http://i.forbesimg.com/assets/img/forbes_logo/forbes_logo_white.pngBy Michael Horn. Why people thought that the massive open online course (MOOC) providers would disrupt U.S. higher education by themselves by simply offering traditional university courses online for free has never made much sense. Yet judging from many of the pieces that have been published since Udacity announced its alleged “pivot” to focus on providing learning opportunities that integrate tightly with employer needs, that’s what many people thought. Some of the confusion seems to have stemmed from a misunderstanding of what much of higher education does and is incentivized to do (hint: research often trumps the teaching and learning part of the equation) and how higher education imparts value for students—not primarily through learning in many cases, but in fact through the sorting certain institutions do, the market signal that a degree sends, and the network—or access to social capital—that institutions provide. More...