Who Says Online Courseware Will Cause the Death of Universities?

By Tom Katsouleas, Dean of Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering. He serves as Chair of the National Academy of Engineering’s Advisory Committee on Engineering Grand Challenges for the 21st Century.
In a recent editorial, Ray Kurzweil, futurist and Singularity Chancellor, compared the current university model to the bookstore model, suggesting that universities will be undermined by online the way that digital books undermined Borders.  Others have suggested that universities are headed the way of the newspaper.  Others have suggested that online teaching represents a new funding model for universities.
Yogi Berra said predictions are hard, “especially about the future.”  With that in mind there are a couple of perspectives to take from predictions in old issues of Popular Science or Scientific American:  futurists always over-estimate how soon new technology will manifest and researchers in the field always underestimate it. The bottom line, though, is that while online education poses a challenge for universities, they will ultimately improve them. Read more...