Are univerisites scared of the online learning movement?

Mainline universities loudly proclaim their love of online learning ? and pedagogical innovation more generally ? while doing everything possible to slow it.

By Peter G. Klein,?Guest blogger / May 16, 2012

Harvard President Drew Faust, left, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Susan Hockfield speak during a news conference announcing a new partnership in online education earlier this month in Cambridge, Mass. Klein argues that despite offering more online courses, most universities would prefer the shift to online education not happen.

Bill Greene/The Boston Herald/AP/File

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I posted last week on Organizations and Markets about the tepid,and entirely predictable, reaction of the higher education establishment to the information technology revolution. Mainline universities loudly proclaim their love of online learning ? and pedagogical innovation more generally ? while doing everything possible to retard it. The strategy has been to make a few easy, low-cost, conservative moves that preserve the status quo, such as putting some existing courses online, while trying to suppress the innovative outsiders like Phoenix, DeVry, TED, Kahn Academy, etc. It?s a classic example of what Clayton Christensen calls sustaining innovation ? incremental changes that keep the existing market structure intact. The last thing the higher-ed establishment wants is disruptive innovation that challenges its dominant incumbent position.

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As Morgan Brown wrote earlier this year, universities are guilds, and it?s this organizational structure, not bad leadership or the wrong ideology, that underlies the universities? hostility to markets. If there is fundamental reform, it will surely come from outside the guild system, not within it. It?s great that Harvard and MIT and other elite universities are offering some classes online. But look instead to bolder experiments like the Mises Academy ? not a duplicate of the standard degree program, but a modular, flexible, focused approach to teaching Austrian economics and related subjects. Call it guerrilla teaching. Let?s see where this new movement can go!

The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. This post originally ran on stefanmikarlsson.blogspot.com.

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