Education as a product

Posted by in Uncategorized Jan 31st, 2005

Via Enrollment, a story that highlights the shift in academic power structure online university courses may cause.

Most online learners are working adults, and "the market overwhelmingly favors professional education," he says. That has led to "a growing commoditization of the curriculum and a tendency for schools to market education as a 'product,'" he writes. Many institutions now develop curricula that can be reused and repackaged, with little or no further input from instructors.

That is "triggering a seismic shift in the academic power structure," he writes, with power tilting to administrators and information-technology specialists who may see faculty members merely as content providers.

One distance-education instructor whom Mr. Wright interviewed compared some online curriculum development to sweatshop work. "You have these busy people creating these objects — like multiple-choice tests, or little games, or learning objects — these are people who are paid nothing, whereas other people are paid a lot for overseeing it, like factory owners," said Susan Nash, associate dean of liberal arts at Excelsior College.I'm somewhat concerned about marketing 'education as a product' just like any other product. One of the problems I think is that currently many online university programs, since they are growing so fast, accentuate the marketing aspects of appealing to students with limited time, professional lives, etc., without developing a tradition of big E education, where the education is the most important aspect.

I'd like to hear what others are thinking about this.

Here is more critical commentary about distance education from the Salon.com article highlighted here.

Hunt, a history professor at the nearby Community College of Aurora, had Accepted a friend's invitation to attend the University of Phoenix graduation ceremony for its Denver-area students. Hunt was keen to take a closer look at Phoenix, the for-profit juggernaut whose booming distance-learning programs were changing the calculus of higher education at schools nationwide, including his own. Outside the Aurora faculty lounge, dark rumors were swirling of state bureaucrats talking up a troubling notion: the "professor-less classroom."

Hunt listened intently as the commencement speaker, a Phoenix professor who had recently been named Faculty of the Year, gave a speech describing how Phoenix had transformed her role as a professor. "She defined her job," he remembers, as "delivery of chapters."

That phrase, Hunt says, "just sent chills down my back."

Did you enjoy this article?