MIT's Skills Experiment
Posted By
Spencer Thompson
15 February 2012
How the UK provides skills to its population is an important issue. Previous research by The Work Foundation pointed to a growing need for knowledge workers over the coming decade, and indeed it is this section of the labour market where jobs growth has been strongest in the recession: In 2010 there were around 180,000 more knowledge workers in the UK than in 2008. At the same time, the way we fund higher education in order to provide these degree-level skills is going through a difficult transition, from a model of state-funding towards greater student contributions via higher tuition fees. Whilst it is probably too early to tell whether this is having a negative effect on applications, we should take seriously experimental alternatives to the standard teaching model that may be able to provide some of the UK’s skills needs far more cheaply.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a top class university, ranked seventh in the World by The Times university rankings. When it was founded in the 1860s it was itself a radical new kind of American university, eschewing the Liberal arts tradition of earlier US institutions for a European polytechnic model, focused on the generation and wide dissemination of knowledge. This week MIT announced MITx, a new online project that offers free online courses to anyone in the world, with no entrance requirements and the promise of an MIT-certified qualification at the end. It will use online lectures, discussions and e-textbooks to provide content and automated assessments to measure progress. So far there has been one course announced, but many more are in the pipeline, along with improved security measures to ensure against cheating.
The implications of this are pretty enormous. Firstly, and in their own words, it “shatters the barriers to education”. Studying at MIT is enormously expensive and constrained to only the brightest of students. Many of the lecturers are superstars in their respective fields. MITx will simultaneously throw open the doors of this Ivy-league institution to anyone who wants to enter, and allow far greater numbers of students access to lectures and material by world-class academics. Whilst it is unlikely the resulting qualification will carry the same weight as a traditionally provided MIT course, it is definitely going to be worth much more than a piece of paper, and will likely act as a complement rather than a substitute to their traditional HE offer.
I am excited about distance e-education because it has the potential to meet some pretty acute needs. Firstly the cost per student to the institution providing the course is extremely low. No need to pick up litter and heat draughty lecture halls for students who are studying from the comfort of their own home or local coffee shop. This will lower the cost of education for many students who, put off by rising tuition costs, may forgo university study and all of its career benefits. Secondly, the dynamics of technological change and creative destruction often radically alter the skills needs of society, raising demand dramatically for complementary skills and reducing it for those competing with the technology. Displaced workers may need to re-skill in order to get back into the labour market, and their skills needs are likely to be to a level above secondary but below a full-blown degree course. By providing shorter, targeted courses extremely cheaply, and without the need to move cities or even country to attend an institution, distance e-education may offer these workers a viable route back into the labour market with demanded high-value skills. Finally, I do not see it replacing the ‘traditional’ HE offer, which itself is undergoing interesting developments to make it more relevant to both students and employers. Rather it should be viewed as another way of bringing higher education to a more diverse group of people who, for various reasons, may not consider a standard university course appropriate for their needs or situation.
We are not there yet. Automated online courses tend to lend themselves well to subjects and courses whose knowledge is easily codified and tested. It is unlikely an online course in English Literature or Music will be provided in the near future, for instance. But, for many technical subjects, the technology is effectively in place. If we can think outside of the box about how we are going to provide the UK with the skills it needs, in a world of increased demand and constrained funding, experiments like MITx might just provide an answer.
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