Wall Street Journal   Big MOOC Coursera Moves Closer to Academic Acceptance

American Council on Education

http://www.acenet.edu/news-room/Pages/Adult-Learner-Services.aspx

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/02/07/online-learning-goes-official-as-five-coursera-courses-get-approved-by-the-american-council-on-education/

In the middle of this revolution, there’s trends and final destinations sometimes visible in the dust clouds stirred up by all the “disruption”. But just as online access has been rounded up into corrals  by monopolistic telecom gatekeepers, for now anyway…while other cloud products are still free…and some trying to be….the question of who is going to control the gates for online education is not clear. Does education want to be free?

Now we have a sort of 2 tier eLearning model:

1. the free but not much if any accreditation model.
2. the free educational content but pay for the accreditation model.

“Traditionally” there’s an arrangement that allows universities to charge large for accreditation, which they “buy” in turn from accrediting agencies. American Council on Education is one of these “accreditation wholesalers” from which Universities buy the ability to sell accreditation retail. Something like that.

The big underlying question is do people really need this sort of accreditation? Is it sort of the emperors clothes, because what really matters for employment, self or otherwise, and for status and qualification in society for many things, is can you pass the test? Can you prove you know what you need to know? Can you do the job?

There’s also a lot of that sort of accreditation going on already. Lots of tests for all kinds of skills and fields and licenses etc. Employers do testing too. We might say there are 2 kinds of “qualification”.

1. The first, upon exiting some DLE situation, such as a degree or certificate.
2. The second, upon entering some field of employment, or licensing by state or others.

The placement of the gate determines who gets to collect the toll.

Logically, one would expect the eLearning revolution to cause the Entry gate to be what predominates, and the Exit gate to gradually fade away in importance and desirability. Thus the $$ would then follow to those who control the Entry gates.

Which we hope is not as ridiculous as present day higher ed charges to the “consumer”. And not controlled by monopolies.

OTOH, a university or college does a lot for a community, employs a lot of people, attracts the students, the cultural activities, the research jobs. Generally adds to the rationality of those living nearby…less “no nothings” getting their way in the community that has highly educated like professors to inject “learning” into local dialogues and political initiatives.

But that was yesterday, so to speak. And we don’t know what tomorrow will look like, except that it will be different. (just a caution here, the same things about change in education were being said in the 60’s)