2. MOOC Mania
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3. MOOC Mania
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4.
5. MOOC Mania and the
Ambivalent Future of
American Higher Education
Sean Andrews, ACLS Public
Fellow and Director, NITLE
Shared Libraries
6. MOOC Mania
Some premises
• Context is important
• Determination is contextual
– Raymond Williams: Determination derived by
the setting of limits and the application of
pressures.
• What are the key issues in the MOOC debate?
• What are the limits and pressures?
• Why are we having this particular conversation at
this particular moment?
19. MOOC Mania
Myth of technological sublime
―Today’s world of new media is not the first
to be christened with magical powers to
transcend the present and institute a new
order. But they also demonstrate that
transcendence is not easy to sustain.
[The] sublime eventually fades into the
banality of everyday life.‖
- Mosco, Digital Sublime
20. MOOC Mania
―The lid of the classroom
has been blown off, and the
walls have been set on the
circumference of the globe.‖
[Thanks to radio,]
―every home has the
potentiality of becoming an
extension of Carnegie Hall
or Harvard University‖
- Radio Broadcast Magazine
22. MOOC Mania
"I believe that 50 years from now, education
will be as short and sweet as Twitter is
today. It will be like an evening talk. And that
will be a fantastic moment.”
- Sebastian Thrun, Udacity founder
https://www.edsurge.com/n/2013-04-02-udacity-s-sebastian-thrun-on-the-future-of-education
23. MOOC Mania
George Siemans
―The problem of education does not concern
me as much as the solutions to the
problem of education are starting to
concern me.‖
- in response to
something Jeff Jarvis
said…at a TED talk.
24. MOOC Mania
―Solutionism‖
• ―An unhealthy preoccupation
with sexy, monumental, and
narrow-minded solutions [. .
.] to problems that are
extremely complex, fluid, and
contentious.‖
• ―How problems are
composed matters every bit
as how they are solved.‖
25. MOOC Mania
MOOCs as Solutionism
―The quick fixes it peddles do not exist in a
political vacuum. In promising almost
immediate and much cheaper results, they
can easily undermine support for more
ambitious, more intellectually stimulating,
but also more demanding reform projects.‖
28. MOOC Mania
This is why MOOCs matter. Not because
distance learning is some big new thing or
because online lectures are a solution to
all our problems, but because they’ve
come along at a time when students and
parents are willing to ask themselves,
"Isn’t there some other way to do this?"
29. MOOC Mania
MOOCs as ―Disruption‖
• Dismisses any political or social answer to
the problem.
– MARKET, CONSUMERS, and TECH primary
• Overlooks the political, social, and cultural
elements to their vision coming to pass.
– True even of Clayton Christensen’s examples,
e.g. disk drives.
30. MOOC Mania
BA Premium
• US has one of the largest earnings
premiums: Henwood and Featherstone
– ―Someone with a bachelor’s earns 77% more
than someone with only a high school diploma
(or international equivalent) 24 points above
OECD average. The college premium looks to
be broadly associated with the general level
of inequality, with Brazil and the US at the top,
Sweden at the bottom.‖
34. MOOC Mania
Global Plutocracy
―The rich of today are also different from the rich of
yesterday. Our light-speed, globally connected economy
has led to the rise of a new super-elite that consists, to a
notable degree, of first- and second-generation wealth.
Its members are hardworking, highly educated, jet-
setting meritocrats who feel they are the deserving
winners of a tough, worldwide economic competition—
and, as a result, have an ambivalent attitude toward
those of us who haven’t succeeded quite so
spectacularly. They tend to believe in the institutions that
permit social mobility, but are less enthusiastic about the
economic redistribution—i.e., taxes—it takes to pay for
those institutions.‖
http://breakingculture.tumblr.com/post/41790069710/reflective-writing-and-expropriation
43. MOOC Mania
Workers don’t lack skills, they lack work
http://www.epi.org/publication/workers-dont-lack-skills-lack-work/
44. MOOC Mania
“For full-time, full-year workers, the hourly wage declines from
2000 to 2012 represent a roughly $3,200 decline.”
http://www.epi.org/publication/snapshot-wages-young-college-graduates-failed-grow/
45. MOOC Mania
No jobs because no investment
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/liberal-arts-majors-didnt-kill-the-
economy/272940/?fb_action_ids=10151520078370485&fb_action_types=og.recommends&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation
_id=288381481237582
46. MOOC Mania
Bruce Bartlett, in NYT
―many corporations are holding vast amounts of
cash and other liquid assets, using them neither
for investment nor to benefit shareholders.
These assets are largely earned and held
overseas, and not subject to American taxes
until the money is brought home.‖
―As of the third quarter of 2012 nonfinancial
corporations in the United States held $1.7
trillion of liquid assets‖
51. MOOC Mania
All ―perfectly legal‖
• ―Texas gives out $19 billion per year in
corporate subsidies.‖
• ―To help balance its budget last year,
Texas cut public education spending by
$5.4 billion — a significant decrease
considering that it already ranked 11th
from the bottom among all states in per-
pupil financing, according to recent data
from the Census Bureau‖
– http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/03/us/winners-and-losers-in-texas.html?smid=fb-share&_r=2&#h[]
52. MOOC Mania
Tech companies as tax dodgers
• ―Apple deferred taxes on over $35.4 billion
in offshore income between 2009 and
2011.‖
– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/04/business/an-inquiry-into-tech-giants-tax-strategies-nears-an-end.html?_r=0
• ―Google Inc. avoided about $2 billion in
worldwide income taxes in 2011 by shifting
$9.8 billion in revenues into a Bermuda
shell company, almost double the total
from three years before, filings show.‖
– http://breakingculture.tumblr.com/post/37718667423/google-is-a-u-s-tax-deadbeat
54. MOOC Mania
Public
higher
ed
• Not just ―Public‖ schools, but how and why
we, as a society fund and support
education.
• Cannot separate higher ed from k-12,
which is also seeing many of the same
threats/pressures
• Private market more efficient
• Testing to justify ROI of public funds
• Technology = efficiency
55. MOOC Mania
e.g.
• Florida - Now mandatory that all students
must take at least one class online before
graduating high school.
– Led by Jeb Bush
– Supporter of Academic Partnerships
• Virtual Charter systems in FL, Colorado,
Virginia, and Texas among other states.
– Teacher:student can be as high as 1:137
– Widespread graft, little oversight.
56. MOOC Mania
Stats
• US – Spends 1/3 more than OECD average on
education, second highest of any country (exceeded
only by Iceland)
• 41% of Ed spending on Tertiary Education, 15 points
above average.
• 23% of Americans in their 20s are enrolled in some
form of higher ed. 2% below OECD average
– Finland = 43%
– EU Average = 33%
• 16th in terms of completion
57. MOOC Mania
Obama Admin
• Leading world in BA by 2020
• Higher rate of completion
• Lower debt
• Time to degree (three years ideal)
• ―Accountability‖
– Bush era Spellings report recommendation
• Western Governor’s as model
– Competency based; no tenured faculty; all
online; public, non-profit, lower cost.
58. MOOC Mania
Not public vs. private
• Federal, state and local dollars subsidize
education at all levels – because of our
meritocratic ideology.
• Instead:
– Who will use federal dollars to produce more
degrees/credentialed citizens?
– And what kind of skills will they teach.
60. MOOC Mania
True disruptive innovation
• For profits – mining public dollars
efficiently by exploiting underserved
students who qualify for higher Pell grants
– not technological – political economic
– Spend< 25% of funds on education
– More on marketing, recruiting, debt peonage
– 10% of ed market, 25% of federal aid
– In some cases 85% of income from tax $$
– http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CPRT-112SPRT74931/pdf/CPRT-112SPRT74931.pdf
63. MOOC Mania
As the share of enrollment in the for-profit sector increased from 6% in fall 2001 to 12% in fall 2010, the share
of Pell Grant funds going to students in this sector increased from 14% to 25%. In fall 2011, for-profit
enrollments remained at 12% of FTE students, and the sector’s share of Pell Grants declined to 21%.
64. MOOC Mania
2011 Pell Grants = $37
billion
21% = $7.5 billion
+21% Stafford
+23% Unsub. Stafford
e.g. University of Phoenix
derives 85-88% of revenues
from U.S. Government
funding
66. MOOC Mania
Pell helps colleges poach middle
class payments
• ―more than one-third of public colleges and nearly
two-thirds of private colleges engage in ―gapping‖
— providing lower-income students with aid
packages that don’t come close to meeting their
financial need. In the parlance of enrollment
management, this is often called ―admit-deny,‖ in
which schools deliberately underfund financially
needy students in order to discourage them from
enrolling.‖
• http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/pellprivate
s_test/Sheet1?:embed=y&:display_count=no
69. MOOC Mania
Hmmm
• Tech industry investing in more training for
people to build the robots to replace us
– Udacity, GIT Computer Science MA MOOC
• VC hoping to cash in on federal dollars set
aside for this training
– For-profits didn’t pan out, but maybe
rebranding of online will pay off.
– Lots of money in this
– And a lot of people to be served.
70. MOOC Mania
Competency based credentials
• Southern New Hamshire University
– Predicted to make $200 million in 2013-2014
– Fully online
• Governor’s State University
– Amendment written in 2005 allowing them to
grant degree based on competency instead of
credit hour.
71. MOOC Mania
My Verdict
• We must do all of the above
– Improve use of ed tech
– Combat plutocratic abandonment of
education, decent jobs and wages, and
– Ensure the future of the U.S. meritocracy
• …Maybe we should do a MOOC on this
As a benefit of membership, NITLE Shared AcademicsTM offers members of The NITLE Network access to expert presenters without incurring the travel costs of bringing them to their individual campuses while additionally enabling them to be in a virtual classroom with colleagues at other institutions. This platform allows for a high level of engagement much like you would find in a classroom at one of our institutions.
The key issue we are really debating here is public higher education – if not public education as a whole. As we’ll see, there is a very large wage premium for the BA in the US. Yet we do not have the capacity to give everyone a BA (in part because that would mean more investment in education.)This creates a perverse tension between what colleges and universities do, and whether students actually engage in deep, reflective, critical learning (the BA or BS being a badge earned through learning) (CLICK FOR MERITOCRACY)– or they just go through the required motions, pay the required fees and end up with a commodity degree. (CLICK FOR GRAPHIC) This is an unresolved tension because our current conditions of austerity (Click for Blyth) we cannot contemplate increased public funding for higher education – whether through building public institutions like community colleges, or increasing Pell grants or other aid for needy students. These grants, as we’ll see, aren’t nearly as helpful to the poorest students as we might hope anyway.So by public higher ed, I don’t mean only public colleges, but the notion of the United States having a broadly functioning higher education system through which anyone with the intellectual ability and desire could acquire a degree that is actually indicative of learning and growth rather than the ability to pay.The limits of austerity are not natural, but are set in large part by a set of ideologies promoted by the business community – especially among financiers. So, for instance, Moody’s seems very keen to promote MOOCs as an advance – as in their announcement yesterday afternoon that having a MOOC might help a large university’s credit rating, but might hurt a small college. (click for graphic, then for it to disappear.)In short, the limits on what can be done in public education are maintained by pressures from what we will call the plutocratic thought leaders in the U.S. (click for graphic) and by the exciting new technologies (CLICK for GRAPHICS) that may enhance learning, learning communities, and learning analytics. I am going to go quickly through laying out this argument and then I hope you can tell me if it sounds right and, if so, what we can do about it.
The key issue we are really debating here is public higher education – if not public education as a whole. As we’ll see, there is a very large wage premium for the BA in the US. Yet we do not have the capacity to give everyone a BA (in part because that would mean more investment in education.)This creates a perverse tension between what colleges and universities do, and whether students actually engage in deep, reflective, critical learning (the BA or BS being a badge earned through learning) (CLICK FOR MERITOCRACY)– or they just go through the required motions, pay the required fees and end up with a commodity degree. (CLICK FOR GRAPHIC) This is an unresolved tension because our current conditions of austerity (Click for Blyth) we cannot contemplate increased public funding for higher education – whether through building public institutions like community colleges, or increasing Pell grants or other aid for needy students. These grants, as we’ll see, aren’t nearly as helpful to the poorest students as we might hope anyway.So by public higher ed, I don’t mean only public colleges, but the notion of the United States having a broadly functioning higher education system through which anyone with the intellectual ability and desire could acquire a degree that is actually indicative of learning and growth rather than the ability to pay.The limits of austerity are not natural, but are set in large part by a set of ideologies promoted by the business community – especially among financiers. So, for instance, Moody’s seems very keen to promote MOOCs as an advance – as in their announcement yesterday afternoon that having a MOOC might help a large university’s credit rating, but might hurt a small college. (click for graphic, then for it to disappear.)In short, the limits on what can be done in public education are maintained by pressures from what we will call the plutocratic thought leaders in the U.S. (click for graphic) and by the exciting new technologies (CLICK for GRAPHICS) that may enhance learning, learning communities, and learning analytics. I am going to go quickly through laying out this argument and then I hope you can tell me if it sounds right and, if so, what we can do about it.
The key issue we are really debating here is public higher education – if not public education as a whole. As we’ll see, there is a very large wage premium for the BA in the US. Yet we do not have the capacity to give everyone a BA (in part because that would mean more investment in education.)This creates a perverse tension between what colleges and universities do, and whether students actually engage in deep, reflective, critical learning (the BA or BS being a badge earned through learning) (CLICK FOR MERITOCRACY)– or they just go through the required motions, pay the required fees and end up with a commodity degree. (CLICK FOR GRAPHIC) This is an unresolved tension because our current conditions of austerity (Click for Blyth) we cannot contemplate increased public funding for higher education – whether through building public institutions like community colleges, or increasing Pell grants or other aid for needy students. These grants, as we’ll see, aren’t nearly as helpful to the poorest students as we might hope anyway.So by public higher ed, I don’t mean only public colleges, but the notion of the United States having a broadly functioning higher education system through which anyone with the intellectual ability and desire could acquire a degree that is actually indicative of learning and growth rather than the ability to pay.The limits of austerity are not natural, but are set in large part by a set of ideologies promoted by the business community – especially among financiers. So, for instance, Moody’s seems very keen to promote MOOCs as an advance – as in their announcement yesterday afternoon that having a MOOC might help a large university’s credit rating, but might hurt a small college. (click for graphic, then for it to disappear.)In short, the limits on what can be done in public education are maintained by pressures from what we will call the plutocratic thought leaders in the U.S. (click for graphic) and by the exciting new technologies (CLICK for GRAPHICS) that may enhance learning, learning communities, and learning analytics. I am going to go quickly through laying out this argument and then I hope you can tell me if it sounds right and, if so, what we can do about it.
The key issue we are really debating here is public higher education – if not public education as a whole. As we’ll see, there is a very large wage premium for the BA in the US. Yet we do not have the capacity to give everyone a BA (in part because that would mean more investment in education.)This creates a perverse tension between what colleges and universities do, and whether students actually engage in deep, reflective, critical learning (the BA or BS being a badge earned through learning) (CLICK FOR MERITOCRACY)– or they just go through the required motions, pay the required fees and end up with a commodity degree. (CLICK FOR GRAPHIC) This is an unresolved tension because our current conditions of austerity (Click for Blyth) we cannot contemplate increased public funding for higher education – whether through building public institutions like community colleges, or increasing Pell grants or other aid for needy students. These grants, as we’ll see, aren’t nearly as helpful to the poorest students as we might hope anyway.So by public higher ed, I don’t mean only public colleges, but the notion of the United States having a broadly functioning higher education system through which anyone with the intellectual ability and desire could acquire a degree that is actually indicative of learning and growth rather than the ability to pay.The limits of austerity are not natural, but are set in large part by a set of ideologies promoted by the business community – especially among financiers. So, for instance, Moody’s seems very keen to promote MOOCs as an advance – as in their announcement yesterday afternoon that having a MOOC might help a large university’s credit rating, but might hurt a small college. (click for graphic, then for it to disappear.)In short, the limits on what can be done in public education are maintained by pressures from what we will call the plutocratic thought leaders in the U.S. (click for graphic) and by the exciting new technologies (CLICK for GRAPHICS) that may enhance learning, learning communities, and learning analytics. I am going to go quickly through laying out this argument and then I hope you can tell me if it sounds right and, if so, what we can do about it.
The key issue we are really debating here is public higher education – if not public education as a whole. As we’ll see, there is a very large wage premium for the BA in the US. Yet we do not have the capacity to give everyone a BA (in part because that would mean more investment in education.)This creates a perverse tension between what colleges and universities do, and whether students actually engage in deep, reflective, critical learning (the BA or BS being a badge earned through learning) (CLICK FOR MERITOCRACY)– or they just go through the required motions, pay the required fees and end up with a commodity degree. (CLICK FOR GRAPHIC) This is an unresolved tension because our current conditions of austerity (Click for Blyth) we cannot contemplate increased public funding for higher education – whether through building public institutions like community colleges, or increasing Pell grants or other aid for needy students. These grants, as we’ll see, aren’t nearly as helpful to the poorest students as we might hope anyway.So by public higher ed, I don’t mean only public colleges, but the notion of the United States having a broadly functioning higher education system through which anyone with the intellectual ability and desire could acquire a degree that is actually indicative of learning and growth rather than the ability to pay.The limits of austerity are not natural, but are set in large part by a set of ideologies promoted by the business community – especially among financiers. So, for instance, Moody’s seems very keen to promote MOOCs as an advance – as in their announcement yesterday afternoon that having a MOOC might help a large university’s credit rating, but might hurt a small college. (click for graphic, then for it to disappear.)In short, the limits on what can be done in public education are maintained by pressures from what we will call the plutocratic thought leaders in the U.S. (click for graphic) and by the exciting new technologies (CLICK for GRAPHICS) that may enhance learning, learning communities, and learning analytics. I am going to go quickly through laying out this argument and then I hope you can tell me if it sounds right and, if so, what we can do about it.
The key issue we are really debating here is public higher education – if not public education as a whole. As we’ll see, there is a very large wage premium for the BA in the US. Yet we do not have the capacity to give everyone a BA (in part because that would mean more investment in education.)This creates a perverse tension between what colleges and universities do, and whether students actually engage in deep, reflective, critical learning (the BA or BS being a badge earned through learning) (CLICK FOR MERITOCRACY)– or they just go through the required motions, pay the required fees and end up with a commodity degree. (CLICK FOR GRAPHIC) This is an unresolved tension because our current conditions of austerity (Click for Blyth) we cannot contemplate increased public funding for higher education – whether through building public institutions like community colleges, or increasing Pell grants or other aid for needy students. These grants, as we’ll see, aren’t nearly as helpful to the poorest students as we might hope anyway.So by public higher ed, I don’t mean only public colleges, but the notion of the United States having a broadly functioning higher education system through which anyone with the intellectual ability and desire could acquire a degree that is actually indicative of learning and growth rather than the ability to pay.The limits of austerity are not natural, but are set in large part by a set of ideologies promoted by the business community – especially among financiers. So, for instance, Moody’s seems very keen to promote MOOCs as an advance – as in their announcement yesterday afternoon that having a MOOC might help a large university’s credit rating, but might hurt a small college. (click for graphic, then for it to disappear.)In short, the limits on what can be done in public education are maintained by pressures from what we will call the plutocratic thought leaders in the U.S. (click for graphic) and by the exciting new technologies (CLICK for GRAPHICS) that may enhance learning, learning communities, and learning analytics. I am going to go quickly through laying out this argument and then I hope you can tell me if it sounds right and, if so, what we can do about it.
First, the technology piece.
Many people probably heard of the story of Target’s data mining project, which eventually yielded 25 products that could be used to calculate a customer’s pregnancy prediction score. Using data collected from customers at checkout (and cross referenced with the baby registry database) they were able to accurately predict when an Atlanta teenager was pregnant before she had told her father. The promise of big data is all around – and as the NSA’s PRISM program (Click to get image) suggests, so are its perils.In any case, this is one of the real outcomes that some MOOC providers hope to produce. The platform launched by Harvard and MIT – edX (Click for image) – says that they hope to use the data on student learning to better understand how students learn. As a recent research paper on a class offered through edX puts it (click to next slide)
The findings from this study echo what we’ve heard in others. Basically that people who collaborate with others offline have a better chance of success. (click for quote) Since many MOOC platforms are set up to allow for structured interactions, some of this is built in.
The findings from this study echo what we’ve heard in others. Basically that people who collaborate with others offline have a better chance of success. (click for quote) Since many MOOC platforms are set up to allow for structured interactions, some of this is built in.
But other more wide ranging studies of online education, such as the report from the community college research center at the teachers college of Columbia University (which aggregated data from 400,000 students, 10% of whom were taking classes online) note that students who have trouble in face to face classes have an even harder time in online courses. (CLICK FOR CONCLUSION)So, in other words, what we are probably looking at is not the end of the problems we face in higher education, but the shift in scope, scale, and venue. MOOCs will not change everything, but they might help. What we are seeing, therefore, is the MOOC as a myth.
Mosco and others have illustrated this for us - and I'm sure you have other examples you can think of...
Vincent Mosco in a more recent essay notes, "The first radio courses in the early 1920s prompted Radio Broadcast magazine to forecast “the advent of the ‘University of the Air.’ ” One enthusiast declared: “The lid of the classroom has been blown off, and the walls have been set on the circumference of the globe.” Thanks to radio, “every home has the potentiality of becoming an extension of Carnegie Hall or Harvard University (MOSCO)
Tim Wu, in Master Switch quotes D. W. Griffith the revolutionary film maker of the 1920s as saying the innovations in his craft would make it so that, "Children in the public schools will be taught practically everything by moving pictures. Certainly they will never be obliged to read history again."
Perhaps more importantly for today, Much as books have been shrunk down to the size of 140 character tweets, Thrun says he expects that we'll continue to compress education."I believe that 50 years from now, education will be as short and sweet as Twitter is today. It will be like an evening talk. And that will be a fantastic moment."I especially like that Thrun's quote is couched in his saying that he's never sat through a whole MOOC. This is telling since that is par for the course, so to speak: attrition rate is horrible! They might be better attended at 140 characters long.
If Thurn is the solution then, I think I side with George Seimans And Since the meme is still a little warm at this point, I might also point to EvgenyMorozov's handy new concept
It is these more difficult political questions – framing the entire debate – which are important to note.
The primary tension we see here is the tension between the college degree being an emblem of a broad form of post-secondary learning and personal development; and the college degree as a commodity certificate whose primary purpose is to create premium in job market. One of the leading proponents of Clay Shirky, points to MOOCs as arriving in a certain economic context.
We are going to spend the next few minutes examining Shirky’s graphic here. I’m going to bracket some of the “cost disease” problems of higher ed here. The work colleges and universities do is expensive. But many of the problems in terms of both the rise of tuition and the lack of wage growth and employment are a result of a perverse economic system. As I said, from the perspective of austerity, MOOCs seem to provide an answer.
Or as Shirky puts it: read slide. To this, I would add, policy makers who have no public revenue to work with are also asking their plutocratic campaign donors if this might work for them.
This inequality is something we should examine because it is part of what is itself driving the MOOC debate.
Chrystia Freeland is a reporter for “Roiters.” She conducted interviews with many of the richest and most powerful people on the global stage today – and it is important to note that they see themselves as global rather than national citizens. In her assessment, they still believe in the idea of the meritocracy, they just don’t want to pay for it.
To get a picture, for those of you who haven’t seen these numbers, we have an objectively plutocratic system which increasingly rewards those who already have abundant resources rather than lifting the rest of society with their rising tide. I point this out because this material condition carries with it an outlook – an outlook shared by many of our leaders in government, business, and even higher education administration.
As you can see in this graph, for contrast, in the period between 1940 and 1974, the golden age of American capitalism, when top income rates were taxed as high as 90% for a time, average income grew by almost 30 thousand dollars. The bottom 90% of the income distribution shared a relatively proportional 70% of that income growth; while the top 10% got a disproportionate premium of 27%. In his recent book “Marketplace of ideas” Louis Menand says this was also the time when higher education institutions witnessed the most growth in terms of capacity. Since then, it’s been downhill. NEXT SLIDE
In the last thirty five years or so, there has been far less average growth – nearly a third less overall – and all of that growth has gone to the richest 10%.
A different view of those statistics, since 1979, the top 1% has seen their incomes grow by 130%, while the bottom 90% have seen only 15%
In real terms, wages have been stagnant for nearly three decades.
Despite growth in productivity
This is even more disproportionate when we look at how this has affected the distribution of wealth – where the top five % have accumulated 80% of the wealth in the US since 1983. The EPI doesn’t have new numbers yet, but the recession has only exacerbated it.
The flipside of this, is the growth in debt
Which is especially evident in the middle income brackets. It is worth noting that much of this debt – as with the home equity withdrawals of the housing boom – was taken on to support things like education and health care. Debt was being used to supplement stagnant income growth. And, again, the recession has only amplified this.
The recession has led to unemployment across the income spectrum, with all education levels seeing nearly double their previous unemployment rate.
And, yes,The economic crises of the last decade, has produced a stagnant to declining wage advantage for college grads.
But part of this can be mapped onto the fact that companies are simply not investing in jobs in this country.
So to go back to shirky’s diagram, 5.6 annual growth is a problem – but it is still less than the 6-7% annual growth libraries have seen in their serial costs. And in the case of public universities, where the tuition growth has been faster, this has everything to do with fall in public funds. Wage side of the scissor is equally important – and has been for three decades. And the rising tuition is not just to pay for fancy dorms. It is also to make up for falling public support of higher ed, much of it facilitated by states, localities, and lobbyists at every level.
So, back in march the Chronicle ran a story pointing out that we are nearing a 50-50 break even point where net tuition revenue made up 47 percent of public colleges educational costs. This is up from 1987, when tuition made up only 23% of higher education revenue.
Part of this is due to the boondoggle of tax incentives, which research shows does little to create jobs.
The tech companies – and their former employees – who are promoting MOOCs as the answer to higher education are among the most creative tax dodgers…
Despite the fact that they have benefited from those tax dollars – here is the $4.5 million National Science Foundation grant that helped get Google off the ground.
This brings us back to public higher ed.
By commodity degree I mean As problematic as it might seem, this is effec
Also, serves the bottom of the market and uses political clout and economic muscle to eliminate its competition.
For Profits serve the bottom income brackets much more than any other sector. Part of this is by design – for instance,
This is fully in line with what Christensen says about disruptive innovation. Though he doesn’t admit it, the companies that are able to dominate use any manner of muscle they have to shift the market in their favor – including political leverage.
Here we can see the extremely disproportionate amount of loans going to for-profit colleges and universities.
In some ways this is where small, liberal arts schools are most culpable, at least in aggregate. As a recent report on the way Pell funds are used.
This is, of course, an equal opportunity sport.
So when you look at the sector that has seen the most growth before the recession, and then the most contraction after it, it is clear there is a major gap in providing needy students education and actually delivering on the meritocratic promise of American Higher Education. The question that MOOCs attempt to answer is who will be the parties that will help do this and what are we educating people for.
It appears that some technology companies are using their financial clout to set up an educational system they can more easily exploit for profits – and which will help generate the kinds of workers they want.
The real threat – or promise – may come from competency based credentials. Liberal Arts colleges may find these very interesting, but only when they are geared towards actually having students reflect on learning, rather than just speeding them through a degree program in order to get their commodity BA.
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