Clay Shirky's latest defense of MOOCs quality doesn't matter very much, surely much less than cost

Clay Shirky, a leading MOOC advocate, writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education:


"Running a college was cheap enough that the surplus between dollars taken from our students and value produced for them was enormous. It was so enormous, in fact, that we never had to resolve the tension between the view we faculty have of ourselves (molders of youth, transmitters of sacred tradition, wise elders) and the view most of our young charges and their parents have of us (instructors in the skills needed in the modern world, including especially preparation for gainful employment)."

This is a false dichotomy if I ever saw one.  What faculty see themselves in such a rosy light as is portrayed in option?  I suppose that on our very best days some of us might feel something like this.  There is something sacred (in a secular way, if that is possible) about higher education.  But even in those moments we are well aware that we are mainly seen as instructors in certain skills related to employment...and we mainly see ourselves that way, realistically speaking.  So, both are true, although the first less so than the second.  It is promotion of these kinds of dichotomies that lead people like Shirky to suggest that only an idiot would promote anything like the first option, and all realistic people accept the second as the whole truth.  Hence we should accept MOOCS.  Of course even if that were true the issue would remain whether MOOCs will really give students these skills.

"The net benefit from a bachelor’s degree has shrunk every year of this century, with nothing today suggesting a reversal of that trend."  That's a wild one.  Where is Shirky's evidence?

"As has been widely discussed, most MOOCs reiterate the ancient form of the lecture, and do not signal much of a leap in pedagogy. (As McLuhan noted, the contents of the new medium are the old media, at least at first.)"   Where is the new medium here?  Television was a new medium.  Perhaps we could argue that the web is a new medium.  But MOOCs are not new media.  What does Shirky imagine the wild new thing that would replace video clips of lectures would be? 

"As ordinary as their educational sensibility may be, MOOCs represent a change in expectations among our clientele that cannot easily be contained in traditional structures. For as long as students and their parents have nervously scanned tuition bills, they’ve asked themselves “Isn’t there another way to do this?” And for that long, the answer has been “no.” Now, for the first time, the answer is “maybe.”
You would think that this “maybe,” from a few nontraditional learners, would be a small threat to existing purveyors of higher education.

There are a couple fallacies here.  First, although "maybe"s are always nice...it is always nice to think about new possibilities, we also need to be cautious.  Shirky has already admitted that MOOCs are not going to win out at the level of quality.  So what exactly would the parents be getting.  One of the illusions of the MOOC business is that supporters compare the cost of a year at Harvard with the low cost of a MOOC.  This is the wrong comparison.  Most Harvard students are never going to take a MOOC.  Harvard is marketing MOOCs to colleges where tuition is significantly less. 

Second fallacy:  MOOCs in their current form do have to do with learners in the tradition of auto-didact.  That's a good thing about MOOCs, as it is about the very similar Learning Company lecture series.  But the importance of MOOCs is that they are platforms, including testing mechanisms,  intended to replace teaching in the universities and colleges (mainly community colleges).  MOOCs may be fine for people who live on isolated farms, as correspondence courses have always been.  But that's not the issue.  So, the phrase, "a few nontraditional learners" is deceptive, at least.

"keep expenses below revenues."

This is a nice truism.  But Shirky does not mention all sorts of other ways that this can be achieved other than gutting the very idea of college professors outside of elite institutions.  How about lowering non-academic expenses (especially administrative costs), which seem to go up every year?  How about bringing back some of the lost state funding?