It seems that the energy in the change in higher education and technology/internet is a bottom up force and not driven from the top down.

In contrast, the Coursera, Udacity and AI courses were wonderful. I completed 10 – 20 hours of homework weekly. Voluntarily, I completed an educational experience that was more enjoyable, more rewarding, more difficult, and a better learning experience than many of the courses I completed in my undergraduate degree at Simon Fraser University.

@Accordingtosmith, I suggest your sample is incomplete, and most likely drawn from online experience like Athabasca and Thompson River, traditional distance education institutions. Tens of thousands of people are volunteering to complete Coursera, MITx and Udacity learning experiences. I have taken three so far and hope to take many more.

Is this not what we hope for in education? People lining up to learn?

I agree that Canadian universities should be pioneering this field as well. A university without the ability to provide this kind of experience in a few years will be in a difficult position. However, aside from that, this is the frontier of education. Stanford has demonstrated that the incumbents of distance education, Athabasca, Thompson River, Open University, etc, were not reaching the scale, nor the interactive experience, that was possible.

What Coursera and Udacity are currently providing is not the pinnacle of possibility, it is the foothills. However, what they have now is a large student body, a platform they can evolve, and lots of data. As these things move forward having the platform and the data is the difference between research and innovation and content provider.

I just received this email from an imaginary friend, who will remain nameless.

Dear Colleague

I work in a university where we have a “Centre for Innovation”. Thankfully, this absolves me from needing to worry about innovating, which, as you know, can be hard work. We also have a “Quality Advancement Unit” and a “Human Ethics Committee”, both very handy for similar reasons. I think there is also a “Higher Education Development Centre”. All I have to do is, well, what I’m told to do. Easy, eh? And they keep moving me up the chain, where I have fewer people telling me what to do and more people doing what I tell them to do. The closer to the top of the pyramid I get, the more comfortable I am with the way the organization works. I’ve exchanged stories with people in similar positions and we all agree — it’s a great system, and we will fight any attempts to weaken it. There will always be a few malcontents and loose canons, who will insist on being critical just to cause trouble. It’s not my problem if they refuse to play the game and succeed as I have, and they are probably envious of my hard-won position. Fortunately, we have policies and procedures to deal with such people. I should know — I drafted a number of them myself.

Best regards.

We are losing millions by the month.

Thanks for writing..