''' *SCARING THE HELL* OUT OF
TRADITIONAL UNIVERSITIES '''
DOTCOM mania was slow in coming to higher education, but now it has the venerable industry firmly in its grip.
Since the launch just over two years ago Udacity and Coursera, two Silicon Valley start-ups offering education through MOOCS:
massive open online courses...........
The ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their foundations.
University brands built in some cases over centuries have been forced to contemplate the possibility that information technology will rapidly make their existing business model obsolete.
Meanwhile the MOOCs have multiplied in number, resources and students recruitment -without yet having figured out a business model of their own.
Besides providing online courses to their own ( generally for paying ) students, universities have felt obliged to join the MOOC revolution to avoid being guillotined by it.
Coursera has formed partnership with 83 universities and colleges around the world, including many of America's top-tier institutions.
Edx, a non-profit MOOC provider founded in May 2012 by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and backed with $60 million of their money, is now a consortium of 28 institutions-
The most recent joiner being the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. Led by the Open University, which pioneered distance-learning in the 1970s.
FutureLearn, a consortium of 21 British, one Irish and one Australian university, plus other educational bodies, will start offering MOOCs.
But Oxford and Cambridge remain aloof , refusing to join what a senior Oxford figure fears may be a ''lemming like rush'' into MOOCS.
On July 10, last year, Coursera said it had raised another $43 million in venture capital, on top of the $22 million it banked two years ago.
Although its enrolments have soared, and now exceed 4 million students, this is a huge leap of faith by investors that the firm can develop a viable business model. The new money should allow Coursera to build to any advantage it has-
From being a first mover among a rapidly growing number of MOOC providers. ''It is somewhat entertaining to watch the number of people jumping on board,'' says Daphne Koller, a Stanford professor and co-founder of Coursera.
She expects it to become one of a ''very small number of dominant players''.
The industry has similar network economics to Amazon, eBay and Google, says Ms Koller, in that ''content producers'' go to where most consumers are, and consumers go to where the most content is.
Simon Nelson, the chief executive of FutureLearn, disagrees. ''Anyone who thinks the rules of engagement have already been written by the existing players is massively underestimating the potential of the technology,'' he says.
Certainly, there is plenty of experimentation with business models taking place.
The MOOCS themselves may be free, but those behind them think there will be plenty of revenue opportunities.
Coursera has started charging to provide certificates for those who complete its courses and want proof, perhaps for a future employer. It is also starting to license course materials to universities that want to beef up their existing offering.
However, it has abandoned for now attempts to help firms recruit employees from among Coursera's students, because catering to the different needs of each employer was ''not a scalable model'' , says Ms Koller.
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