The other day I was scrolling through Twitter when a message caught my eye. It came from George Siemens, a longtime leader in trying to understand the impact of technology on higher ed. He’s the guy who coined the term MOOC, short for Massive Open Online Course, which then was a reference to multiplayer video games.
But this tweet was a biting critique of where higher ed is heading.
He wrote:
“I no longer think there’s a huge difference between for-profit and public higher education. Sit in enough faculty meetings, meet with enough leadership, and it becomes clear that it’s all about money. The difference between for-profit and public is mainly about appearances. In public institutions, we claim the higher ground but almost everything is driven by student numbers, enrollment, and dollars. Education could be less expensive, it could be more engaging, it could have a bigger impact, but we are confined to a system that values dollars first.”