Progress Making Higher Education More Affordable

I was heartened by a short piece in Newsweek¹ that addressed some concerns I raised in the Healthymemory Blog Post, “A Solution to the Excessive Cost of a Higher Education.” According the the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, the costs of a higher education have skyrocketed 450 percent in the past 25 years. As I argued in my blog post, the proper use of technology should have decreased, not increased, the costs of a higher education.

Apparently, two professors of computer science at Stanford University, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng agree. They believe that the Internet should allow millions of people to receive first-class educations at little or no cost. They have launched Coursera, www.coursear.org, to make courses from first rate universities online at no charge to anyone. They offer full courses to include homework assignments, examinations, and grades. Go to the website to view the wide range of course offerings. It is worthwhile to note, that professors are not paid. So kudos to these professors who place education first and realize the potential of the Internet.

Ng and Koller made a class available at no cost online. The class in machine learning drew more than 100,00 enrolled students, 13,000 of whom completed the course. This result impressed not only Ng and Koller, but also such venture-capital firms as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and New Enterprise Associates, which together have invested $16 million combined in Coursera.

Providing free education is one matter, but as was pointed out in the healthymemory blog post, the money comes from the granting of degrees. The following is taken from the Coursera Website.

“…This Letter of Completion, if provided to you, would be from Coursera and/or from the instructors. You acknowledge that the Letter of Completion, if provided to you, may not be affiliated with Coursera or any college or university. Further, Coursera offers the right to offer or not offer any such Letter of Completion for a class. You acknowledge that the Letter of Completion, and Coursera’s Online Courses, will not stand in the place of a course taken at an accredited institution, and do not convey academic credit. You acknowledge that neither the instructors of any Online Course nor the associated Participating Institutions will be involved in any attempts to get the course recognized by any educational or accredited institution. The format of the Letter of Completion will be determined at the discretion of Coursera and the instructors, and may vary by class in terms of formatting, e.g., whether or not it reports your detailed scores or grades in the class, and in other ways.”

In my view they are not addressing this issue in a satisfactory manner. Some ideas regarding how to do so are offered in the healthymemory blog post.

1Lyons, D/ (2012). Cheaper Than Harvard: An Ivy League Education Online—For Free. Newsweek, 14 May, p.13.

© Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com, 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Douglas Griffith and healthymemory.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Tags: Andrew Ng, Coursera, Daphne Koller, E-learning, Excessive Costs, Healthy Memory, Higher education, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Stanford University, Transactive Memory