How Online Education challenge is shaking up US academia

Last updated on November 28th 2012

I think there is tremendous pressure on top US university managements on this online education stuff. University of Virginia (UVA) top administrator, President Teresa Sullivan, was fired and then re-hired amidst a lot of UVA community protests and tremendous media coverage in June 2012. It seems her lack of big initiative for online education was one of the main reasons behind her being fired.

NYTimes article, 'Anatomy of a campus coup', http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/magazine/teresa-sullivan-uva-ouster.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0, is an absolutely fascinating article on Teresa Sullivan's ouster and then reinstatement. The article touches upon many things including:

1. Funds crunch for UVA as state government reduced funding. Alumni network helped by contributing to endowment. UVA has a $ 2.5 Billion budget [At Rs. 55 for 1 US $ that comes to Rs. 13,750 Crores].
2. UVA Board seats are allotted by State government/Governor.
3. UVA Board head, Helen Dragas, a real estate developer, was strongly influenced by Harvard Professor, Clayton M. Christensen's book, "The Innovative University", http://www.theinnovativeuniversity.com/. [From http://www.theinnovativeuniversity.com/proj/the-promise-of-online-learning/: “The Innovative University” shows how online technology makes a college or university vastly more attractive to a wide subset of students. It gives many people a second chance at learning – i.e. those who cannot afford a traditional college education, those who do not have the flexibility to take part in a full plate of coursework, and late bloomers or dropouts who have fallen behind and now have the chance to catch up.]
4. Dragas said, “Higher education is one of the last sectors of the economy to undergo this kind of systemic restructuring". [I presume she meant systemic restructuring being forced by embrace of disruptive new technologies like online education]
5. UVA Board fires President Teresa Sullivan (though it is couched in different language). Helen Dragas who headed the UVA board justified decision of ouster specifically mentioning that UVA was falling behind in development of online courses, "a potentially transformative innovation". [The email dated June 10th 2012 from Helen Dragas and another person announcing President Sullivan's stepping down: http://news.virginia.edu/node/18788?id=18788]
6. Message from Teresa Sullivan to the Board of Visitors on stepping down dated June 18th 2012: http://www.virginia.edu/president/speeches/12/message120618.html. A telling extract from the above message about her views of online education: "There is room for carefully implemented online learning in selected fields, but online instruction is no panacea. It is surprisingly expensive, has limited revenue potential, and unless carefully managed, can undermine the quality of instruction."
7. Message from Teresa Sullivan after being reinstated due to outcry in campus and media leading to state Governor stepping into the matter, dated June 26th 2012: http://www.virginia.edu/president/speeches/12/message120626.html
8. After her reinstatement Teresa Sullivan announced a partnership with Coursera but used cautious words about its future.

This set of article and messages involving the President of one of the top public universities in the USA and one which is within the first 25 top national universities of the USA, http://www.virginia.edu/Facts/Glance_Rankings.html, clearly shows that online education is a very hyped-up buzzword. Teresa Sullivan's views on online education seem to be solidly sensible especially for a public school with fund constraints (as against an MIT or Harvard with massive endowment I believe). But her Board wanted more from her! I think it truly has been a great victory for academic sensibility that she was reinstated due to public outcry.

A couple of relevant videos which shows the humans behind the drama as well as the human aspects of it:

• U.Va. Board of Visitors reinstates Teresa Sullivan as President, June 26th 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1wuDVuA824, 26 min, 11 sec.
• President Sullivan Addresses Supporters on the Lawn (after the above reinstatement meeting), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTVIUSolPk8, 15 min, 58 sec.

A video which shows her supporters at the time she stepped down as President:

• Teresa Sullivan Addresses Rally Crowd after stepping down as President on June 18th 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2Ny-50XPVc, 2 min, 33 sec. 

I must also mention that I believe online education is rapidly coming of age. I mean, it may be a matter of just a few years before it reaches stability in terms of large percentage of enrolled students completing courses, getting credit/certification and even degrees, market giving feedback on knowledge level of such students and how employable they are, and revenue stream for online education providers.

Some further thoughts on this matter.

I had a mail exchange on this matter with a friend that made me drill a little deeper into the matter. Thought I can share that on this post.

In the Board of Visitors meeting on June 26th 2012 (video link given earlier) a senior person of the board specifically apologizes for due process not having been followed in the decision to ask Sullivan to resign. He also states something to the effect that if due process had been followed for her removal then such issues would not have cropped up in the first place

Here's the UVA Board of Visitors (BOV) web page and here's the UVA BOV manual. From the UVA BOV manual, Page 49-50, "The board shall be charged with the care and preservation of all property belonging to the University. They shall appoint a president, with such duties as may be prescribed by the board, and who shall have supreme administrative direction under the authority of the board over all the schools, colleges and branches of the University wherever located, and they shall appoint as many professors as they deem proper, and, with the assent of two-thirds of the whole number of visitors, may remove such president or any professor."

So where the rector, Helen Dragas, committed a "due process" mistake was to not convene a meeting of the board, raise the issue of asking the President to resign due to clearly specified reasons, put it to vote and get two-thirds of BOV support for it. Not all BOV members supported Dragas as could be seen from the BOV meeting video mentioned earlier, and it seems that such a motion would have had vigorous debate with the possibility of Sullivan being given a fair chance to present her side to the Board of Visitors. Instead it was, as the NYT article put it, a "campus coup" by the rector in getting the President to resign.

Regarding Dragas and others' concern about UVA falling behind other top USA universities in the area of online education, it seems that clear directives were not given to the President about online education efforts by the Board of Visitors. Teresa Sullivan's messages clearly show her side of the story (far more eloquently than the NYT article). No wonder she was able to get so much support from the UVA community and the media which led to her reinstatement.

Indian Situation

In India autonomy of academia is a very important matter which limits government and funding agencies power to manipulate academic processes (including selection of teaching staff) of large public universities (small private universities are a different matter).

It is quite decent in terms of official procedure, I think. A Vice-Chancellor (VC) is the top executive officer of a university and gets appointed for a term (typically 3 to 5 years). For large public universities the government is typically involved in selection & appointment of the VC. The paper, "Appointment of Vice-Chancellors: Rules, Procedures and Intentions", http://www.aserf.org.in/presentations/vcpaper.pdf, gives an interesting bird's eye view picture.

Removal of a VC of a big university is a major issue affecting the public of the area in which the university is based. So, it seems to me, due process is important. If a VC is dismissed the VC may be able to approach the High Court to question his/her dismissal and even get it reversed if due process has not been followed.

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A Princeton Sociology Professor's Online Teaching Experience

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/education/colleges-turn-to-crowd-sourcing-courses.html?_r=0 has the fascinating experience of a Princeton Sociology professor with online teaching. He had taught the "Introduction to Sociology" course 30 times before and recently moved it to a free online course. I find it so nice to see humanities courses go online.

The article covers many interesting points:

• The professor wondering where to focus his gaze while teaching?
• The prof. thinking about how to handle a worldwide student audience without a real idea of what their backgrounds are?
• How crowd-sourcing technology helped the prof. focus on important feedback from the thousands of feedback messages and how he responded to them in his later lectures.
• The key problem of grading so many students being tackled by students themselves using grading criteria designed by the professor.
• The huge feedback gives the professor more feedback on his sociological ideas than he has had in his entire teaching career so far!
• Mid-term and final exams were hand graded. There was plagiarism detected in the mid-term. The prof. detailed rules to avoid plagiarism before final exam and that seemed to have worked.
• Less than 5% of enrolled students completed the course. 40,000 odd students enrolled, 2,200 did the mid-term exam, 1,283 did the final exam.
• But Princeton does not give certificate of completion and that may have not given some students enough reason to take the exam.

Napster, mp3 music industry disruption and MOOC

[6th Jan. 2021 update: Web Archive - Wayback Machine - link: https://web.archive.org/web/20121113052806/http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2012/11/napster-udacity-and-the-academy/ as following link is now broken] http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2012/11/napster-udacity-and-the-academy/ is a fascinating analysis of higher education challenges and opportunities. 

I would like to preface my comments below by saying that some of what I have written below as possibilities for the future may already be happening in the USA but, as far as I know, have not yet happened on a significant scale in India.

I found the mp3+Napster disruption of music industry example and similar possibility being considered in higher education fascinating. The mp3 compression format, Napster and fantastic devices like the iPod allowed music of so many genres to be enjoyed by so many people worldwide, even if the quality of the playback was not as good as uncompressed CDs. It was a revolution in bringing music to the masses worldwide.

In my humble analysis of Indian Computer Science and Information Technology academia I have found that teaching quality has become less important as the academic career growth path is more on the research side, http://arxiv.org/pdf/1202.1715. With Internet based learning/MOOCs the emphasis on good teaching is bound to increase. The competition in higher education will be just a mouse-click away!

Prof. Sebastain Thrun talked about how teaching in elite colleges involves having 'weeder' classes and how his online class forced him to change his style to accommodate less brighter or less knowledgeable students too. Very importantly, the Internet teaching medium gave him the opportunity to do so. Prof. Thrun's talk can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkneoNrfadk. In case you don't have the time to view the video, you might want to read a blog post of mine on it, http://eklavyasai.blogspot.in/2012/07/prof-sebastain-thruns-experience-of.html.

Internet based learning certainly seems to have the potential to bring a knowledge delivery revolution just like the mp3+ipod music delivery revolution. It will be an awesome utopian-dream-come-true scenario if knowledge delivery to the masses worldwide in the not-so-distant future becomes like how music is delivered today to the masses worldwide.

Certification of whether knowledge has been acquired adequately can be delinked from teaching/learning (different from smaller tests/quizzes which are conducted during the teaching of a course). That may really free up the student. S/he can choose the Internet teacher(s) for her/his courses and prove to herself/himself and others that they have picked up the knowledge by clearing examination(s) of her/his choice and acquire the appropriate certificates.

Employers will be able to give market feedback on the knowledge level of graduates with different certifications. That should filter out certifications/examinations that do not test students appropriately.