Changing Higher Education

Futurelearn -a UK entry into the universe of MOOCs

MOOCs such as edX, Coursera, and Udacity have obviously caught the attention of the higher education world,  In large part, the excitement has been generated by the participation in these ventures of many of the 800 pound gorillas of US research universities (e.g.Harvard, MIT, Stanford and UC Berkeley). Suddenly, the highest elites of the US university world are plunging into online learning!

Consequently, one might be excused for looking askance at the recent headline in the Times Higher Education:

Open university launches British Mooc platform to rival US providers

Given that this MOOC (Futurelearn) does not include the 800 pound gorillas of the UK research university world such as Oxford, Cambridge, and Imperial College, how could Futurelearn have the weight to rival "our" MOOCs? **

How can we think about the wave of new innovations in higher education?

Much has been happening recently in higher education - MOOCs, competency based degrees, alternative credentialing, Presidential (of the US, that is) statements that real increases in tuition must stop, etc. This has led various observers to predict tsunamis, tipping points, crises, and/or disruptions for higher education.

How should one begin to analyze the possible impacts of this seemingly endless set of new "environmental conditions"? I find that a useful starting point is the business model of higher education.  The following picture describing the elements of a business model is taken from a recent publication, Disrupting College,  by Clayton Christensen, Michael Horn, Louis Caldera and Louis Soares (CHCS).   

 

This picture emphasizes that there are four key components of a business model, and that all of these components must fit together in an interdependent way in order for the model to be viable. The lock on the picture emphasizes that no one component can be changed without causing significant changes in the other components once the model has reached a viable equilibrium.