[Chevalier]

"The new digital credentials can solve this problem by providing exponentially more information. Think about all the work you did in college. Unless you’re a recent college graduate, how much of it was saved and archived in a way that you can access now? What about the skills you acquired in various jobs? Digital learning environments can save and organize almost everything. Here, in the “unlabeled” folder, are all of my notes, tests, homework, syllabus and grades from the edX genetics course. My “real” college courses, by contrast, are lost to history, with only an inscrutable abbreviation on a paper transcript suggesting that they ever happened at all."

Exactly. On the merits, a MOOC degree ought to be infinitely more worthwhile than any traditional college degree. MOOC completion (quite literally) demonstrates project work, practical skills, attendance, and interaction. The courses themselves are the highest quality in the world and the rigor and impartiality is available for all the world to see. In a sane world, MOOCs will inherit global education.

But the world hasn't caught up yet. Right now the only commonly understood credential is the college degree, which everyone knows can be accomplished through registering for bullshit courses, skipping class, plagiarizing occasional essays nobody will ever read, and earning a one-word major that does nothing to prove any actual skills. Historically, this is as good as we've been able to do. No longer.

Give it time. There are entrenched interests here -- not only the massive and powerful education industry, which is now obsolete, but also every existing college graduate whose expensive credentials are now threatened by the radically superior MOOC certificate. Not to pick on teacher unions in particular, but several states require infamously pointless masters degrees in education before you can teach. Lawyers likewise REALLY don't need a three-year JD before we can practice... and the US stands alone in requiring bachelor's degrees prior to legal training or bar passage (with the exception of California). Virtually any non-STEM job that requires a bachelor's can be filled without the aid of expensive four-year certificates in poetry or pottery or communications. That's an enormous threat to basically every working professional in the United States.

Employ the D.E.N.N.I.S. system here.

First, demonstrate the value of MOOC certificates to employers.

Second, engage employers with hiring pipelines direct from Coursera/Udacity/edX.

Third, nurture these pipelines and grow them into a viable Github-for-employment.

Fourth, neglect protests from existing interests that have demanded advanced degrees in "teaching MOOCs" (seriously) or jeers that MOOC completion rates are low.

Fifth, inspire students with visible examples of success through MOOCs. Thiel fellows are the closest to this, but the project more closely resembles a lottery than a structured path.

Sixth, separate MOOCs entirely from their current aping of traditional courses. There is no reason whatsoever to release courses on a real-time basis, or to rely on artisanal videotaped lectures. (Though MOOCs have admittedly improved dramatically on the latter, with faster speeds, transcripts, open courseware, etc.)

Or... just withdraw federal subsidies for student loans and make host institutions partially liable for student defaults. I'd love to see the argument to pay $50k/year to attend no-name for-profit ripoffs in the middle of nowhere, versus free attendance in every Harvard course at any Starbucks in New York City.

[dalke]

I question your statement "a MOOC degree ought to be infinitely more worthwhile than any traditional college degree". (Taking "infinitely" to mean "at least twice".)

Do you have any evidence for that? That is, there's very little research to back that up. For example, http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1902/300... compared the two systems and found that they were roughly the same, in terms of outcomes.

However, that's based on completing the course. From the paper, "Although approximately 17,000 people signed-up for 8.MReV, most dropped out with no sign of commitment to the course; only 1500 students were “passing” or on-track to earn a certificate after the second assignment. For the IRT analysis we included only the 1,080 students who attempted more than 50% of the questions in the course, 95% of whom earned certificates. Most of those completing less than 50% of the homework and quiz problems dropped out during the course and did not take the posttest, so their learning could not be measured."

Further, "It is also important to note the many gross differences between 8.MReV and on-campus education. Our self-selected online students are interested in learning, considerably older, and generally have many more years of college education than the on-campus freshmen with whom they have been compared. The on-campus students are taking a required course that most have failed to pass in a previous attempt. Moreover, there are more dropouts in the online course (but over 50% of students making a serious attempt at the second weekly test received certificates) and these dropouts may well be students learning less than those who remained. The pre- and posttest analysis is further blurred by the fact that the MOOC students could consult resources before answering, and, in fact, did consult within course resources significantly more during the posttest than in the pretest."

This reads like if a student finishes a course then there isn't much difference based on how they learned the material. Hardly the sign of a 'radically superior' education system.

[viscanti]

'Radically Superior' could mean equal quality of education for:

1) Free (or nearly free) 2) Open to anyone 3) flexible to fit anyone's schedule 4) Easier to show the actual work completed (because there is a digital copy).

Generally, any student who needed special considerations for any of the above (a likely non-trivial amount of students), they had to compromise on the quality of education. For those students, I'd argue that it a significant improvement.

[dalke]

I am pleased to see an increasing uptake in mass higher education, except like the OP I think we have confused liberal education with job training. But it would be unwise to ignore the history of distance learning, which started with correspondence colleges in the 1800s. Certainly anything which was done by post can be done now by computer, so I have no doubt that MOOCs can work. The question is how judge if they are "radically superior".

California used to have (1). The GI bill also meant (1) for many veterans. Germany, Sweden, and some other countries still have (1). Which makes it easy to judge if current US universities are radically inferior to tuition-free universities. The Open University in the UK is a decades old example of (2) and (3), though not (1).

It's therefore hard for me to accept that MOOCs are significantly more radical and superior than existing systems which already incorporate most of the points that are supposed to make it radical and superior.

And, (4) Seriously? What, some employer is going to come and insist seeing my individual assignments for partial differential equations before hiring me? And read through my essays for sociology class? And my term papers for introductory philosophy? Embrace the Panopticon!

For that matter, my wife's college (she takes online courses) is focused on team projects, so most of her assignments are done with 2-3 other people. How is the outside world supposed to figure out which part is hers? How much time are they willing to spend to disentangle this?

And finally, if this were useful then a pen-and-paper correspondence college could add a small surcharge per course to hire someone to scan incoming mail and put it in a file for future reference. That that hasn't happened, nor that there's been a call for it, suggests that it isn't so useful.

[nmrm2]

You forgot step four of The System :-)