MOOAs: Another Massive Idea

Massive Online Open Administrations!  From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Study after study has shown that the people at the top—the deans and vice-presidents and other Grand Poobahs of bureaucratic reproduction—have grown far faster than faculty in the past couple of decades. And their salaries are far higher, over all, than those of professors. As a study from the conservative Goldwater Institute pointed out:

Between 1993 and 2007, the number of full-time administrators per 100 students at America’s leading universities grew by 39 percent, while the number of employees engaged in teaching, research, or service only grew by 18 percent. Inflation-adjusted spending on administration per student grew by 61 percent during the same period, while instructional spending per student rose 39 percent.

So if we could find a way to put administration online, to create Massive Online Open Administrations or MOOAs, we could really cut some fat and reap some serious rewards.

And this:

It’s possible that administrators won’t immediately see how revolutionary MOOAs would be, but faculty and students must help them understand that MOOAs would be good for all of us. Really. The first colleges to start MOOAs can sell their superior administrators to institutions with more B Team administrators. B-Team-admin sorts will be let go. All the colleges can reap the benefit of cut administrative salaries and share the costs of MOOAs, thereby allowing them to cut tuition. So it is that MOOAs will make higher ed more democratic and accessible to all.

Administrators of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your salaries.

The link. 

MOOCs: A Massively Bad Idea

From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

According to a recent article in The Chronicle, a state senator in California has sponsored a bill that would establish “a statewide platform through which students who have trouble getting into certain low-level, high-demand classes could take approved online courses offered by providers outside the state’s higher-education system.”

In other words, students at California’s public colleges who are unable to enroll in regular classes due to overcrowding will instead be steered into MOOCs, or massive open online courses.

That strikes me as a massively bad idea.

For the rest of the piece, follow this link.

The Changing Market Structure of Dreams

During the last couple of weeks I have been teaching the various Market Structures in Econ 102 Microeconomics. Also I have been searching and reading various business strategies out there. Another item of interest to me is the higher education world.  So it should not be a surprise that I was dreaming about "Barriers to Entry" and Higher Education last night.
Higher Education competes in a Monopolistic Competitive market structure. A pure competitive market will sell a homogenous product and will only compete based on price alone and nothing else. In a monopolistic competitive market the item being sold is differentiated, based on location, perceived quality differences, and quality of customer (student) service. This is why firms in these types of Markets do not compete on price alone.
One of the characteristics that help economists to identify the various market structure is the existence of Barriers to Entry.  In higher education the Barriers to Entry include class size, time, location, Accreditation and the reputation/qualification of the faculty. However, most of these barriers can be overcome by new competitors for example a new competitor can lure star faculty away from their current college.  The Accreditation barrier can be overcome by meeting certain standards and jumping through the various bureaucratic hoops. The only barrier remaining was location, and instructional infrastructure (Libraries, classroom seats).  
Now with the advent of online education new competitors have found they are not restricted by geography and they can invent ways to cram as many students into virtual classrooms. Thereby the explosion of Massive Open Online Courses more popularly known as MOOC.
Some of these new entrants ave gone into partnership with existing well known competitors such as Harvard, Stanford, and other well known Universities to overcome the reputation and faculty qualification barrier. They also have overcame the infrastructure and location barrier by providing virtual classrooms and Libraries. 
I could see the removal of the listed barriers, but I could not figure out how they plan to generate revenues. Last night in my dream I found the source of that revenue. It is testing, examination, assessment! Here is a testing company that is generating revenues from this model and using the existing infrastructure to generate revenue from the dreams and ambitions of our students.