Change continues in online learning at the higher ed levels… as this wide ranging article describes. A Mega University is something that services tens of thousands of students online, in various ways, and may or may not be connected with a traditional university. The focus is often on adult learners who are fully enmeshed in adult lives, need a degree to advance in the workplace, and aren’t prepared to spend the amounts demanded by traditional universities.
If the Mega Universities’ success can be reduced to one factor, it’s that they have pursued the more than 30M Americans who have some college credit but who never graduated. Which is half again as large as the more than 20M Americans now enrolled.
The article touches on a number of “hot issues”, but doesn’t really get into the nitty gritty MO of how online courses differ from “in the seat” courses. Although the competency based approach is emphasized where adults can receive “credit” for life experiences that support a certification/ degree in some field.
It does mention that Mega Universities can aggregate resources for R&D in online learning. Which is likely where innovations in EdTech MO will come from because of production costs and adaptive learning’s need for “Big Data”, OTOH, the YouTube revolution might find a low cost way to be big players in Higher Ed. All this perhaps in a partnership with a giant tech company such as Apple or Google or Amazon.
It seems clear that the present absurdly exorbitant costs to students and families of higher education in the US will drive some form of change, and Mega Universities are one manifestation of that. We’ll no doubt see other ways that the “market” and also government institutions address this economic aberration. (BTW, similar factors are at work destabilizing the US health care apparatus.)
Kudos to Gary for the link.
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