If this had been circulated on April 1, I would have suspected it of being a spoof, challenging the college administrators with the same kind of job-performance/security threat that professors have been given by MOOCs.

While I think this might be as inevitable as MOOCs, I think we will find we enjoy the fruits of MOOCs and MOOAs in the same way we enjoy the fruits of WalMart, Home Depot, Best Buy and other BigBoxia. We will badmouth them in public but sneak into them in private to get the economies of scale, all the while whining about the loss of a rich and diverse ecosystem provided by the thing these behemoths replace.

- Steve
Your children's and grandchildren's college tuition is going up much faster than inflation. One reason--not the only one, but one big one--is the burgeoning class of administrators. The vice-presidents proliferate like those of banks, and if you add in compliance officers of one kind and another, the growth is phenomenal. Joe tells me of sitting through a mandatory sexual harassment tutorial, whose content could have been covered in ten minutes, but which took two "harassment officers" an hour to state the obvious. What particularly offended him was their clear contempt for the professoriate. WE run the university dudes, was their attitude, and you're just the pesky people we have to endure.

This is an Ivy League university, Columbia. God only knows what it's like in the state schools.

FWIW, I sent this on to a couple of other members of the professoriate, who laughed like hell.


On Jun 23, 2013, at 9:40 PM, Tom Johnson wrote:

Well, for me at least, we had a near maximum amount of independence without a lot of interference from administrators. I'm sure that varies widely, but I enjoyed it. You can have the time or the money, and I've always taken the time.

-tj

On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 9:03 PM, Owen Densmore <o...@backspaces.net <mailto:o...@backspaces.net>> wrote:

    It was always supposed MOOA would be a huge part of MOOC success,
    if indeed it did succeed. Thanks for the pointer, very
    interesting indeed.

    For example, Udacity and Coursera (and MITx) all agree that
    administration cost reduction is a huge step towards the solution
    of cost of education.

    I wish I *did* have a better understand the ins/outs of Education
    .. whenever I hear Ed and others talk about the arcane aspects of
    University Life .. I realize that I just don't Get It.  And don't
    want to!

       -- Owen


    On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 7:41 PM, Tom Johnson <t...@jtjohnson.com
    <mailto:t...@jtjohnson.com>> wrote:

        For those of us who have hung around universities for a
        while..... (Tkx to Joe Traub)

        
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2013/06/forget_moocslets_use_mooa.html

        --tj


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J. T. Johnson
Institute for Analytic Journalism   --   Santa Fe, NM USA
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