This is a dream .
25 World Universities got together to form a
GLOBAL ONLINE UNIVERSITY
They are ( From Times Higher Education World Universities Rankings )
University of Oxford
Stanford University
Harvard University
MIT
Princeton University
University of Cambridge
Imperial College London
Uni opf California Berkeley
University of Chicago
Yale University
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
UCLA
Columbia University
University of Pennsylvania
John Hopkins University
Cornell University
Northwestern University
University of Michigan
University of Totonto
Carnegie Mellon University
DUKE University
University of Washington
University of TEXAS
Georgia Institute of Technology
University of Tokyo
They all will develop online courses for the world and degree programs . At least 200 online courses for at least 10 degree programs . Each school will be able to handle 1,000,000 to 10,000,000 online students from the world . There will be several online platforms constructed by MIT .
Any student in the world over 18 years old can access the online courses.
If a student is seeking a degree he registers with one HOME university he wishes. He is assigned an advisor. Together with advisor they prepare a degree program with selected courses from all these member universities . Students access the courses, complete all requirements for the courses and he receives credits for the courses. All his credits are counted in his HOME University .
When he completes 40 courses with a score of 70 ( out of 100 ) , HOME University awards him a degree of the HOME University .
These degrees are the best degrees in the world .
Universities charge only $ 10 per course per person . Since each will serve 10,000,000 students they will collect annually $ 100 million .
If they feel $ 10 is not enough they can go up to $ 20-30 range .
Each course will be 12 weeks long and equivalent to 3 credit f2f courses .
Access will be open , and students will pay the fee after the 6th week .
They may drop the course anytime they want .
ONLINE Courses will include video lectures by the best teachers of the world, forum discussions will be held, assigned homeworks will be graded, midterms and very rigid Final exams will be made . Extra lab works are done if necessary . Simulations, animations, interactivities will be heavyly used . There will be continouos correspondence among students and teachers .
Is that a dream ? I think it will happen within 10 years .
Dream Solution for HE
You know MITx + Harvardx + Berkeleyx + UTx
Each school can handle easiliy 10 million online students at anill cost per course .
Now assume this consortium has 25 universities , then 25 x 10 = 250 million students can access to to these 25 universities
Cost is less than $ 1 . Then fee can be $ 5-10 per course.
Only 20 million can attend from USA. Rest 230 million is global.
Therefore 230 million x $ 10 = $ 2.3 billion will flow to USA globally .
MITx + Harvardx + Berkeleyx + UTx
The biggest revolution is happenning .
University of TEXAS joined the consortium of MITx + Harvardx .
UT has 51,000 students . There are many courses where number of students are more than 500 per semester . So there is good reason to be ONLINE.
Another good thing is UT is considering to provide credits for their own courses as well as MITx Harvardx courses to its own students .
That is the revolution .
ONLINE Education requires scale, millions students.
That can be achieved only by
- Being GLOBAL
- Being the best school of the world
In order to attract million students .
Then cost is very small, therefore schools can charge only a small fee
Students get the best education in the world .
That is the solution to HE in the world .
Target of Governer of Texas was a $ 10,000 BA degree in TEXAS .
Now it is possible even to get at $ 2,000 BA degree in TEXAS with the cooperation of MIT and Harvard
The cost of one online course is at most $ 1,000,000
That includes development investment, intellectual property of professors, TAs, platform, automatic grading amortisation, automatic authentication of students amortisation .
So if you amortise this cost in 10 semesters with 10,000 registration each the cost of per course is only $ 10 .
10,000 students x 10 semester x $ 10 = $ 1,000,000
UT also plan to provide credits to MITx Harvardx courses too .
Then in the students' transcript it will say
" such and such courses taken at MITx Harvardx . "
It is a nice referance .
This fall
MITx offers 3 course
Harvardx offers 2 courses
Berkeleyx offers 2 courses
UT will start courses in Summer semester with 3-4 courses .
Strategy of MITx is going very well . Slow and very careful .
It seems it will take some time to offer 50-100 courses so that some degree programs can be implemented .
MIT is offering the best online courses in the world . They do have a fantastic platform + they have a fantastic knowhow regarding the development of online courses + many online tools .
Therefore students like to take online courses of MITx .
After initial excitement the number of registration will be stabilised .
I expect 50,000 or so registration per course this fall .
Let us support MITx Harvardx I claim it is the solution for HE in the world .
