In their recent college guide, Washington Monthly included a provocative article entitled “College for $99 a Month”. This article featured the work of Burck Smith and his tech start up StraighterLine. This company provides introductory level classes to students and allows them to enroll in as many as they want for a flat fee. While on the one hand, this model for higher education would seems to suggest a kind of radical deomocratization for knowledge and teaching (at least at the introductory level) as online classes become available and affordable to people who do not fit the model for traditional residential college education. On the other hand, as the article points out, the for-profit model developed by Smith which leverages economies of scale and the rapidly developing potential for online knowledge delivery, holds forth real dangers for traditional universities which rely on “high volume” introductory courses to subsidize both more focused (and typically inefficient) upper level courses as well as faculty research, the maintenance of the physical plant, and other expected features central to life on a residential university campus.
With both a tremendous upside and potentially game-changing risks, we invite our UND faculty readers to chime in on the potential and problems of a Smith’s model and similar challenges to traditional methods of information distribution and, for lack of a better word, teaching. Be sure to check back this Thursday for a response from , Anne Kelsch of the Office of Instructional Development will respond. We’d also like to hear your take on this intriguing view of the future. So if you want to offer a post, send it along! Or start the conversation in the comments on Anne’s post!
