New England Board of Higher Education » online learning

Learning in the Clouds?

John O. Harney — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 10:54:28 +0000

Engaged learning—the type that happens outside textbooks and beyond the four walls of the classroom—moves beyond right and wrong answers to grappling with the uncertainties and contradictions of a complex world.

My iPhone backs up to the “cloud.” GoogleDocs is all about “cloud computing.” And Facebook, well, forget the clouds; it’s as ubiquitous as the sky.

But learning? Really? Is learning really going to be in the clouds as well?

I’m referring, of course, to the dramatic rise in online learning. Whether it is the millions upon millions signed up for MOOCs (massive open online courses), the popularity of Khan Academy, or the fact that one in three college students has taken an online course as part of their education, online learning is everywhere.

In some respects, this is to be expected. Technology has driven just about everything to the web, from the way we shop to how we watch movies and plan our parties, there appears to be an app for it all. Education, it appears, will be next.

Brookings Institution's Center for Technology Innovation, for example, recently profiled five key “success stories,” including MOOCs, computerized adaptive testing, and “stealth assessment.” A common thread is that such technology is based upon massively networked, data-driven, and automated systems. Students playing an “adaptive” learning game will find that it changes in difficulty according to responses, offering instantaneous feedback and helpful prompts. Research has shown that such automated real-time feedback, when linked to learning analytics grounded in “big data,” provides opportunities for mastery learning at a much faster pace than in traditional face-to-face classrooms.

Such disruption is no longer at the margins. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is investing in similar technologies for community colleges, which educate almost half of the 18 million undergraduates in postsecondary education. The U.S. Department of Education recently approved Southern New Hampshire University as the first institution in the country to offer a fully online competency-based education (that is, reflecting, “can you actually do the work?” rather than seat time).

So is that our future? If it is, where does it leave traditional bricks-and-mortar institutions?

I run a research center that planned to convene more than 100 scholars and practitioners at Tufts in July to discuss this very question. There are dozens of academic programs—certificates, minors and majors—around the country that focus on community engagement. From questions of civic leadership to community-based asset mapping to theories of social change, we help students develop the habits of mind and repertoires of action to engage with our local and global communities.

So the question of online learning looms large over our programs. Yes, like a big dark cloud. Paul LeBlanc, the president of SNHU, is coming to speak to us. So are the folks from MITx. And we’re going to ask lots of questions and take lots of notes. Because deep learning, it seems to me, can’t all be done with our head in the clouds.

Don’t get me wrong. MOOCs, and online education more broadly, may be wonderful for a certain form of content delivery, one which helps students master certain kinds of knowledge. This is oftentimes referred to as transmissional knowledge, in that we simply transmit a particular body of knowledge. As the Brookings report makes clear, technology is becoming really good at that. So good, in fact, that within a decade, it will change much of how we think about and do teaching and learning.

Such technology, though, has very clear limits. Namely, the knowledge that can be learned through such systems has to be stable, singular and solvable. Put simply, there has to be a right and a wrong answer.

But to be blunt, this is not truly education. Or at least not all of it. Education, ultimately, is transformational in that it helps us grapple with the uncertainties and contradictions of a complex world, pushing us beyond our comfort zones and into moments of genuine reflection. John Dewey suggested that such true learning begins in a “moment of doubt,” what we might call an “aha moment,” of rethinking and reframing what we thought was normal.

So with that goal in mind, I want to suggest that we must keep our feet firmly on the ground at the same time that our heads are up in the clouds. Engaged learning—the type that happens outside of textbook covers and beyond the four walls of the classroom—offers a chance to make learning come alive and bridge theory and practice.

In the end, the ubiquity of the technological cloud that is blanketing higher education may indeed have a silver lining: It will help us to be clear that what we do in our classrooms and communities matters to our students, local stakeholders and the future of higher education.

Dan W. Butin is the founding dean of the School of Education at Merrimack College and the executive director of the Center for Engaged Democracy.

COOCs Over MOOCs

John O. Harney — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:17:03 +0000

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are all the rage these days and are being offered as a potential way to shorten the degree-attainment process and thereby reduce costs. With escalating tuition at public and private institutions and shrinking median household income, the energy around MOOCs is fueled by the question often asked by students, parents and policymakers: Can a meaningful higher education be provided at a reasonable price? The answer to this question is yes, but affordability should not be implemented at the expense of quality nor at the risk of vitiating a degree as a widely accepted credential.

At New England College of Business and Finance (NECB), we focus on what I like to call “classically offered online classes” or COOCs, instead of MOOCs. Through COOCs, our school is lowering the cost of education in ways that preserve quality. For instance, our model, which is 100 percent online, has the attributes of a true classroom with peer cohesion and development among students, faculty leadership and institutional support services. We also offer services that resemble more traditional institutions including alumni and career services, library and research skills workshops, and 24/7 free, online tutoring, as well as the Canvas Learning Management System, a virtual learning platform where students can discuss their coursework with faculty and their peers.

There is a growing online imperative in higher education without which the ability to lower costs and to provide more access to education cannot be accomplished in today’s economic environment. Many traditional colleges are struggling, and in turn, are deeply discounting tuition to attract students. At the same time, these institutions are not changing their model so they continue to bear the same cost structure. It is necessary, however, to lower the costs of producing a quality education in order to also lower the price of attaining one.

In particular, and especially in regard to MOOCs, costs are being reduced at the expense of an inviolate component of a quality educational process: the faculty. Our faculty members are at the heart of the educational experience by being highly responsive to the individual learning needs of students, leading classes through enlightening discussions and serving as mentors for students. Maintaining faculty as a critical component of higher education doesn’t mean faculty costs should not be controlled. At NECB, we strive to keep our faculty costs down, while still maintaining a low student-to-faculty ratio, by having approximately two-thirds of our courses taught by adjuncts. These adjuncts bring their real-world experiences to the classroom, ensuring that students get a well-rounded education that combines practical and theoretical knowledge. Both adjunct and full-time faculty members are leveraged where they can do the most good — in the classroom teaching students and evaluating their coursework, rather than working on the technology that goes into creating NECB’s online classes. Each professor is assigned one IT specialist, who works with the professor’s curriculum in mind to create an effective, technologically efficient online course. NECB also has academic advisers and career services experts who can help students plan their courses and their future after NECB. In this way, faculty members can focus on helping students, while letting other experts manage these additional components of the online education experience.

Not surprisingly, another cost-savings method is the use of online delivery itself. At NECB, all courses are offered online, which has proven to be an effective approach for students of varying ages seeking all degree types. A study conducted for the U.S. Department of Education found that students, who completed some or all coursework online, on average, outperformed those who were educated solely in the traditional classroom setting. Not only is online learning equal and, in some cases, better than face-to-face instruction as this research demonstrates, but it also reduces the need for a lot of real estate. If students are added, facility costs remain low as new classrooms don’t need to be added. Low facility costs are another main component in lowering costs that can then be passed down to the student in the form of lower tuition.

In today’s higher education market, the fastest-growing component is what used to be called “nontraditional students.” College students under age 23 have actually become the minority. For today’s older students, who understand the importance of a degree but don’t have a lot of extra time and money at their disposal, frills and extracurricular activities are not required. At NECB, we do not offer dormitories, a cafeteria, a gymnasium, student lounges, nor a host of student organizations and clubs. We offer exactly what our students want: a solid, useful and relevant education that results in the acquisition of competencies that will help them with career improvement and career escalation. By avoiding the frills that residential campuses provide, we keep our costs modest and our tuition low. For students with families, jobs and other commitments, a no-frills, but solid education at a reasonable cost is exactly what is desired.

These and other measures enable us to keep costs down for students but also offer high-quality academic programs. To ensure that we are doing so, we commit a substantial amount of dollars and operational time to assessment so we can demonstrate student satisfaction, professional achievement and student learning. Our assessment practices not only include standardized survey instruments, but we also bring in external faculty to evaluate our curriculum, student work and methods of instruction.

As for MOOCs, they will find their place in online delivery, but as “sourceware” not as “courseware,” and it will be important for the accreditation councils to hold the line on their creditworthiness until there is researched demonstration of their efficacy. As sourceware, MOOCs can be a major advancement over standard textbooks because they preserve the use of exceptional content experts and expand the concept of the textbook by including internal assessment mechanisms and student-to-student interaction. Building on this concept, edX, the Harvard/MIT venture, is now saying its online courses will “improve” rather than “replace” campus-based education, and it has arrangements with Bunker Hill and other community colleges to teach courses around the MOOC content as one might similarly teach a class around a textbook. While this is an appropriate and admirable application, by reincorporating the on-ground class component, it begins to defeat the affordability online courses can provide. This MOOC application injects another faculty layer into the course and the concept of a place-bound schedule for the students and reverts to the use of real estate to host the course.

In his seminal work on the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn puts forth a theory saying major changes in accepted scientific practice are more a matter of fits and starts, rather than a pattern of changes occurring in a straight line. Kuhn points out that sometimes the revolutionary method can create more or different problems than the predecessor method, which it is trying to improve upon. Such is my feeling about MOOCs. They have found a method of bringing tremendous expertise and knowledge to a vast audience, but, as the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University reported last month, most MOOCs have completion rates of less than 10 percent. Furthermore, because of the lack of consistent faculty presence, there is often a student peer-grading system rather than an expert faculty member taking the time to evaluate student work and deploying institutionally agreed upon rubrics. However, to the extent MOOCs are making a contribution to online learning applications, especially as to the overall credibility of the delivery model, they should be regarded as forward movement.

We just need to remember higher education is not all about creating a course. It’s about creating a class, and that is where real learning will continue to abide—just at a far more reasonable price.

Howard E. Horton is president of New England College of Business and Finance.

Learning to Do During High Unemployment

John O. Harney — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 12:27:15 +0000

Even as the economy appears to have turned a corner, high unemployment persists. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the national unemployment rate teetered at 7.9% in January 2013, and New England’s was 7.3% in December 2012.

Strangely, as millions nationwide struggle to find work, there are millions of jobs that remain unfilled. The BLS reports that on the last business day of December 2012, there were 654,000 unfilled jobs in the Northeast and 3.6 million unfilled jobs nationally. In Massachusetts alone, the governor’s office revealed that there were 211,000 people looking for work in a state with over 144,000 job openings.

High unemployment rates may therefore have less to do than commonly assumed with an economy that is not healthy enough to produce jobs or employers who are unprepared to hire, and rather, more to do with a workforce that is improperly trained for the jobs that are available. With 53% of recent college graduates unable to secure jobs, few universities or colleges can aver that their programs and majors match the needs of today’s labor market.

When such a labor mismatch exists, job-seekers tend to look for programs that can prepare them for available jobs and careers. They desire not just knowledge but also skills that translate readily into the workforce. Learning to do becomes even more critical for our students.

It’s a good bet that New England’s state comprehensive universities (SCUs) and community colleges will play important roles in teaching how to do. SCUs, such as Worcester State University, Southern Connecticut State University and Johnson State College, are broad-access public institutions that, nationwide, offer relatively low-priced instruction to millions of students. SCUs and community colleges educate a significant percentage of bachelor’s degree recipients in New England, many of whom are adult learners seeking to upgrade their skills for a job or career.

But are the region’s non-exclusive institutions up to the task? There are reasons to worry.

Going up-market?

What we have learned from our research on innovation is that organizations in all sectors strive naturally to have a larger footprint by going up-market and building their prestige through steady improvement. Although this natural force is an important inclination, the challenge in higher education is that, today, universities do not build prestige by improving teaching and learning.

In a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Scott Carlson details the elaborate country-club-like amenities blossoming at less-selective universities. Based on the findings of a new report by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Carlson summarizes that in an effort to increase student enrollment, these universities are actually de-prioritizing instruction and academic quality. The researchers state that “for many institutions, demand-side market pressure may not compel investment in academic quality, but rather in consumption amenities.”

Such a report validates Kaplan Inc. CEO Andrew Rosen’s argument that, in an effort to go up-market, colleges often layer in a multitude of bundled experiences for students that have nothing to do with learning.

When we pause and consider the soaring price of tuition, shrinking state budgets, the rising costs for traditional institutions to stay competitive with their peers, and the labor mismatch afflicting the economy that positions students poorly to pay back the loans for these educations, the perils of such exorbitant spending become clear.

Even though these institutions were established as learning centers, their incentives appear to be pushing them not only to de-prioritize but also to undermine teaching and learning.

To complicate matters, these broad access institutions’ move up-market is clearing more room for potential disruptive innovations led by a variety of online learning institutions, including both for-profit and nonprofit universities. Many of these institutions are introducing massive open online courses (MOOCs) as well as competency-based programs , in which the amount of time each individual student learns is treated as variable, and students only progress upon mastery of concepts. At their best, these competitors are focusing primarily on employer needs, which begs the question: If New England’s non-elite schools continue on their current path, will they continue to exist and serve a large percentage of Americans seeking higher education?

Potential solutions

Even as the disruptive innovations improve at training-job seekers and connecting them to employers, there exists a significant opportunity for SCUs and community colleges as the more established institutions. Although disruptive innovations transform sectors, they don’t always result in a complete disintegration of the old order. A key insight is that the established organizations that are being disrupted can focus their efforts on defending the parts of their business that are beyond the extendable core of the disruptive innovator’s product. The extendable core is “the aspect of the business model that allows the disrupter to maintain its performance advantage as it creeps upmarket in search of more and more customers.”

In the case of online technologies, for example, as e-learning institutions have been gradually improving the effectiveness of their programs while maintaining cost and convenience advantages, their extendable core is not of much use to students who value attending an elite college because of its exclusivity or to those who desire the social aspects of college afforded by campus living.

The key for SCUs and community colleges will be to figure out where they are likely to succeed—or perhaps more importantly, where what they offer will ultimately not be as valued. As Kevin Kiley writes in his summary of the recent Moody’s report, “the ‘buffet model’ of higher education—where institutions try to be all things to all people—is over.” In this particular case, creating exclusive or residential experiences is not necessarily the forte of these broad-access colleges, nor is it what their student population values. These institutions must therefore ask themselves: What is the most indispensable “job” that our students—many of whom are commuting and already employed—hire us to do for them? Nailing this job will be critical and will enable SCUs and community colleges to make critical resource allocation decisions that can define their sustainable, competitive advantage.

SCUs and community colleges do appear to have a defensible opportunity, even as online learning improves. There are countless careers for which learning knowledge is not a good enough entry point for doing the job well; simulations will not even do. Coupling learning knowledge with learning to do—through on-the-job, in-person training, or on-the-ground projects integrated tightly with regional clusters of employers—is vital.

Indeed, there is evidence that students desire these types of experiences. New England’s less-selective universities may not have to focus on amenities at the expense of teaching and learning in order to compete. UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute recently released its American Freshman Survey in which 88% of college freshmen cited getting a better job as a vital reason for pursuing a college degree—approximately 17 percentage points higher than 2006. This suggests that students would value tailored offerings more closely aligned with their career objectives. SCUs and community colleges therefore have a unique opportunity to return to their original missions of serving the region by figuring out how to align their students better with the industry clusters in the area.

By helping students learn not only industry knowledge, but also specific skillsets for the workforce, universities and colleges can stave off disruption through a laser focus on their job-seeking students. Using real-time labor market information (LMI), SCUs and community colleges could take advantage of their regional positions and reach out to the businesses that surround them to assess the kinds of qualifications for which they are looking.

In ways similar to Northeastern University’s model, a university could help students complete coursework while they’re employed at local businesses through various co-op models. Fairfield University recently announced a new internship program to connect their students with employment opportunities in Bridgeport, Conn., with jobs ranging from positions in city departments to the local animal shelter. Although this is a good start for the Jesuit university, it is unclear whether more private liberal arts or research institutions will be able to emulate such programs with their nearby communities. The matriculated students at such colleges arguably might not desire gainful employment in towns to which they have been temporarily transplanted and at which they do not intend to stay. Moreover, most faculty at more selective institutions and especially those that prize research do not necessarily envision their scholarship and specialization within a discipline as having anything to do with training students and equipping them with specific skills for the workforce.

For regional universities and community colleges, on the other hand—the workhorses of academia—their student populations tend to prize opportunities around the campus, as many are already somehow tied to these geographic areas, whether it is because of work, families, or other personal reasons. SCUs and community colleges have the unique potential to think differently about developing student talent into tangible outcomes. Catering specifically to nontraditional, working commuter students with families will be important if, as Rosen affirms, college is increasingly “a place you return to at periodic intervals, to retool and reload for the next phase of life’s journey.”

To execute on this, these less-selective universities will require a very different model from the one they use today. Such a shift in priorities will not be easy or even feasible for many institutions. Educating students with very different resources, processes and priorities is not a simple, overnight task; however, the need for a new model exists. For those regional colleges up for the challenge of emboldening their missions, priorities must shift toward closing the gap between their newly minted bachelor’s degree holders and their graduates’ potential employment opportunities.

Learning to do in the modern workforce

Such a dramatic shift requires academics, administrators, employers and students to move beyond the derogation and conflation of vocation with low-skill factory-line jobs. The alignment of educated individuals to jobs is something that all universities need to consider at this critical juncture of increased global economic competition. Many of the skills that employers say they most value—and that too many students don’t have—are those that a classical liberal arts education purports to develop, such as the ability to write well, think critically and solve problems in teams. These skills are embedded in learning to do in the modern workforce.

The conversation about higher education is changing slowly from one about graduation and retention rates to one about employment opportunities. Perhaps new kinds of rigorous certificates will become just as or even more meaningful than bachelor’s degrees for certain industries looking for specific skillsets. Andrew Ng, co-founder of Coursera, has already noticed a shift in attitudes about informal certificates provided by MOOCs and was “surprised by how seriously [some] employers are taking informal certificates.”

Our standard of measurement, the credit hour, which has been the basis of student workloads and faculty teaching loads, academic calendars, financial aid and degree requirements, could slowly be shifting to a different kind of standardized unit of measure built around competency and mastery of a particular subject. Perhaps some certificates will hold just as much weight as certain degrees, or, at a more granular level, certificates will become the new majors to transition graduates more seamlessly into the workforce.

As staples in their regions with deep relationships in the community, comprehensive and community colleges have the opportunity to innovate, develop robust offerings and nail this job for students and employers in ways that could not only protect their own campuses, but also revolutionize higher education and boost the nation’s competitiveness.

Michelle Rhee-Weise is an education senior research fellow and Michael B. Horn is executive director of Innosight Institute.

Will MITx Change How We Think About Higher Education?

John O. Harney — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:44:29 +0000

While many colleges and universities are trying to adapt to the forces affecting higher education today, a recent move by the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology is about to cause a seismic shift.

The prototype version of MITx is scheduled for launch in spring 2012. MITx is an outgrowth of MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW), which began in 2002. Building upon the inventory of nearly 2,100 MIT courses, MITx will offer the online teaching of MIT courses worldwide and the opportunity for able learners to gain certification of mastery of MIT material.

The launch of MITx represents a milestone both in terms of access to higher education and higher education credentialing. The significance of this event is that this shift is coming from MIT, more often thought of as a premier global university than a radical institution.

Beginning with a portfolio of selected courses, MITx is expected to grow over time. It will offer a compendium of courses needed for demonstrated competence in a given subject, including lectures, syllabi, online tests, feedback, group discussions, labs and interaction with MIT faculty.

Online learners who demonstrate mastery of subjects will earn a certificate of completion of MIT coursework. As with MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW), the teaching materials on MITx will be available for free, as will be the teaching on the platform. Those who have the ability and motivation to demonstrate mastery of content can receive a credential for a modest fee. MIT is in the process of determining a fee structure for both individual and groups of courses.

The credential would not be issued under the name MIT, but rather a body within the institute. MIT plans to create a not-for-profit body that will offer certification for online learners of MIT coursework. That body will carry a distinct name to avoid confusion.

MIT will also make the open-source software infrastructure on which MITx is based freely available to educational institutions. Through an online interactive learning platform, this infrastructure will establish ways for other universities, as well as interested individuals, to join MIT in improving and adding features to the technology.

Disruptive or creative destruction

The open-educational-resources movement began around a decade ago. A term applied to free and open digital publication of educational resources—such as course materials created by universities—these resources are accessible to anyone, anytime via the Internet. Open-source offerings do not carry college credits per se nor can they be used toward earning a degree.

Now in its 10th year, MIT’s OCW includes nearly 2,100 MIT courses and has been used by more than 100 million people.

MIT is not the only university to understand the value of OCW. Stanford, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Notre Dame, the University of Michigan, the University of California Berkeley and numerous other distinguished higher education institutions have joined in the movement.

Hundreds of English-speaking open courseware initiatives now exist across the U.S. as well as in England, Canada and Australia. A big boost for the idea of "open access" to the world's knowledge is a recent announcement to let the public view, for free, some of the trove of information available through JSTOR, a service that helps scholars, researchers and students discover, use and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive of more than 1,000 academic journals and other scholarly content.

But this new iteration, MITx, represents a wider disruption—and perhaps even a creative destruction. It begs the question: Is this the catalyst that will change how we think about traditional higher education?

Reading the signs

At a time when higher education is essential for succeeding in a global economy, we have reached a crossroads with a vast university system that has difficulty accommodating demand because the cost is prohibitive. Access is becoming increasingly out of reach.

Consider the confluence of forces driving us to reconsider how we look at traditional higher education. Those forces include disruptive technologies (Internet, open courseware movement, etc.), but also tuition tipping points, the changing labor market, the economy and changing demographics.

The annual price tag for a college credential has risen about three times as fast as inflation, and there is no sign that it’s slowing down. Debt burdens—$110-billion in student loans borrowed this last year—point to questions about the value of a degree and the nature of credentials.

This suggests to some that going to college at any price may no longer be worth it. Indeed, approximately half of Americans think the higher education system is doing a poor or fair job in providing value for the money spent, according to a survey last spring by the Pew Research Center.

Higher education game-changer?

Revolutions come as a result of a response to dominant power. Self-directed learning (SDL) may be that tool for some who lack access because of time, place or circumstances. Different from traditional higher education, it can be a viable means of access to knowledge acquisition with a value-added element. Learners avail themselves of the relevant knowledge when and where they wish.

While a similar argument was made about the “distance learning” revolution 20 years ago, it’s different this time with MIT (through MITx) offering not only free content and sophisticated online pedagogy, but most significantly, a credential from a world-renowned university for a very modest fee.

Are we about to see the kind of paradigm shift in higher education that was seen in the health care industry when funding formulas changed dramatically? It could be an earthquake for the majority of colleges, which depend on tuition income rather than big endowments and research grants.

The era of high-level SDL promises free access, rapidly increasing quality and advanced educational content. With access to relevant knowledge to their career and a credential of mastery from an MIT or for that matter Stanford (which is embarking on a similar endeavor to that of MITx), what would stop individuals from making an informed choice? Credentialing from world-class institutions, at anytime and anyplace, and at a highly affordable price could be a very attractive option.

When combined with the free online textbooks at sites like Textbook Revolution and TextBooksFree, plus other course books from Google Books, World Public Library and Project Guttenberg, MITx will provide students wtih access to a high-level collegiate learning experience totally online for a nominal fee. It's easy to imagine that these students will form their own virtual study groups, affiliations and various other aspects of traditional student life. The only thing missing from a face-to-face MIT or Stanford education may, in fact, be the “live” campus experience.

What remains to be seen is whether employers desperate for high-level talent will start to bring the drawbridge down and relax their education screens to include nontraditional “self learners," especially if these learners have received certificates of completion or mastery from distinguished world-class institutions such as MIT or Stanford. As these "graduates" demonstrate value to their employers, it might open the door to many more nontraditional self-learners.

A threat to higher education or a wake-up call?

The wider significance of MITx to higher education may not be so much the strategic tension between tyranny of the degree versus the transformation of learning into a simple commodity that cheapens the challenge of mastering subject matter. Rather, it may be that MITx threatens traditional higher education in general. For some who see universities as credit-producing machines—students as input and revenue dollars as output—it may seem so. Private higher institutions are already tuition-driven entities and public higher institutions are becoming increasingly so.

This shift advances a question many have asked before and one that is particularly relevant today. What commitment does higher education have in creating learning opportunities that break barriers to education?

Is higher learning more than taking a class? Is it more than subject content and testing for knowledge acquisition? Is it membership within a community of learners?

If the latter is the case, then access to higher learning—lifelong learning—must be seen as higher education's primary role and as an asset for all members of the community.

MITx and other similar programs coming out of “high-end” universities are realizing that public higher education has had it right all along. It's a question of access—precisely what public higher education has embraced since its inception as the core of its mission. Aligned with this core mission of access comes both affordability and student success in the forms of retention, persistence, graduation and preparation for the job market.

With funding support of public higher education dwindling, providing access becomes even more challenging. The rise of new forms of self-directed learning and nontraditional credentialing will increasingly be a part of our higher education fabric and fill gaps by recognizing learning areas that employers may value but traditional grades and diplomas often miss, such as certain computer technology skills, critical thinking know-how and interpersonal proficiencies.

Consider the fact that the marketplace has overtaken the government as the dominant force shaping and reshaping American higher education. MITx is addressing the market by lowering the existing barriers between residential campuses and the millions of learners around the world by making MIT educational content accessible and providing those learners with an opportunity to earn an MIT-related credential.

Whether MITx will directly threaten the operating margins of universities (especially for-profit universities) remains to be seen, but higher education continues to be disrupted.

In a global economy, the real question for traditional higher education now becomes whether we continue to offer higher learning to those who can afford the high prices and let the market address the issue of access.

Philip DiSalvio is dean of University College at University of Massachusetts Boston.