I was completely blown away by this – Colorado State offers accreditation for MOOC courses for $89 and has no takers – ZERO in one year.
I am sure there are a lot of moving parts here, but an element that I have not paid much attention to is that college students apparently don’t really care all that much about how much their degree costs – at least not enough to do something about it.
The article is here.
Kind of like preliminary returns on election night with 0.01% precincts reporting…but reminds that we don’t know how the powers that be will react to maintain powers that be. The accreditation gatekeeper is in place; the early stages of figuring out how to get around that gate is just beginning.
Students already take on an absurd debt burden in US to get a degree, or even just to attend college for a year or two. Their willingness to do so does reflect some sort of disconnect between the actual later impact on their lives of paying it off…and decision making process in the present.
The realization that there’s actually an alternative that leads to career and income earning success awaits a more complete revolution…as the article points out accreditation is still “under control” by standard universities.
The paperless office has taken a while to get here too. Wish it would hurry up… I joke, but crises in higher ed is a gigantic transformation just getting under way, and one might expect years of back and forth before new “norms” of doing it are clear.
Would not want to assume at this point that college students don’t really care about college costs… and it’s not just the kids, the parents are billpayers often enough for the college bills. They most definitely care.