Higher education: Creative destruction

Higher education evolution, or Creative Destruction as this article calls it, typifies the tendency of costs to soar in industries where labor costs rise as productivity remains the same.  This article in the Economist was surprising in the way it combined MOOCs, which are not for credit – the only MOOC, at Georgia Tech, that is for-credit – and the ASU Online program, which is not a MOOC.  The author predicts a higher ed future of MOOCs, whereas I see them in their current form as an interim solution.  Nonetheless the virtual migration of a good deal of higher ed will most likely continue.  The victims, such as the small towns that rely on universities, will likely feel some pain.   “Whereas the prices of cars, computers and much else have fallen dramatically, universities, protected by public-sector funding and the premium employers place on degrees, have been able to charge ever more for the same service. For two decades the cost of going to college in America has risen by 1.6 percentage points more than inflation every year.”

via Higher education: Creative destruction | The Economist.