According to this article, The Next Level of Open Source Yale is going to start video tapping course lectures and making them publicly available online. They are not the first to do it, in fact MIT has been offering it since 2001. They offer syllabi, reading references, lecture notes, and even assignment and project descriptions. There is no reason why a self-motivated, self-teacher couldn't couldn't take full classes online. If this trend continues, what kind of changes will happen in higher education?
What will this transparency will mean. What will happen when someone compares Fundamentals of Physics offered at UCA to Fundamentals of Physics at Yale? Will UCA instructors be expected to make their course comparable to Yale's? What if UCA is better, would Yale be tarnished? What if a student doesn't like their professor? Can they find a different professor online and opt to take that course instead?
What does this mean for my resume? Right now I fill the special training section of my resume with UCA course titles that are relevant to the job I'm applying for. Can I put OCW (OpenCourseWare) courses on there as well? Will my potential employer see me as self-motivated or will they think that it's irrelevant since there is no way to determine that I understood and processed the information I took in? What if my employer starts expecting it? As a college student I'm suppose to be self-motivated and self-teaching. Per class I'm suppose to spend two to three hours working outside of the classroom. Supposedly I'm already good at taking online courses because the majority of my college experience was happening on my own. That means I have little excuse for not self teaching during breaks. Along those same lines, are students who can't afford college expected to self-teach online? Will a day come where retail management positions require OCW business courses?
The most obvious questions, what will happen to my classes? If everyone can receive the same education, why should I pay for it? Am I still paying for the education, or am I paying for the test? Can they charge that much for a grade? Will the lecture become part of the homework? Will I have the right to demand that my in class experience goes above and beyond what everyone else gets for free? Will college become more about the experience and less about the investment?
This last question is one of the most exciting to me. When the first colleges were founded in Colonial America, they didn't always make the most economic sense. In that agricultural society, there was little reason to let your son leave the farm to learn Greek and Latin. Colleges were providing an experience that was intended to create good citizens and good leaders. Unfortunately, as colleges became more accessible, they also became an investment. We've reached a point where we know exactly how much more a person will earn in their lifetime based on each degree they have. It could probably be argued, that now the experience has very little to do with the courses. If these Open Source Courses take off, we could have education available to all, and the experience available to many.
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UPDATE: Berkeley is going to give it a try too
Fascinating. I don't think this is a threat to my source of income, because open source can make good business sense as well as embody an admirable philosophy about information. I would love to see some of the lectures, presentations, and other materials I've developed about my most cherished ideas become available to as many people as possible. Scholars are used to not being paid for what they write -- why shouldn't we get used to giving away what we teach, too, for the same reward: prestige, honor, reputation, and the duty of contributing to the store of human knowledge?
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