How the Embrace of MOOc's could hurt middle America by Greg Graham

Sebastian Thrun, the Stanford teacher that started the the website Udacity which offers online courses quite teaching at the University when he found out enrollment in his online class in AI reached 160,000 students. "Having done this, I can't teach at Stanford again," Thrun said when he announced his decision this year. "You can take the blue pill and go back to your classroom and lecture to your 20 students, but I've taken the red pill and I've seen Wonderland." Thrun was enthralled by the number of students interested in taking his online class, and saw no point in continuing to teach small numbers of students when he could make a bigger impact online and effect more people. But the question is, how long will his big impact be considered just that? Big. 

If there is a large move towards these MOOC's there is an issue with what it will do to society and social classes. "Although the move toward online education is being advanced by some of the nation's most elite universities, in the end it will be the lower half of the student population that will be forced out of the traditional classroom, widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots." It can be concluded that the free education is good for everyone but the issue lies in that the lower half of society will be taking online courses and the more privileged will have the advantage of being able to go to elite universities and get a more personal education. So maybe before society lets these MOOC's take off they need to ask the question that is more often then not ignored, will the long term effect be as beneficial as the short term effect? It all depends on what you value more I guess. An equal society, or education? 

Our society often makes the mistake of accusing those not on board with an idea to be old fashioned. When we put a negative connotation to different ideas, in this case that MOOC's may not be as beneficial to society as we perceive them to be, we often end up ignoring them. "The push for technology is relentless [and] if you're not on board, the sentiment goes, you're falling behind." When society makes bold statements like this, people are easily persuaded, and don't make decisions for themselves, they listen and obey. "We've got to question the motivations behind those moves. I'm sure online educators are motivated by the sight of an abundance of learners, but what are the chances that, over time, those numbers will lose their meaning?"

The idea that MOOC's may not be the right answer will be overlooked and the consequences of our choices today are easy to predict on what it will do to future generations of tomorrow. Imagine no more face-to-face learning. It may be far off but it is possible. Right now the push is only to put higher education online, but they have already done experiments on senior high students, and the results were "remarkable" as Mr. Kim said from the article 5 ways that edX could change education. What happens when the idea of e-learning jumps from helping adults find time to get educated, to using it instead to teach elementary children. Everyone would be educated online, and you can bet the only children getting a good face-to-face education would be the children of the one percent. "This could happen because the move toward online education is driven by a holy trinity of interests: state and local governments that want to reduce education expenditures, school administrators forced to cut budgets, and technology companies looking to expand their markets." It is this very idea of the holy trinity that should scare everyone. 

The holy trinity will advertise the idea of "Wonderland" and make Thruns dream a reality. Only the reason Thrun loves this idea is because he is at the top of the food chain with 160,000 students beneath him, or maybe in the future the Thrun running these classes will have the world beneath him. It may be good for Thrun but is it good for the world? The holy trinity is going to sell us Thruns view of the holy trinity not the worlds view and the person saying this might not be a good idea is going to be called old fashioned and quickly overlooked. 

http://chronicle.com/article/A-Pioneer-in-Online-Education/134654/