Can MOOCs Save Academic Freedom?
Edward Renner1
University of South Florida
Abstract
The commercialization of higher education
over the past 50 years has embraced MOOCs as the next big growth opportunity
for venture capital. However, the realization that M00Cs are our last stand to
protect the fundamental purpose of academic freedom has been lost in the
current distraction of debating the relative value of online as opposed to
traditional classroom teaching. Our academic challenge is to use MOOCs to
elevate general public knowledge to be an effective civic moderator of wealth,
power and belief. If we do not, commercial
control of information will become the currency defining the human
condition.
Historically, the three forces that have defined the human
condition and human progress have been economic wealth, political power and
social beliefs and values. Like the keeper of the fire, academia in the role of
keeper of knowledge, has sought to preserve and protect the light of reason and
wisdom against the excess of wealth, power and fanaticism. This is the ultimate
modern purpose of academic freedom.
Although globalization is commonly treated primarily as an
economic concept, its impact on political power and social beliefs and values has
changed the frame of reference for how we must now think about academic
freedom.
The digital communication revolution that has flattened the
earth into a global playing field is disrupting higher education in the form of
massive open online courses (MOOCs). However, the value of MOOCs as a powerful
force to protect the fundamental purpose of academic freedom has been lost in
the current distraction of debating the relative value of online as opposed to
traditional classroom teaching.
Of far greater importance for human progress and the nature
of the human condition is the essential prerequisite of independent critical
thinking that can neither be bought nor suppressed.
This noble justification of academia is now more than
theoretical, it is actually possible – but not without a struggle. The commercialization
of learning that has overtaken higher education over the past 50 years has embraced
MOOCs as the next big growth opportunity for venture capital. In this sense, MOOCs
have become the last stand for the defense of academic freedom because ownership
of knowledge and information is the key to controlling the political power and
social beliefs and values determining the distribution of wealth in the 21st
Century.
Unfortunately,
academics are typically weak warriors, and our colleges and universities are
deeply compromised fortresses for combating power and belief in the service of
greed. For example, at the University of
Wyoming, the mining industry was successful in the early removal of a “Carbon
Sink” sculpture which called attention to the dangers of climate change.2
At the University of Iowa, the appointment of a director for the Center for
Sustainable Agriculture was blocked by agribusiness because the nominee’s research
supported the mission of the Environmental Protection Agency.3 The
student loan crisis provided a financial accounting of shifting the cost of a
college degree from a public to a personal responsibility, to mention only a
few illustrations of the commodification of education.4
On
the one hand, MOOCs offer the opportunity to fully democratize knowledge and
learning, by facilitating the flow of all information into the public domain. Finally,
with open online courses there is an opportunity to make teaching and learning available
to everyone. Now, the ultimate civic accomplishment of balancing the dynamic
resultant of the three forces of wealth, power and belief in the service of
human progress and the enhancement of human condition is possible.
But,
our institutions, as owners of copyrights and patents, contribute to making
knowledge and information a commodity by removing it from the public domain.
Apple is attempting to control the K-12 academic market in which an iPad can replace
many of the functions of a physical classroom. State legislators see the cost
of education going down and control of content going up through online learning.
AAUP is confronted with a dilemma that the instrumentality of job protection as
the strategy of choice for defending academic freedom will be compromised by
MOOCs. Colleges and universities are searching for a business model to survive in
a competitive market in which a few winners supported by venture capital
provide courses administered by others with a minimum of financial support from
state governments.
The
potential endpoint is an economic market which owns the political power and social
beliefs which determines the preconditions for the distribution of wealth,
globally and nationally.
MOOCs
may well be the last stand in defense of academic freedom if knowledge is to
increasingly belong in the public domain, and not increasingly become a
commodity. This is our academic challenge. We must own and use MOOCs to elevate
general public knowledge to be an effective civic moderator of wealth, power
and belief. If we do not, control of information will replace resources, just as
resources replaced land, as the currency defining the human condition.
Seeing knowledge as public domain, not as the newest
commodity market, can secure our legitimate place in human progress as the
keeper of the fire. We must now occupy learning. In the long term, MOCCs can provide
a strategic and powerful defense of the ultimate purpose of academic freedom,
not job security in the short term.
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1 Professor Renner teaches an MOOC in the Honors College at the University of South Florida.
2 University of Wyoming officials sped up, touted removal of anti-coal sculpture. http://trib.com/business/energy/emails-university-of-wyoming-officials-sped-up-touted-removal-of/article_4f9332ee-d83c-5d58-a38b-19e913ba739d.html
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1 Professor Renner teaches an MOOC in the Honors College at the University of South Florida.
2 University of Wyoming officials sped up, touted removal of anti-coal sculpture. http://trib.com/business/energy/emails-university-of-wyoming-officials-sped-up-touted-removal-of/article_4f9332ee-d83c-5d58-a38b-19e913ba739d.html
3 Thomas Bartlett. Field of Discourse, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 27, 2010.
4 The Making of Corporate U, Topical issue of The Chronicle Review, Oct 17, 2010.
