Changing Higher Education

An update on StraighterLine - a "disruptor in the making"?

A few years ago, I identified a few organizations that I thought were doing things in higher education that were examples of approaches that potentially could be disruptive to the field (Potential disruptions in the higher education space). Among these is StraighterLine, which offers primarily introductory level college courses much more inexpensively and flexibly than traditional colleges and universities.  Entry level courses are relatively similar in many if not most colleges, and at the same time are the most profitable for the colleges because they are most often taught in large classes. If students in large numbers were to opt for the StraighterLIne combination of online convenience and low cost, it would prove quite disruptive to the budgets of many traditional institutions. 

The problem with CA higher education is that no one asks what the problem is

The advertisements in a newspaper are more full of knowledge in respect to what is going on in a state or community than the editorial columns are.
Henry Ward Beecher

The editorial board of the Los Angeles times weighed in on December 29 on the funding situation of the UC system with Finally, UC gets budget attention  . This latest Times editorial joined earlier ones about the UC in demonstrating a certain naivety on the part of the Times editorial board in matters of higher education in California. The editorial strongly supports President Napolitano's solution to the UC problems - send more money - and egregiously mischaracterizes Governor Brown's proposals as "mechanistic". If only the UC issues were simply about "budget"!