By Rahul Choudaha. MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses – have been in the news for their potential to be revolutionary within the learning space, with significant interest coming from outside the US. For instance, nearly three-quarters of Coursera’s course-takers are international students. Could the growth of MOOCs then lead to the decline of branch campuses?
Branch campus unsustainability
While there are successful examples of foreign branch campuses like the University of Nottingham in China and Malaysia, there have also been embarrassing failures, such as Michigan State University in Dubai and the University of New South Wales in Singapore. More recently, we have been observing a new wave of interest from big names like New York University in Abu Dhabi and Duke University in China. Overall, a growth in demand for branch campuses exists. However, this growth may be unsustainable.
Philip Altbach, in “The Branch Campus Bubble?”, highlights various issues relating to enrolment, academics and funding, which put the quality and sustainability of branch campuses under the scanner.

By Jessica Moore. Elite US universities including Harvard, Princeton and Stanford are making their classes available for free online. Jessica Moore asks why.
Elite US universities are known globally for their excellent standards of education, and for their astronomical course fees. At Harvard, the full whack for an undergraduate programme is around $60,000 a year. For all the current anxiety in the UK, that makes our new £9,000-a-year maximum look like pocket money. But then, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Or is there? Enter "Massive open online courses", or MOOCs – a rapidly growing phenomenon launched around a year ago in the US, whereby prestigious universities such as Harvard make selected courses available over the internet to absolutely anybody around the world for free.
Here's how it works. MOOC students work through set assignments online, usually using involving online video and interactive materials. They commonly study at their own pace and evaluate one another's work. Graduates are awarded a certificate but not a credit. Anyone can enrol, and it's all completely gratis.