Chronicles of Higher Education
Academic life has barely changed in 40 years. Why? The faculty likes it that way.
About 10 years ago, I was co-chair of the Committee on Online Education at Yale University. Our primary mission was to explore making some of Yale’s classes freely available to students worldwide by creating MOOCs (massive open online courses).
I thought this was a fantastic idea. Giving away our best courses to people who would otherwise have no access to a university education seemed like just the thing a great university should do. I also saw the rise of MOOCs as poised to revolutionize higher education in North America. Some of Yale’s best professors were lined up to teach these courses, including the physicist Ramamurti Shankar, the psychologist Laurie Santos, and the Nobel laureate economist Robert Shiller. Few professors at American universities can teach as well as these scholars, so wouldn’t it be wonderful if their lectures were available to students everywhere?
The committee decided to proceed with the plan, and I volunteered to present its recommendation at a meeting of senior faculty.
It did not go well. Many of my colleagues hated the idea. They said that free open courses would dilute the value of a Yale education. It would endanger their jobs and those of their students. There were strong feelings expressed, and a bit of yelling. The committee met after the meeting, and I remember an associate dean looking at me sympathetically and murmuring, “Well, this isn’t really the sort of thing that requires a faculty vote.” So we just did it.
