What’s the value, agenda of ‘free’ courses

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/12/2014 (3968 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

My mother was afraid of computers. She thought they would harm the world. Not me. I like technology. As an educator, I use it regularly. Online learning is important.

It has expanded exponentially in the last five years in various forms, for various audiences. The variety of online learning tools — courses, resources that vary based on age, place, and intention of both the user and supplier — seem to be a positive addition to the field of education — accessible, affordable, a blessing.

Online learning looks so good on the surface: Knowledge at the tip of your Wi-Fi. What could be wrong with free knowledge?

Primary and secondary online learning materials are a resource to a curriculum. My daughter uses Kahn Academy for math, but only because her teacher tells her to. It’s a great resource for home-schoolers, too. It has a place as a resource for those who guide the education of youngsters. Youngsters themselves would rather watch cat videos on YouTube.

Then there is higher learning (a.k.a. post-secondary education), advanced learning and the newest buzzword, lifelong learning. Many of the innovations here in online offerings claim to be a silver bullet, a way to overcome the problems of a traditional bricks-and-mortar university education, which has become too expensive, complicated, ideological and detached from the masses.

Anant Agarwal is the president of edX, an online learning platform and provider of MOOCs (massive open online courses) many of which are free and offered worldwide. It’s also open-source. It sounds like it’s a solution. Why would we even need universities?

But are MOOCs really free? Let’s begin with Agarwal. He is employed by MIT and edX is a collaboration between Harvard University and MIT and involves 47 universities. So, someone is paying somewhere, and it just happens to be the bricks-and-mortar universities that pay the salaries of these innovators. Sounds like a contradiction to me.

Next question is about course content. Someone has to create the courses. Often those people are university instructors. MOOCs and other online offerings have intellectual-property concerns. Instructors own the materials from the tests to the notes. They often hone the course over many years, modifying, updating and nurturing it. This is what they are paid to do.

In some universities, once the course has been offered online, its contents become the property of the university or a consortium (such as edX), which then hires a facilitator to run the course. This saves universities and other providers money, and universities are desperate for cash.

Enter for-profit online education such as University of Phoenix, Cousera, and Udacity, which don’t hide the fact they want to profit from your educational needs and desires.

Michael Clifford (former CEO of U of Phoenix and other online institutions) is an education entrepreneur turning non-profit education into for-profit. There are no infrastructure costs at University of Phoenix, only labour, most of whom are telemarketers who use strong-arm sales tactics to get people to enroll. University of Phoenix, a subsidiary of the Apollo Education Group, has a quarter-million students and has such a high profit margin ($3.6 billion) I’m sure Clifford is high-fiving Gordon Gecko.

Should we complain? What’s wrong with commodifying knowledge?

Nothing is free. Frontline’s scathing documentary College Inc. revealed 86 per cent of the profit comes from federal student loans, and the majority of these are not repaid due to high unemployment rates of graduates. So like the salary of Agarwal, Clifford’s income comes from public money. Udacity is funded by a venture capital firm, Charles River Ventures, which is a company developed to commercialize research findings developed at MIT. This system sounds more like Wall Street than the information superhighway. Is this the best way to solve problems with universities?

Student experience with many MOOCs and University of Phoenix and the like is generally poor. Many complain they have little contact with professors, there is a lack of feedback and it is impersonal. Completion rates are low. It appears a unique online option, LibertasU, overcomes some of these issues.

They offer courses for as low as $95 for a regularly scheduled class, where the teacher is present and the student can interact as avatars. These are humanities courses, such as the reading of Dante’s Inferno. These are not-for-credit courses. LibertasU is a great option for those who may already have degrees and are interested in some guided knowledge and don’t want to start a book club. Is there something more to the eye here?

LibertasU’s dean is Roger Scruton. He is a well-known philosopher, writer, critic, activist and general smarty-pants. He is also an academic conservative. In one of his books, Arguments for Conservatism, he discusses the need to teach people philosophy if conservativism is to flourish. According to him, “universities don’t teach students anything much of value, instead indoctrinating children in sloppy, anti-religious leftism.” The four teachers at LibertasU represent various organizations such as the Faith & Reason Institute and some are employed, and paid, by bricks-and-mortar universities. Is LibertasU a conservative ideology machine or free knowledge? You can judge that.

So with online education, it appears knowledge is a commodity used to make profit, to reduce costs and to put forth various political agendas. In the land of online learning, perhaps the message is more important than the medium.

 

Kelly Gorkoff is an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Winnipeg.