online lecture courses and music

This is an interesting article (via supergee) arguing that online (and usually free) college lecture courses are reaching the tipping point that MP3s as a format and Napster (and its successors, like itunes and Pandora) as delivery systems represented for online music: that they're now good enough, common enough, and easy enough to access that they'll become the default method for a simple higher education. Though audiophiles (and most classical listeners) still prefer CDs, or at least the more sound-enriched WAV files that CDs are made of, and some even still stick to LPs, or *gasp* live concerts, for your average pop listener the MP3 - and, significantly, the better-quality compressed formats that have succeeded it - is good enough.

Similarly, the article says, while online education won't compete with truly elite and high-quality universities, or with stimulating seminar courses and other one-on-one or one-on-a-few forms of education at those universities or elsewhere, the average college whose curriculum is based on routine lecture courses, and even more so the baleful for-profit university, is facing real competition. This is even more critical for education than for music, because higher education is now considered a minimum for a decent career, and because traditional delivery methods are now so expensive.

I'm inclined to think this is so, and several consequences and follow-ups occur to me. ( Read more... )