MOOC Inroads Stir Cal University Faculty Protest Letter

Image: insidehighered.com

The insular world of higher education was overdue for an institutional earthquake. When faculty of elite universities, such as Harvard and Stanford, began their commercial foray into online education initiatives such as MOOC, the ground under smug tenured faculty throughout Academia shook. The packaging of courses available to a worldwide audience, provided by intellectual stars across the academic firmament, led to the potential destabilization of higher ed's lesser lights' stature and value. Given Academia's cynical, relentless tuition and fee increases over the years, any doubt about the financial value of a tenured professor's "required" course and autocratic program requirements would be problematic to those whose "workload" includes paid summer-long vacations, paid sabbaticals, business development activities beneficial to the university and to the prof (a/k/a grants), and other activities that do not directly involve (heaven help us) instructing a generation of students.

For university administrators, tech's high priests, and the shadow world of "privatized" higher ed, the weakness of a professor's value proposition screamed for a profit-oriented "solution." MOOCs were, in some ways, made to order to resolve this conundrum. While positioned as game changers by well-intentioned university-based educators, the notions of profit and control were rarely discussed. Rather, MOOCs were characterized as the 21st Century version of "power to the people." Did anyone say "lifetime learning?"

Reporter Katy Murphy(photo: twitter.com)

Well, Academia' professorial B-list finally woke up to MOOC's implications for their jobs, their institutions, and (ahem) students. Recently, San Jose State University's philosophy department sent an open letter protesting their school's embrace of MOOC. The downloadable letter, included in Oakland Tribune reporter Katy Murphy's story on the topic,  provides cogent points regarding the MOOC encroachment into what had been the philosophy department's once-sacred grove. The story was picked up by the Mercury News, based in San Jose and in the heart of Silicon Valley.

While I don't agree with all positions the letter asserts, the document does present issues that should be considered, argued, and openly considered.

Understanding the impact and implications of MOOC leads to a broader inquiry into some of high tech's darker corners. Data mining, privacy usurpation, education as a handmaiden to business imperatives, depersonalized intellectual development -- all of these issues are at the heart of a data-driven nightmare that triumphalist technophiles are trumpeting as desirable directions for our society.

While it's difficult to sympathize with the San Jose State philosophy staff, they have raised the battle flag. What's needed is an articulate, persuasive position that questions tech's breezy assumptions regarding human behavior and the industry's dismissive preference for total power. It is individuals who should be in control of their destiny, not an algorithm written by someone who values data architecture and statistically-based mumbo jumbo over the human heart's poetic mysteries and our infinite realizations of beauty.