We have recently managed to avoid blogging about massive open online courses (MOOCs), although at least two of our bloggers (Tim and Kevin) are avid MOOCers (see here and here). So, although I am by no means an expert on the topic, let me open the discussion with the hope that others will weigh in. I’ll start with a nice (but possibly bogus) anecdote:
Larry Ellison, genius loci of Oracle Corporation, was slumming recently. He was, the story goes, giving a talk at a big meeting of the American Association of University Professors, the guild organization that invigilates the protectionist rules that keep the professoriate in their tenured luxury. Ellison began with a little flattery. Teachers, he said, are one of the most important assets of our society. Applause and appreciative murmurs. Not only are teachers important, he said they are also drastically underpaid. Even more appreciative applause and scattered “Here, heres.” In fact, quoth this business giant, I think teachers are so important that they ought to be paid at least a $1 million a year. A standing ovation: who knew that someone from corporate America could be so insightful? Unfortunately, Ellison concluded, I’m only going to need about 100 of you.
A quick Google search did not corroborate this story, and the guy who wrote it, Roger Kimball, seems to have it in for professors in general, and the notion of tenure in particular. That said, I have observed at least a hint of schadenfreude is typical of news articles about MOOCs (perhaps because journalism itself was actually disrupted by the Internet).
My opinion is that MOOCs are a great tool for outreach, a way to get many people to know about the things you (professionally) care about — much like popular science books in an age when reading popular science books was cool. Personally I remain unconvinced that MOOCs have the potential to replace traditional college education.
Instead of rehashing the same arguments that many of us have seen, I’d like to raise a new point (although I wouldn’t be surprised if it has already been discussed somewhere). Many predict that the demise of higher education is imminent, but I haven’t seen anyone suggest that MOOCs will replace K-12 education. Granted, being able to read is a prerequisite for MOOCs, so elementary schools are probably not going to disappear any time soon. But as far as I can tell the main difference between high schools and colleges is that colleges are on average a lot more expensive. Unlike college education, which is very specialized, high school education really could be limited to 100 teachers (or even fewer): The best math teacher can in principle teach all of the high school math lessons, etc.
I imagine that this idea would seem repugnant to most people, but arguably the main reason is the way high school teachers are typically perceived — underpaid and hardworking despite adverse conditions, vs. the public’s perception of university professors — overpaid and living in “tenured luxury”. This perception is of course completely false; after all, some of us are living in untenured luxury.
Turing's Invisible Hand 
From my experience in American and Canadian public middle/high schools, I was under the impression that they are basically a way to distract and occupy kids so that their parents can go to work. You can’t really have a MOOC babysitting teenagers.
More seriously, the real difference is in how a good teacher versus a good professor define themselves. A teacher’s high-point is not expertise in their class (nobody considers a high school math teacher a mathematician, or a high school science teacher a physicist) but ability to motivate and engage with their students. MOOCs are unbelievably bad at motivation and engagement because there is such a numbers barrier between the students and the teacher (this is the most common critique). Many university professors, on the other hand, view themselves as experts in their field and students should be inherently motivated to listen to them just because it is the student’s’ privilege to be in the presence of such expertise. Thus, if a university professor puts a class online, they feel they are doing a service for the community; no school teacher would ever think this. Of course, I am overgeneralizing a bit, since some professors are amazing at engaging students, but MOOCs can never provide a platform for this; by definition they are too “massive”.
The fake anecdote you open with does raise an extremely valid concern and I think A.J. Jacobs said it best in his recent NYT article on MOOCs:
The “big-name” MOOC courses run a huge risk of standardized curricula. Although this might be fine for some STEM courses (especially at the intro level) it would be disastrous for the social sciences and humanities (as the Open letter to Prof. Sandel from philosophy department of San Jose State U. explains).
Thankfully, not all MOOC sites are running themselves in the “we recruit elite profs to pass on their expertise” paradigm. Places like Udemy are providing an open framework for anybody to create a MOOC. This allows MOOCs to become much smaller and niche; I for one would love to see you guys run a Algorithmic Economics MOOC on Udemy to teach computer scientists economics and economists computer science. Such a course would definitely make answering why economists should care about computational complexity easier.
I agree that professors have more incentive to put their courses online, because the academic community typically gives you credit for being able to reach beyond the ivory tower in a significant way. However, I don’t think the teachers of many of the big MOOCs think they are uniquely qualified to teach these courses — just that they can teach them well . Similarly, a high school teacher may be motivated by the thought that he can offer a learning experience that is much better than the one kids are currently receiving.
Good point about “biodiversity”. Interestingly, this is presumably not a concern in the high school context, where curricula should ideally be standardized.
I think that MOOCs can really go a long way in replacing something that universities are generally bad at – frontal lectures. Why have your local professor teach a course on standard material (say, intro to algorithms), when you can get the same material taught by the best in the field for free? That way, bad lecturers who are forced to teach by the university can be reallocated to doing better things, and students get a better learning experience. Where universities can really come in and distinguish themselves is in the quality of tutorials, and the quality of the final exam/extra assignments. That way a student –and the university– get the best of both worlds – good lectures in the students’ own time, better quality tutorials (with professors not having to teach, they’re free to do that), and no professors doing something they’re bad at. In any case, there’s hardly any interactivity in a 2 hour lecture with 200+ students in class, so I don’t see the added value of frontal lectures in the university.
BTW, that’s why highschools aren’t moving to MOOCs – highschool classes are closer to this model: students read something at home, then come to class for homework revision/extra help.
The high school you attended must have been very different from mine 🙂