The success of capitalist totalitarianism (oligarchy) in America would require the elimination of any significant independent higher education, and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) could provide a means to accomplish this goal. The following comes from http://truth-out.org/news/item/18120-massive-open-online-courses-and-beyond-the-revolution-to-come
MOOCs are a type of marketing. They allow academic institutions to signal that they are with-it and progressive, in tune with the contemporary technological climate.
MOOCs are a financial policy for higher education. They exemplify what Naomi Klein has called “disaster capitalism”: policy guilefully initiated in the wake of upheaval.
MOOCs are an academic labor policy. As a consequence of the financial policy just described, MOOCs are amplifying the precarity long experienced by adjuncts and graduate student assistants and helping to extend that precarity to the professoriate. MOOCs encourage an ad-hoc “freelancing” work regime among tenured faculty, many of whom will find the financial incentives for MOOC creation and deployment difficult to resist.
MOOCs are speculative financial instruments. The purpose of an educational institution is to educate, but the purpose of a start-up is to convert itself into a financial instrument. The two major MOOC providers, Udacity and Coursera, are venture-capital-funded start-ups, and therefore they are beholden to high-leverage, rapid growth with an interest in a fast flip to a larger technology company or the financial market.
MOOCs are an expression of Silicon Valley values. Today’s business practices privilege the accrual of value in the hands of a small number of network operators.
MOOCs are a kind of entertainment media. We are living in an age of para-educationalism: TED Talks, “big idea” books and the professional lecture circuit have reconfigured the place of ideas (of a certain kind) in the media mainstream.
“Elite” universities, connected to the power structure and primarily serving to train/indoctrinate the next generation of the elite power structure, will maintain their prestigious place. To reach this exalted state will continue to be the dream foisted upon the masses. There will also be a layer of near-elite “wanabe” institutions, closing following in the footsteps of the most powerful institutions.
Comment by admin — August 17, 2013 @ 8:31 pm
I am not questioning that such courses can be quite effective at an inexpensive price. Quite the contrary — that Goebbels would have loved this. A first step.
Comment by admin — August 18, 2013 @ 7:27 am