Posts Tagged ‘economy’

[Sorry for longish, rambling post, but it's important.]

In 2001/2002, MIT unveiled MIT Open CourseWare – an initiative to make available the material from their classes. For free. Online. Today, they publish more than 500 courses per annum – ranging from simply syllabi and assignments to full video recordings. They have been joined by Yale, University of Michigan, Tufts, Notre Dame and hundreds more around the world. (And, if things go to plan, Georgetown will be joining soon.)

MIT could have joined the dime-a-dozen for-profit distance learning businesses that sprouted up with the Internet, but given the dramatically decreased costs of publishing online, MIT, with the generous support of some very charitable foundations, decided to change the game. And I think, in time, that game change will change the world.

But to get there – that changed world where higher education doesn’t remain the purview of a select cadre of ivory tower dwellers – much more needs to be done.

I’ve been involved trying to make sure Georgetown does its part, but now is the time for big thinking. We’re spending billions upon billions of dollars to stimulate the economy and, one hopes, prime it for continued success.

Education is a key part of continued competitiveness, growth and success. It’s no secret that the United States cannot compete on manufacturing cars or sewing t-shirts. We need to develop the human capital to embrace our future as a knowledge economy. We need a population equipped to research, develop, synthesize, manipulate and invent new information. We need education to get there.

Yet, America is falling further and further behind. Our primary education system has been hemorrhaging opportunity for decades. Fortunately, we have had an unrivaled network of institutions of higher education. The world’s best and brightest come to American universities – the same ones American high school students aspire to join. These schools have – through their introductory courses – served to catch up students from diverse backgrounds. In essence, our universities have made up for high school failures (at least for the students who make it through the high schools to universities).

But we’re failing to do that now.

In his recent interview with Charlie Rose, Harvard professor Michael Porter, who studies international competitiveness noted that America has fallen out of the top 10 in college attainment. Although we have many of the best colleges in the world, supply is falling short of demand.

That is why Open CourseWare makes sense now, more than ever. We need to utilize the Internet to “explode the classroom.”

People crave education. Laid off factory workers don’t want to work at Wal-Mart. They want to receive knowledge so that they can compete again. In a Biblically bad economy, people don’t curl up and cry. They seek knowledge to make sense of the world. And thanks to UC-Irvine and MIT, plenty of people are turning to OCW to study finance and management.

Whether you like it or not, the government is going to be a big part of our economy for the foreseeable future. It has always played a role in education – establishing universities, funding research and employing top academics. My argument is that it should play a role in opening higher education to all.

This could take many forms:

• Mike Caulfield has been doing some thinking about why OCW is stimulus worthy. The idea is to fund OCW efforts at any university that commits to produce 10 courses in an open manner. Financial constraints are one of the main challenges to OCW, so let’s stop paying dying industrial car companies, and let’s fund the next generation of thinkers.
• I’ve mused that perhaps OCW should be framed in terms of taxpayer access. Just as my paying taxes to NIH justifies my access to their research, shouldn’t my taxes to the University of Illinois justify my access to an OCW site of theirs? (By the way, NIH Open Access is threatened. Please help.)
• And most recently, the very smart folks at the New America Foundation have included a proposal for an “Open University” in 10 New Higher Education Ideas for a New Congress:

(6) Open University

Approximately 5 million adult workers displaced by global trade will need education and retraining over the next 10 years. There are millions of additional adults who have some college, but no degree-many of whom would like and should be encouraged to complete their studies. Modeled on Great Britain’s 40-year-old and well-regarded Open University, Congress could seed a non-profit American Open University that provides low-cost, quality online education to undergraduate and graduate adult learners everywhere. Students would benefit from the flexible higher education course times and offerings associated with distance education programs. An American Open University would need to be seeded with $100 million over five years to begin operation and guarantee students access to financial aid. (Five years in, accreditation would attach, thereby enabling students to access the main federal financial aid programs.) Priority should be placed on proposals that partner with existing, accredited colleges and universities.

Pros: Future-oriented, big idea; appeals to working class and professional adults wanting or needing to go back to school for undergraduate or graduate training; successful model in the existing Western Governors University started by Governors Roy Roemer (D-CO) and Mike Leavitt (R-UT); low cost.

Cons: Traditional higher education community will oppose competition claiming inadequate quality assurance and duplication of both for-profit University of Phoenix and non-profit university distance education offerings (e.g., University of Maryland); United States Open University failed in 2001 when British financing was pulled before the school was accredited-a problem avoided here with seed financing.

Moderate Alternative: American Open University grant funds could instead be distributed to existing state colleges and universities to develop and expand distance education course and degree programs. Priority would be given for programs directed at degree and certificate completion for those adults with some prior college credit. This moderate alternative removes most of the traditional higher education community’s expected opposition, but reduces visionary appeal.

I’m not particularly biased in favor of one option over the others, but know that something needs to be done to open education to more people. We are already seeing wonderful exhibitions of what is possible on top of an education infrastructure (see here and here). If we expand the free (as in freedom, if not price) educational content available, we can unleash a new generation of knowledge workers who will pull us out of this crisis.