Toys Children Play With & Higher Ed

Here is a new toy that may or may not be the next big thing. This toy and others similar to it will change the nature of Higher Education in ten or fifteen years.
Children who play with such toys will expect their school work to be presented in the same manner.   We have something similar to this in Higher Education. It is called Hybrid or Blended courses. These courses are presented both in person (the traditional mode) and online.
Another way this could go is that more and more classes will implement the Flip Classroom where lectures are online and the students show up for in person tutoring on the points they do not understand.

College for $99/month

Everyone should listen to this show from NPR. It is an interview with Kevin Carey, policy director for the Education Center, and Marc Parry, reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Here is the transcripts of the show.

Are We Going the Way of Newspapers

Here is an interesting piece from the Washington Post titled A Virtual Revolution is Brewing for Colleges.
The following section caught my eyes:

"Colleges, like newspapers, will be torn apart by new ways of sharing
information enabled by the Internet. The business model that sustained private
U.S. colleges cannot survive. "

The article points out that with the invention of online education the barriers to informations have broken down.

"Both newspapers and universities have traditionally relied on selling
hard-to-come-by information. Newspapers touted advertising space next to
breaking news, but now that advertisers find their customers on Craigslist and
Cars.com, the main source of reporters' pay is vanishing. Colleges also sell
information, with a slightly different promise -- a degree, a better job and
access to brilliant minds. As with newspapers, some of these features are now
available elsewhere. A student can already access videotaped lectures, full
courses and openly available syllabuses online. And in five or 10 years, the
curious 18- (or 54-) year-old will be able to find dozens of quality online
classes, complete with take-it-yourself tests, a bulletin board populated by
other "students," and links to free academic literature. "

They also point out that not all students come to college for the sake of learning, and some view education as a comodity with a price tag.

But the demand for college isn't just about the yearning to learn --
it's also about the hope of getting a degree. Online qualifications cost a
college less to provide. Schools don't need to rent the space, and the glut of
doctoral students means they can pay instructors a fraction of the salary for a
tenured professor, and assume that they will rely on shared syllabuses. Those
savings translate into cheaper tuition, and even before the recession, there was
substantial evidence of unmet demand for cheaper college degrees. Online degrees
are already relatively inexpensive. And the price will only dive in coming
decades, as more universities compete.