[mattferderer]

MIT was one of the earliest leaders in sharing course material online for free.

I wish they would take that $1 billion & invest it in modernizing online education. If you want to be a leader in AI, I argue you should open your doors to as many applicants as possible from all over the world at an affordable price. Discover a better way to improve collaboration & online learning. EdX & Coursera are nice but they seem to be halfhearted attempts. UNC's online MBA requires video conferencing for discussion & is much more engaging.

I guess $1 billion of server infrastructure & employees doesn't look as pretty though.

[skeptic_69]

I think if you want to be a leader in AI research you want to attract and nurture the best graduate students and researchers. I don't really know how much doing good research has to do with good online education. I am sure online education is useful but these issues don't really have much in common.

[mattferderer]

I don't disagree.

I believe that there are a few universities whose education is by far superior. If you can increase the amount of people receiving top education, you can increase those that can then go on to do research.

Getting into MIT is not easy. I imagine it is especially hard for those outside the US. The gatekeeper effect lowers the amount of people who can go on to become graduate students & researchers.

[skeptic_69]

ehhhhhhh I am not so sure the main limiting factor in going on to grad school is access to quality undergraduate education. a diligent student at the top public school in every state is probably qualified to go do research in graduate school.

I'd imagine a more limiting factor is the a) willingness to work really hard for 6+ years for uncertain rewards for the joy of research with very low wages. especially when you can go into industry and make 100k+ b) student loans-see low wages as an academic.

As an academic in ML at least-I think there are more than enough academics in the field or trying to get here....look at NIPs submissions!

[fooker]

>I don't really know how much doing good research has to do with good online education.

I am currently a CS grad student, I got started with computer science by watching MIT Open Courseware lectures.

[skeptic_69]

obviously learning things effectively makes you a better researcher. I am talking about the value to the academic culture of the department.

[moneil971]

Agreed, collaborations and publishing innovative research/experimentation go much further than trying to do a course simplified to the level that it can be taken online.

[anonymous5133]

I view the online education/MOOC type stuff being for teaching the basics. For example, have the undergrad curriculum be online and basically free. If people want to go to grad school at MIT or wherever, then have them take an extremely hard exam in the subject. I think overall, you would get higher caliber candidates this way just because of how big online education can scale.

The current education system is highly exclusionary based on characteristics that are obtained in high school and most of the characteristics are directly linked to income. The problem is many people can still go on to get these skills later in life but can't really get into MIT once they're adults. You can, in theory, but we all know in practice it is not realistic.

[anonymous5133]

The big universities will NEVER give out high quality equivalents of their courses online. The problem is the undergrad tuition is helping to subsidize the higher-level research that MIT and other big name schools are known for. How many times have you heard the stories about how undergrads are being taught by TAs or graduate students because the professor is off doing some research.

MIT and the other schools know if they gave away their core curriculum's online that are basically the same thing then less people would want to go to the school at the current over inflated rates. If you guys are looking for a revolution in online education, I hate to say it, but don't look at traditional institutions to do it.

The revolution in online education will be done by someone similar to a Steve jobs or Jimmy Wales (wikipedia) that basically has no connections to the traditional education industry but is just very motivated to change the world for the better. We all know that teaching is not rocket science (many people can teach it) and most of the significant human knowledge is being written down in books. The only exception is for the stuff that is cutting edge latest research but of course people aren't going to learn those topics until they've learned all of the other known subject matter on the topic which is recorded in books. So overall, the goal here is to simply take those books, produce free equivalents of them (the knowledge in the books are NOT subject to copyright) and then create some sort of online self-study system where people can learn the material. Tools need to be created that help people to learn the knowledge on their own and offer innovate tools to self-study.

[gumby]

> The problem is the undergrad tuition is helping to subsidize the higher-level research that MIT and other big name schools are known for.

Actually MIT undergrad tuition is about 14% of MIT's revenue and about 16% of expenses (all in, not just the teaching portion), numbers which have been remarkably stable over the last 30 years. Undergrads simply aren't that important to a major research institution like MIT which is better thought of as a big research lab with a small school attached (undergrads make up less than 20% of the personnel on campus).

> The big universities will NEVER give out high quality equivalents of their courses online... MIT and the other schools know if they gave away their core curriculum's online that are basically the same thing then less people would want to go to the school at the current over inflated rates.

Except Open Courseware (thank you Hal Abelson) is exactly that: typically everything handed out by the prof including syllabus, lecture notes, problem sets, clarification notes...everything! And videos of lectures in some cases. And the motivation was precisely the opposite of what you say: "we assembled this stuff; perhaps it's useful for you to make your own course too."

> If you guys are looking for a revolution in online education, I hate to say it, but don't look at traditional institutions to do it....The revolution in online education will be done by someone ... that basically has no connections to the traditional education industry but is just very motivated to change the world for the better.

Umm, maybe. Sadly, a big part of higher education is credentialism, and for that you need to tie back to institutions. And the big institutions have an interest in such experimentation for the standard big institutional reasons that are not specific to universities (the "satellite campus" system has worked for some big institutions like NYU, and their students in, say, Abu Dabi who never go to NY at all) and there's no reason to think that similar classes of experiments could happen via linkups like U of Il + Coursera).

But I agree that new entrants like Kahn are doing interesting experiments that might have a huge, benefit effect in the long run.

[anonymous5133]

I think we will be able to disrupt higher education credentialism. I disagree with your idea that it needs to tie back to institutions. It does not. It simply needs to be able to show to employers that the credential has value. That's it!

[clintonb]

MIT and Harvard are co-founders of edX. What about edX is half-hearted?

* I'm an MIT alum and former edX engineer.

[WhitneyLand]

You can’t get a full undergrad or masters at either school based on your ability.

You can get a “certificate” or some asterisked form of diploma, or you can enter the traditional applicant lotto where a significant number are rejected yet go on to do great work.

The old lotto model is based on the legacy of having enough seats to put students into.

Some newer programs, including one from MIT are experimenting with a scalable online model.

You want a degree from us? Take some classes for a while, prove your ability, you could get in.

The lotto application process besides being limited is imperfect in so many ways. The GMAT if I recall correctly correlates to success only around 65% of the time.

It’s time for these elite schools to decide how important an issue brand dilution (maybe) is for them, and come out and be straight about how much they factor it into their strategy vs. limiting how many diplomas they grant based purely on scalability while maintaining quality.

Ones a logistical problem. One is profit (endownmenrm prestige) motivated.

Pick a side for the future.

[clintonb]

I somewhat agree with you.

MIT has done a lot to expand access to content in the form of OpenCourseWare (https://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm) and edX (https://www.edx.org/).

The issue you have identified is finding scalable method of accreditation. Other schools have certainly tested online-only degree programs and produced many graduates. As an alum, I do struggle with the question of, "would an online-only graduate be 'real' alum"? That's my own personal bias. I imagine the institute does think about brand dilution to some extent.

That said, while colleges may be gatekeepers to degrees, it is employers that require the degrees to get jobs. Why bother with degrees in the first place if the candidate can prove they have the necessary skills for a job despite not holding a degree?

I realize I'm deflecting, but it's worth pointing out that there are multiple parties in play here, not just universities—MIT or otherwise.

[sgt101]

On the other hand if talented teachers can get paid for doing what they do best then they can offer a personal experience as opposed to a diploma factory. I strongly suspect that there will always be a market and mechanism to support that.

[mattferderer]

Also agree with this!!

[throwsaway9192]

Hi Clinton,

Author of edX here. At the time I left edX, the vast majority of courses used long videos and multiple choice questions.

[clintonb]

Yes. Rather than assume, I still pose the question: what is half-hearted about that? What can be changed for the better?

[throwsaway9192]

* High-quality courses (or at least as good as the original few!)

* Open-licensed courses (as originally promised and intended)

* Real checks-and-balances and not-for-profit structures

* Investment in research in improving teaching-and-learning

* Commitment to integrity in results presented to the public, in respect for student privacy, and in general, a strong set of core values and to keeping what's working in education

[mattferderer]

My experience has been watch recorded videos, participate in forums & do assignments. The collaborating part needs to improve in my opinion.

[ghaff]

The collaboration component of MOOCs ranges from mediocre to god-awful. And it's hard to see how it could be otherwise at scale.

A lot of courses are run asynchronously which blows a lot of meaningful collaboration out of the water right there. And even when they're run like a real-time course (which a lot of people who have other schedules/travel/etc. tend to hate), you have such a wide range of skill/language/etc. levels that it's hard to have sensible discussions.

Courses that try to be explicitly discussion-focused are even worse.

Autograding for coding assignments is nice when it works. But I'm honestly not sure the average MOOC is really any better than just reading a book and doing some related exercises.

[mattferderer]

I agree with everything you said.

I do think you need to have deadlines. They can be more flexible but deadlines help at least keep groups of the class at the same pace. The more people participating, the more relaxed the deadlines can be. I've seen some courses that have so many people, you could honestly take the class at your own time & always have people to discuss the current lecture with.

In the case of a real MIT online degree, I would support a schedule that mimics the campus schedule. If you have other schedules/travel/etc., then sign up only for 1 course at a time & understand what you're committing to.

I get scaling is hard the more "real" you make the course. I feel you can have a nice balance between hiring assistants to help with grading & discussions by increasing the cost somewhere in between on-campus & average MOOC prices.

[ghaff]

>I feel you can have a nice balance between hiring assistants to help with grading & discussions by increasing the cost somewhere in between on-campus & average MOOC prices.

Blended models have a lot of promise--at least in theory. My understanding is that post-pivot Udacity does some things along these lines. And, of course, there are more traditional degree programs that have a large online component.

One of the nice things about CS/programming is that, in many cases, you don't really need the physical resources of a university campus. And even if you can't handle 100% of a full degree program, "nanodegrees" and the like are a big win. It's also nice that computer systems can handle a lot of the grading of problem sets--and, as you say, it's not super-expensive to have TAs handle the rest. (Source: I remember what I was paid to be a grader for a few courses in grad school :-))

[anonymous5133]

I would say that most if not all subjects taught at the undergrad level can be implemented in online platforms. You can have in-person seminar courses for all the subjects that actually need hands on practice. Even in those situations, you can still have a significant impact by having simulations using AR/VR or similar. There is a lot of potential in this space that no one really taps into. I see some people doing x and others doing y. It is all good but there is no one doing a unified approach to this so it just ends up going no where. People want the whole picture, not bits and pieces.