At most large state universities, you pay a gazillion dollars to attend classes held in giant auditoriums, taught by teaching assistants until at least your junior year. This is better than an online class... how?

When I was in college, most of my fellow students were there because they had nothing better to do. Every recent college graduate I know is working as a barista (if they're working at all). I would suggest the current state of education does not serve us well, not at all.

@1 is correct. I remember one of my first year Econ classes was in an auditorium at SFU that seated 1200 people. The only way to learn anything was to walk with the prof after the class on the way back to the Quad where his office was, and ask questions then. Just going down all the steps to the mikes took a long time, and then some frat guy popped in front of you, and your question would never get asked in time.

But a good teacher makes all the difference. I've been in small classes of six students where the prof couldn't teach their way out of a paper bag (we used to use paper bags to keep things in, back in the old forestry-equipped days before pinterest), and in large 600 person classes where the prof would keep you spellbound and involved, learning more than you ever could online.

I used to work in the eLearning Department at a local community college. A well designed online course takes a lot of work to set up, but depending on how it's designed it can practically run itself. @1 and @2 have it right, you are getting the same level of teacher participation with a massively open online course (MOOC) as you are with a giant lecture class taught by a TA, and MOOCs can dramatically lower the overhead (no buildings to heat, janitors and security to pay, etc.). The world of online education isn't all University of Phoenix anymore, there are some really good classes taught online. And MOOCs are free, which I would argue isn't the cheapening of college but making learning accessible.

I attended a presentation by Ng this week and he completely sold me on Coursera as the future of higher education. The courses are built and refined continuously and while the "no teachers" thing is a bit misleading, the opportunities for discussion by other students, past students, and experts are all there for those who want it. Through extensive analysis, they can quickly identify problem areas and improve the experience almost immediately.

I have found Coursera to be a better experience than the official online courses offered by WSU, and as mentioned, the opportunity to connect with leading experts is often simpler on the Internet than it can be in real life.

Wow, 5 that is extremely short-sighted.

Higher education is far more than a personal commodity and as a society I believe it would be helpful to remind ourselves why it is important to have a well-educated population.
1. A bachelor's degree isn't necessarily a training program that translates to a specific job.
2. A bachelor's degree with a well-rounded curriculum does translate to individuals who are better able to cope with economic ups and downs. The unemployment rate for people with out college degrees is quite a bit higher than it is for college graduates, for instance.
3. If a university is offering courses that you must take with a TA and with 299 of your cohorts, then THAT UNIVERSITY needs to find a way to invest more in the education of its undergraduate students.
4. If more people got degrees in specialized 4 year training programs, like computer programming, there would be a glut of programmers and not enough jobs for them.
5. Field specific gluts happen all the time. There is now a glut of MBAs. and in the 1980s there were far too many BS in Business graduates.

One of the problems with "democratization" of the college experience is the commoditization of learning. When you commoditize education without strengthening and maintaining the system for accreditation, classes become molded by market forces, such as quickest to graduation, easiest to get into, and least academic rigor for the reputation of the school ruling the market and being the selling points of degree programs (these become the points of value for the students). Seattle U is now offering 1-year MBAs. And "executive leadership" MBAs have become more a really expensive series of networking lunches with a 3-letter payoff at the end than an actual academic learning experience.

Coursera was never meant to replace real universities. I graduated from college in 2005 but I still want to learn stuff. Now I can take quality courses in subjects I never formally studied for free. It might not be as good as attending in person, but it's much more in-depth and interactive than say, reading a book by yourself. Also, colleges give credit for AP exams, so it's not like the concept is unprecedented.

The whole thing was the case of correlation and causality not being linked.

Social Reformers said to themselves, well, the rich go to college, so if we all go to college, we'll all be rich. What they didn't realize is that college for many who are wealthy is just an elongated adolescence, where one can get a "Gentleman's C" as a legacy, and exit with a diploma and a path to the Presidency in Dad's business up in New England.

They figured out the degree part, but left out the business or job on exit thingy.

@ 7

You're so right, thank you. A university is not a vocational school and shouldn't be considered one.

Many of the MOOC courses are fundamental "core" courses, teaching skills rather than outlook and (given the current state of the art) focus mostly on skills the acquisition of which can be easily measured (by multiple choice, etc). What's the harm in automating this process? Plus the global marketplace ensures that the very best and most motivated instructors end up presenting these "routine" classes, maybe better than any given college happens to have on staff. (How many of you have sat through an interminable intermediate class taught by a brilliant but disinterested research-oriented professor? Show of hands?)
I see no problem in using MOOC for these kinds of courses. Until we figure out how to enhance the platform to provide really good one-on-one interaction, I would not move the entire degree program to it.

"cheapening a college degree benefits nobody"

Seriously? MOOCs are undermining the quality of a college degree? Have you been on a campus in the last 10 years? Money has been sucked out of the classrooms and poured into administrative overhead while tuition skyrockets. A MOOC is as interactive as a freshman survey course gets at most schools and a heck of a lot cheaper. Bring it on.

My daughter is currently taking the edX.org CS50 course, which is the same CS50 course (the content is a bit different) that I took nearly 30 years ago. Since it was taught in a huge lecture hall and you really had no direct interaction with the professor, I really don't see much difference between the free Harvard-professor taught course and the very expensive in-person Harvard-professor taught course.

Except the online course has lots of cool features (a zillion videos, on-line forums, great access to people that can help, cool tools for checking in your work..etc) that simply didn't exist when I took it.

Is it possibly easier to cheat? Maybe. If you finish the course with the same investment as you'd give an in-person course, will you have learned the same amount? Yes, I think so.

Do you actually know anything about Coursera? Not only is no credit given for any of the courses offered it is explicitly stated that you are NOT allowed in any, way, shape, or form allowed to say you "took a class" at "such and such university." You are not enrolled at the school, you get no academic recognition whatsoever, and the classes are offered SOLELY to further one's own personal edification - nothing else. I am taking a course on Coursera offered via Wesleyan University. The class involves approximately 3-5 hours of work a week (according to the course description). This is nowhere near the workload of an actual academic course one takes in college. I have two BAs from Syracuse University (graduated with honors 1994) and this Coursera class is VERY BASIC with a broad stroke of the subject covered. There are over 300 people in the class, from all over the world, of all kinds of ages, educational backgrounds, etc.

If you want to start some sort of campaign about the cheapening of higher education, targeting Coursera is not the place to do it. I have numerous friends who are professors at various universities across the country and basically every accredited institution in this country wants in on these types of courses. It's the colleges and universities themselves you should start with - not only are they charging obscene tuition, but they want to embrace this massive open online course culture (and make money off of it).

The punchline? Coursera's course about hosting a successful MOOC class crashed and burned and had to be pulled out of their course offerings. Read about it here:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/…

"The history of higher education over the course of the 20th century was one of dramatic democratization. What used to be an opportunity reserved almost exclusively for the children of the elite was transformed into an American birthright"

Elizabeth Warren would argue that since 1970 or so, college has become the new high school -- ie, if you graduated from high school back in the day you could enter the middle class. That's a joke today, and most people would concede that a bachelors degree is needed. So what took 12 years now takes 16+, and leaves people in debt once they're out. So while I think it's great that more people get to go to college, in many ways we're worse off.

Warren explains it all, starting around the 43 minute mark:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0…

Grad student here: almost everyone, profs and TAs et al, hates teaching intro courses. Put that shit online so I can get back to my research.

http://www.salon.com/2013/02/08/the_inte…