Free MOOCs Face the Music (edX)

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/06/14/edx-introduces-support-fee-free-online-courses

 

I am not surprised. I am skeptical of all these good-doers. Saylor is still free for now.

 

I'm not a huge fan of Coursera or edX. Coursera is a for-profit company, so I expected them to charge. EdX is non-profit, but they've been charging for anything of value for a while now. They only have a few limited options for earning real college credits through partnerships. Most of the MicroMasters programs are tied to master's programs that aren't entirely online or aren't online at all, so they're not useful for most of their customers. In order to get college credit through any of the partnerships, you've had to pay for a verified certificate for each course, and edX stopped offering free, honor code certificates a while back.

I think Udacity is a for-profit company, so I wasn't surprised when they started charging. Coursera and Udacity dropped their efforts to get their courses ACE-approved, and Udacity started offering these junk nanodegrees. At least edX is putting in a little effort to get their customers real credentials that employers recognize. In addition to the MicroMasters programs that can lead to earning real master's degrees, they have partnerships with ASU and Charter Oak State College. They also had a few courses approved through the now defunct ACE Alternative Credit Project.

Khan Academy is still free, but their mission is not really career preparation. They're more of a free tutoring service. Saylor has done the most to offer students an inexpensive way to earn college credits. If edX and Coursera were serious about lowering the cost of post-secondary education and making it more widely accessible, they would have invested in getting their courses approved for college credit through ACE or NCCRS. Instead, they offer a bunch of lectures that you can find alternatives for on YouTube and other places. LearnersTV.com was free and great, but not enough people used them, and they shut down. Annenberg Learning is free and great, but they almost never produce new series. Lynda.com is cheaper than edX and Coursera, and many universities offer their students free access to Lynda.com's videos.

 

"Everyone has to eat" was once a common expression. The people laboring for these organizations want to be paid for their efforts.

 

Tied to but not limited to particular programs in particular schools. Tier Two U might just accept what MIT does. And if Tier Two U needs to fill seats...

And the price is right.

 

The MicroMasters programs aren't worth college credit on their own. You can attempt to launder them through the partner school, but you usually need to take at least one class in order to get a transcript with transfer credits on it.

 

Adam Smith was also cynical of all these do-gooders. He thought they did more harm than good.
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Off topic, I downloaded google museum app, and I have a 65% match with my avatar Absalom Jones - born a slave, somehow got educated, became an abolitionist. I feel the connection.

 

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages. Adam Smith

 

Like Carnegie and his libraries.

 

I am with you, nothing do more for the genuine value of charity and philanthropy, like good publicity and a nice tax break. The invisible hand at work, increasing income with reduction in taxes or better yet no taxes. Research has shown that our altruism is done for our own feelings, boosting our ego and self-esteem. Nothing is wrong with that as per Adam Smith.

 

In the U.S., almost half of the people won't pay any federal income tax. So, there's that.

 

The payroll tax is not the income tax. You also have to account for the people who will receive more in their tax return than what they paid in, which offsets the payroll tax. A lot of these "tax cuts" are nothing but welfare in disguise.

 

If you think about the background of the guys at edX, they built edX to be a growth machine from day 1. We are only 4 years in, so the groundwork has to have been in place long before now. I can't imagine that someone in a back room is running numbers and says "oops, we better start charging nine bucks." MIT and Harvard start-up fanatics don't make those kinds of error judgments. Let's also remember that edX invented the MOOC, so our interpretation and expectations are our own construct. I'm of the opinion that being "only" a MOOC, as the public understands it, is probably not in line with whatever they have in mind long-term.
I've been a Saylor fan since day 1. And like Steve, I've had the pleasure of communicating with Jeff Davidson about their mission. The distinction, as best as I can tell, is that Saylor's ACE-evaluation feature is frosting on the cake but secondary to their actual mission of assembling content for everyone to use. That Saylor's college credit catalog just received a 3-year ACE eval is excellent. (that COSTS money, takes AWAY money) They regularly receive criticism that their exams don't align perfectly to their course content, and if delivering credentials were a goal of Saylor, they'd have addressed that swiftly. They haven't, and I think it's because it's not important to what they're doing. Saylor still develops course content (in the same way that baking brownies from a box are from-scratch baking) whereas edX and Coursera rely on the universities to feed them new and updated content on a regular basis. OTOH, edX and Coursera were headed into the credential arena since the launch. And it shouldn't surprise anyone that credentials cost money to create, operate, and validate.
Saylor is the "one that is not like the other" in this discussion. Saylor is more like Khan Academy whereas edX and Coursera have created a new category that's not easy to define.

 

I've no idea how to quote inside a quote since this forum changed- ugh. So, we'll have to agree to disagree about Siemens and Downes- - edX made it happen.
It'll be fun to see how this all unfolds, to be sure. I love the role tech is playing in education!