Education

MIT & Harvard have sold higher education’s future

From The Chronicle: ”…Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sold their edX platform to a for-profit company for $800 million. … Their decision to fold is a major, and potentially fateful, act of betrayal. … Before the sale, edX was academe’s public option — a mission-aligned satellite of the brick-and-mortar campus. Now all the major players in the sector are profiteers, legally obligated to maximize shareholder return. As universities offer more web-based courses and degree programs, most of them will turn to online program managers like 2U and Coursera. 2U already runs over 500 such programs for 80 university ‘partners,’ numbers that — with the edX acquisition — will more than double.”

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