Dear Commons Community,

In the past few months, several of the elite colleges, Stanford, M.I.T., Harvard, and Princeton, have embarked on offering massive open online courses or MOOC’s free of charge and not for credit.  The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article speculating on why and specifically what is the business plan for these endeavors.  These institutions are investing tens of millions of dollars in developing and offering MOOCs, what is the return on their investment.   The article suggests:

“They could eventually follow the iTunes model and sell access to a course for $1.99. That starts adding up to real money if you get 100,000+ people to sign up. Depending on the course subject, they could sell access to corporate recruiters. That’s essentially what Sebastian Thrun did last fall, when he sent the résumés of his best students from his Stanford MOOC to Google and other Silicon Valley companies.

Perhaps the best idea I’ve heard so far is that the universities could use these courses as an alternative admissions system. This makes sense given these institutions recruit far and wide to expand their pool of applicants in the hope of finding that perfect student. Most of the time they choose correctly. Sometimes they miss. Either way, it’s a time-consuming, difficult, and expensive process each and every year.

The MOOCs enable the elite universities to discover talented students participating in classes just like the ones offered on their campuses, and completing assignments made by their professors. It’s an easier and cheaper way to find that diamond-in-the-rough student from a village in Turkey. And it’s a safer bet that these students will ultimately succeed, given they’re already doing the work.”

The admissions rationale makes a lot of sense.  Here come the MOOCs!

Tony