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It's not even about being "lower quality". It's about building another medium for learning outside of highly expensive brick and mortar institutions.

I'm a huge fan of MOOCs. It makes no sense that everyone in America should aspire to getting a 120K bachelor's degree - a university education isn't meant for every career or person or life stage. I think we have this false belief that every American should aspire to getting a university education when in reality, the ROI of a university education is not always net positive. I've seen so many colleagues struggle with huge debt from graduate programs that did did nothing for their career prospects.

And it's not even that - learning shouldn't start or stop at a certain age. For example, I'm in my late 20s and wanted to learn how to build web apps. I like learning in structured environment, so Udacity worked perfectly for me. In 3 months I took an intro Python course and then a web app course led by a Reddit co-founder.

Would I have learned better through an undergrad university course? Maybe. Could I? It'd be pretty much unfeasible, given I was working 50+ hours for a tech firm and commuting between SF and South Bay at the time.

Anything that helps people learn is a good thing.

Yes. I took some Coursera classes and it was better than reading the relevant Wikipedia articles in terms of how much I learned and retained. Net win for education IMO.

The argument you are using privileges one aspect (greater access) above the whole (quality, depth of understanding, mastery etc).

The author is arguing (rightly) that the current system is a pass for educational 'meh - good enough' when we should and must try to get HIGH quality education to everyone.

A lot of proponents of MOOCs, argue that it is an improvement over what we have - that more people are going to be able to learn and be exposed.

This is fundamentally flawed as it as an over-optimistic assesment of the results.

MOOCs will have 2 outcomes

1) They will be great for auto didacts, and they will be the leading edge of subscribers and proponents.

2) They will become certification factories which prove that you can solve X test material (not subject matter) at the end of it.

Would you be OK with Math being considered the same as mental parlor tricks? Differentiation being reduced to knowing steps to carry out? Or History being reduced to rote learning?

I suspect that you will say NO, as would most people understand education to be the same as Knowing and understanding something, not being able to remember it like you would a song stuck in your head.

MOOCs can only go so far - and this is their weakness and the issue educators are trying to point out.

Having seen the philosophy of "good enough" applied to an entire country first hand, I assure you the outcome is misery. Cynical students who realize that getting an answer and learning are no longer happening, and all that matters is acing that test.

A good quality education is expensive. But the side effects of having an educated population (as opposed to literate and trained) is immense.

Half assing this is having engineers, who couldn't do R and D if his life depended on it, and instead he can create value by picking up a phone and saying "Hi this is Sammy speaking".

all the other intelligent people, all around the world who have never had the benefit of a high quality education

But the article's whole point is that all those people will not be getting an education at all; what they'll be getting is something else that shouldn't even be called by that name.

Your analogy with smartphones just reinforces that impression: most of the people who use smartphones or tablets aren't using them to do "computing", they're using them to do the same mindless things they did before smartphones and tablets came along, just more "efficiently".

> what they'll be getting is something else that shouldn't even be called by that name.

Tell me you wore a monocle while typing that