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Possibly. The cache of Harvard/MIT definitely puts it in good shape to be the victor. But, increasingly, and especially in technical fields, degrees are being

Possibly. The cache of Harvard/MIT definitely puts it in good shape to be the victor. But, increasingly, and especially in technical fields, degrees are being supplanted by other talent or qualification indicators. Open source work is a great example. There are significant numbers of folks without CS degrees (or even degrees at all) who have found gainful employment as coders based on their open source work alone. Whether it will be accepted by the Fortune 500 crowd remains to be seen though, and certainly the "show me what you can do" idea doesn't really work for non-technical jobs. At least in the short term offering a degree for these online courses might help. I wonder if for the non-technical crowd who can't show what they've learned an online degree will be thought of in the same light as a traditional brick and mortar one. It isn't so far, but that will almost certainly change if that degree comes from some place like MIT or Harvard.

ebiester 14y ago
Just like real world universities, there may be no "victor." but rather many groups catering to individual needs. If it was a mere matter of location, we'd only have one University per city. For that matter, Western Governors University is still quite large. They could pivot much more easily than Harvard and integrate this into their current system, and they have the advantage of accrediation.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  EDx is clearly planning to compete on quality. I expect them to be pretty resistant to watering down their course challenge level. Coursera is likely to head mostly the same way. Udacity, though, looks like they might lean more towards reducing the challenge to increase the audience. That feels a little dangerous as they're then open to considerably more competition from other schools. The floodgates are about to open. What Udacity has in the short run to mitigate that possibility is a start-up agility mindset. But they'll calcify in the long run, everyone does, and then what? What will interest me most is to see how many people can take on the challenge level of EDx. I suspect it will be many more than anyone would have thought. The people in real trouble are those offering mediocre education for high prices. 5-10 years from now those people will be in a new line of work.

ebiester 14y ago

Just like real world universities, there may be no "victor." but rather many groups catering to individual needs. If it was a mere matter of location, we'd only have one University per city. For that matter, Western Governors University is still quite large. They could pivot much more easily than Harvard and integrate this into their current system, and they have the advantage of accrediation.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
EDx is clearly planning to compete on quality. I expect them to be pretty resistant to watering down their course challenge level. Coursera is likely to head mostly the same way. Udacity, though, looks like they might lean more towards reducing the challenge to increase the audience. That feels a little dangerous as they're then open to considerably more competition from other schools. The floodgates are about to open. What Udacity has in the short run to mitigate that possibility is a start-up agility mindset. But they'll calcify in the long run, everyone does, and then what? What will interest me most is to see how many people can take on the challenge level of EDx. I suspect it will be many more than anyone would have thought. The people in real trouble are those offering mediocre education for high prices. 5-10 years from now those people will be in a new line of work.