According to Forbes’ John Tamny “Online education only offers learning that the markets don’t desire, and because it does, its presumed merits are greatly oversold. There’s your ‘bubble.’” He summarizes “Going to college is a status thing, not a learning thing. Kids go to college for the experience, not for what’s taught. And that’s why there’s no ‘bubble’ forming in the university world.”
Tamny’s opinion is both different from most business analysts and important. His conclusion discourages further investment in current and potential start-up enterprises. It also presents another perspective for institutional boards and governments seeking to better understand the role of education technology.
Joshua Kim, in his Inside Higher Ed blog “Learn,” (here and here) was frustrated by Tamny’s choice of the term “online education.” Kim correctly reports online education technology is heavily used in traditional classrooms as well. Tmany’s article divided higher education between colleges and universities offering classroom instruction and firms offering online education that lack contact with peers and faculty—the typical MOOC provider (Massive Open Online Course). These are two extremes of Kim’s spectrum of the use of “online” technology. Tamny did not use the term “MOOC” itself.
