The free or low-cost classes have obvious appeal among those looking to save money. Online courses don't live up to hype

Massive open online courses were supposed to revolutionize — and democratize — higher education.

But two years since their debut, the initial buzz seems like nothing but hype.


Millions have signed up for online courses sponsored by elite colleges, yet they report high dropout rates and disappointing student performance among those who stick it out. A quietly released report last week on a partnership between San Jose State University and major course provider Udacity found that disadvantaged kids performed particularly poorly and students found the courses confusing. Collective statistics aren’t available, but by one tracker’s account most “massive online open courses” — known as MOOCs — have completion rates of less than 10 percent.

And the courses have yet to figure out a sustainable business model. Earlier this month, provider Coursera announced it earned $1 million by charging students for course verification certificates, but that’s just a sliver of what really drives the organization: $65 million in investment capital from ed tech and mainstream venture capital firms.

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Some college faculty members don’t trust the courses or actively work against their formation, in part for the preservation of their own institutions. These courses largely escape the regulatory environment that governs the delivery of traditional higher education courses. Assessing MOOC students is still a puzzle, as is measuring whether a course is a good one. And one big issue remains almost entirely unresolved: There are are still too few ways to translate a student’s collection of course experience into credits or a degree.

“Credits from a MOOC are only good in our current system if you can transfer them to an existing institution for credit or if you can take them directly to an employer,” said Andrew Kelly, director of the conservative American Enterprise Institute’s Center on Higher Education Reform. “Right now … [it’s] not quite clear that either of them is taking place.”

Since Stanford University offered one of the first MOOCs in 2011, dozens of universities have joined the fray. Major provider Udacity was founded by Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun, who offered that first course. Coursera, another major provider, also was founded by two Stanford professors. Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology founded nonprofit edX.

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The free or low-cost classes carry obvious appeal for those looking to save money or for flexible access to higher education. Anyone with an Internet connection and the willingness to learn can sign up. And the surge in students was helped by the perfect confluence of events: The waning recession and recovering labor market. College expenses were rising while wages were stagnant.

As part of his proposal for college affordability, President Barack Obama in August praised online universities and courses that award credits based on learning, not seat time, to the delight of some providers. Obama lauded schools for leveraging technology in ways that could shake up the higher education landscape.

But if a higher education shake-up were measured on the Richter scale, some analysts say the courses haven’t made the earth move — much.

“Just calling yourself a MOOC doesn’t mean you’re going to be revolutionary,” said Richard Culatta, director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Education Department. “There are some I’m really impressed by and there are some that are terrible. It’s not exciting anymore to just have a MOOC.”

In the higher education version of an arms race, the conversation too quickly became about who offered the online courses instead of how they could improve the delivery of education, said Rachel Fishman, a policy analyst for the nonpartisan New America Foundation’s education policy program.

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Adam Sitze, an assistant professor of law, jurisprudence and social thought at Amherst College, opposed college talks with edX in April.

Faculty and administrators conducted an internal study about the proposed partnership, in which edX set a price of about $2 million for a possible five-year contract. Some faculty felt the money could be better spent on existing technology, not an experimental venture. About 20 or so MOOC skeptics at Amherst circulated an informal internal memo between January 2012 and April 2012 outlining their concerns. In a faculty vote, the college shot down the proposed partnership.

“edX really sells itself as providing democratic access to people who wouldn’t otherwise get into college,” Sitze said. “When so many fail, how do they get off saying this is a viable model?”

The courses face the same, still-debated question online learning faced when it first hit the scene, said Chuck Dziuban, director of the Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness at the University of Central Florida.

“Quality, quality and quality,” he said. “The elephant in the room with online learning has been that these courses don’t equate with the quality in face-to-face courses.”

But what is the best way for students to demonstrate what they’re learning without the solution looking like an online multiple choice test? That hasn’t quite been figured out, either.

The Education Department’s Culatta said it’s time to find creative ways for students to demonstrate the skills they’re learning.

“If I’m learning to code, how in the MOOC can I build something to demonstrate that?” he said. “Rethinking assessment is a really big piece.”

The open nature of the courses could be their undoing: They won’t last long if providers don’t figure out a business model. Colleges have offered online courses for years, but typically to enrolled students who are paying tuition and earning credits. For-profit providers Coursera and Udacity are backed by investors, who expect the providers to make money. MIT and Harvard supported nonprofit edX with $60 million, but the company is looking for a way to sustain itself. Anant Agarwal, president of edX, said the company is experimenting with fees for completion certificates.

The online courses wouldn’t be the first “shiny object” to come and go without making the revolutionary impact originally expected, said Sherman Dorn, a professor in the Department of Psychological and Social Foundations at the University of South Florida College of Education.

Learning-management systems like Blackboard and presentation platforms like PowerPoint were once lauded as transformational technology, but their effect has been decidedly less so, he said.

Everyone is only looking at MOOCs version 1.0, Agarwal said. The technology is far too new to be judged on its long-term effect.

“I would encourage people not to be impatient. How will the world of MOOCs look 10 years from now? It’s hard to say,” he said. “Will they look exactly the same? Absolutely not.”

The evolution is already happening. For example, Google is partnering up with edX to build and operate MOOC.org, a website that will allow any university, institution, business, government agency or teacher to create and broadcast their own course to the world. Before, the nonprofit only provided courses in partnership with other institutions.

Sure, the courses are still working out their kinks, but the question of whether they are revolutionary is moot, Coursera co-founder Daphne Koller said.

“We launched about 16 months ago and since then, we’ve accumulated almost 5 million students around the world — most of them, who in the normal course of events, wouldn’t have access to this kind of education,” Koller said. “If you ask me, it’s changed more than I ever expected it to in such a short amount of time.”

In addition, the open-online-course craze has jumpstarted a new conversation around online learning, access, quality and efficiency.

“I’ve been in higher education for 30 years and this is the first time in my career in which there’s been widespread, passionate discussion about teaching,” said Steve Mintz, executive director of the University of Texas system’s new Institute for Transformational Learning. “People who are bitterly hostile to MOOCs are engaging in this conversation about how can we increase student engagement and success.”

The courses also have sparked new discussions about unbundled coursework, or learning separate from a university, Kelly said. Napster did the same thing for music by separating individual songs from albums. While not sustainable, Napster created an opening for something like iTunes, he said.

Only time and further work on the model will tell if the the courses can evolve and deliver on the transformative change for higher education that was predicted when they emerged.

“MOOCs have really served as an extraordinary catalyst to bring education to the forefront of the discussion around the world,” Agarwal said. “If we have to hype something, what better to hype than education?”