4 Ways Higher Ed Has Changed, Post Recession

Pressure to cut costs and "scale up" teaching helped pave the way for the popularity of MOOCs, or "Massive Open Online Courses" taught by elite universities. Two leading platforms, Coursera and edX, are closing in on five million users worldwide. These courses started out as a way for learners to sample teaching by famous professors at top universities, but options for gaining academic credit are beginning to emerge, and they are quickly infiltrating the teaching at traditional universities. To some critics, the MOOCs are little more than glorified online lectures, and dangerous ones at that; their cost-cutting promises could become an excuse for politicians to cut funding for higher education even further. Read more...