“The internet is a destroyer of any traditional business that relies on the sale of information. In 50 years from now, half of the 4500 colleges in the US will be closed. The residential college campus will be obsolete And 10 years from now, Harvard will enroll 10 million students. Disrupt or be disrupted!” (Harden, 2013)
While the above quote seems a bit dramatic, we are already seeing some of these trends come to pass. In Ireland, the number of applicants who have applied for a college course has dropped to the lowest level in at least five years - from 78,000 in 2014 to 73,000 in 2018 at a time when Leaving certificate numbers are still growing. Institutes of Technology have seen a 10% drop in applicants for Level 6/7 courses. (Donnelly, 2018) The precise reasons for the drop are not fully understood but the growth of MOOCs and online learning are challenging the traditional campus model of Irish Universities.
This presentation will explore the trends in the growth of MOOCs and large online colleges both in Europe and the USA through case studies of designing and delivering a MOOC and also the author’s experience of working in a large online US college - Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU).
SNHU has grown in 10 years from a campus in Manchester, NH with 3,000 students to an online college with over 90,000 students making it one of the fastest growing universities in the USA. To put this in perspective, Leaving certificate students in Ireland were 58,000 students in 2018.
The author will discuss his experience in SNHU and how the University has transformed from a campus based school of accounting and business into an institution offering over 200 programs online, from certificates to doctoral level in Business, Science and Engineering. The author will discuss how the growth of online ‘Super’ colleges is impacting on smaller universities throughout the US and the implications for Irish higher education.
The author will also reflect on his experience on designing and delivering one of Ireland’s first MOOCs. This pioneering free online learning initiative attracted participants from 50 countries, with upwards on 2,000 students registering.
MOOCs are seen as a “disruptive technology” in education. Education commentators predict that MOOCs , while not replacing on-campus degree courses, will transform many aspects of teaching and study, not just in how and where students take courses but also by providing more people with more choice and opportunity to learn in their own time. We are now seeing MOOCs being offered for credit and MicroMasters degrees which are a series of graduate level courses from top universities such as MIT. Coursera are offering six new full degree programmes in 2018 from five university partners. (Shaw, 2018) With low startup costs and powerful economies of scale, online courses such as MOOCS dramatically lower the price of education and widen access to it.
Works Cited
Donnelly, K., 2018. Revealed: The most (and the least) popular CAO choices this year. [Online] Available at: https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/education/revealed-the-most-and-the-least-popular-cao-choices-this-year-36686476.html
Harden, N., 2013. The End of the University as We Know It. [Online] Available at: https://www.the-american-interest.com/2012/12/11/the-end-of-the-university-as-we-know-it/ [Accessed 18 4 2018].
Shaw, D., 2018. Coursera Launches Six New Degrees Including a Bachelors Degree. [Online] Available at: https://www.class-central.com/report/coursera-new-bachelors-degree/
