become valuable, cheating will be a problem. [. . .]
