Dear Commons Community,

My colleague, Frank McCluskey, had a posting on his blog a little while ago raising questions about the purpose of a university. He asked: If a university does not support faculty research and publication can we still call it a university?  He argued “No” and that a fundamental mission of a university is to seek knowledge. The discussion moved to the future of higher education in the age of online learning, MOOCs, and venture capital endeavors such as Coursera and Minerva. An article in The Atlantic on “The Future of College”, published in August, was referenced that speculated on the influence of online technology on higher education. There was the usual give and take about whether certain types of online institutions would replace traditional colleges and universities, much of which has been well-reviewed over the past half dozen years. However, the quote that I liked most in The Atlantic article was from the Greek author, Petrarch, who said: “The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be lit.”  There is great wisdom in these words and they are as important in the 21^st century as they were in the 1^st century AD. A critical question is whether online learning is simply a vessel-filling modality or can it inspire students to learn and to want to learn on their own. I would say yes it can but it will take well-trained faculty to do so who can create highly-interactive learning environments in which students can in fact feel inspiration from a teacher and/or fellow students.  Many of the canned, mass-produced courses lack this close human to human interactivity and that may be their Achilles heel.  In my opinion, many of these courses are well-done, multimedia-infused content delivery that will best be utilized in blended learning environments where faculty will select some of the content but will reserve for the traditional classroom the interaction needed to inspire students.  Yes many students will enroll in these courses and programs especially those who live in parts of the world where higher education opportunity is severely lacking.  In the United States, as long as the elite institutions continue to offer and promote small-class size,  interactive face-to-face instruction, it will be difficult for fully online colleges to become the norm.

Tony