Comment by gu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gu | Hacker News Reader

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I've studied at a number of universities, starting from a relatively unknown local university, and eventually graduating from a very renowned institution. Judging from my own experience, I'd say that if you're only used to high-quality tertiary education, you'd be surprised how disorganized and poorly taught courses at universities further down the ranks can be. Compared to that, MOOCs are already far superior. Should the working world move towards portfolio-based hiring, which seems to get more and more common, then a great many universities will find it hard to justify their existence. Sebastian Thrun, founder of Udacity, said that in 50 years only 10 universities will be left, which sounds hyperbolic to me. [0] Nonetheless, I would be very surprised if there wasn't a wide-scale disappearance of institutions from the 2nd tier and below.

I'm not aware of a site that gathers MOOC reviews, but occasionally reviews get posted on Hackernews, which was the reason I submitted mine, too.

[0] http://www.economist.com/news/international/21568738-online-...

"sounds hyperbolic to me"

Exponential not hyperbolic. If the median real world inflation adjusted income of the general population continues to drop as it has for about three generations so far, at the same time as tuition increases faster than inflation, the rate of decline of general population who can afford to attend will decrease somewhat exponentially not hyperbolic.

Also if you model higher ed as a fad, where rich kids used to go to the ivies so the masses try to copy them by going to state-U, this fad might burn out. Maybe if rich peoples kids try to do startups there will be a flood of the masses all simultaneously trying to get their kids into YC. I would theorize that fads and trends socially propagate exponentially not hyperbolic.

There are also arguments about lack of funding by .gov directly and via loan guarantees having to come to an end, but I think that would be a pretty sharp step function rather than exp or hyp.

Overall I think the best long term argument is exp decline with some pretty sharp step functions. Both linear and hyp are too extreme.

I've never seen a good biz argument against .edu mergers. Why the higher ed system has to have the biz model like corner store retail is unclear. Why can't it be like banking or big media or automotive where a handful of major players control the vast majority of the market? I could totally see 10 or so universities, each with as many local campuses as car mfgrs have car dealers. I could totally see franchise operated proctored test centers, maybe with onsite small group meeting/conference/workspace. Could you run an ochem lab for chemistry classes as a local franchise? I'm thinking probably not for various safety/liability reasons.

Exponential not hyperbolic

He meant hyperbolic as in "hyperbole," not in the geometric sense.

Thank you submitting your review, I enjoyed it! Also it is nice to see you responding to conflicting viewpoints.

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