Today is the time to mine the Internet for higher education resources. Just recently, California passed a law requiring that all college textbooks be available in electronic form by 2020. Some institutions have taken steps no less progressive. MIT, for example, has successfully run its OpenCourseWare (OCW) project for eight years, injecting a rare dose of philanthropy into higher education. By offering its course content online for free, MIT initiated the noble cause of open course projects. Many top universities, including Yale and Carnegie Mellon, have since joined the party. However, ideas to take the project further are somewhat more controversial.
Since its debut in 2002, OpenCourseWare has grown into a rich website, boasting 1,950 courses. Its influence extends far beyond MIT's 168-acre campus. Curious students from home and abroad, individuals looking to beef up their job applications and well-established professionals all visit OCW to recharge themselves with knowledge and skills. The site recorded 50 million visitors by 2008. The project is inspiring not only similar creations in other places, but also more novel ideas to facilitate online education. For example, iTunesU may have derived from the OCW motif ""unlocking knowledge, empowering mind."" While students don't get feedback from projects like OCW, they could still make the learning process more interactive by forming study groups online. Tools like Google Wave make conference chats merely a few clicks away.
As more people jump into the bonus pool of free, open course learning, some have taken it more seriously than a weekend hobby for inquiring minds. An increasing number of job hunters hope to write their OCW experiences into a resume. Consequently a proposal to attach credits to open course projects is gaining momentum. Even if universities don't endorse the plan, proponents argue that there should be institution-issued certificates for people who have finished certain courses.
A call for certification might be going too far for open learning projects. There are some valid concerns that this would dilute the brand names of universities. If everybody claims to have been a Harvard student, where is the world-renowned prestige built in the past 200 years? So far the open resources are mostly just course materials such as lecture notes, assignments and online textbooks. These can't even make up a full definition of ""courses,"" not to mention ""education"" (which is what is truly valued behind each diploma). Even if certification is in practice somehow, it could cause serious confusion during job hunting. When you claim to be ""MIT-educated,"" nobody doubts that you have gone through years of MIT's rigorous course load and are right now a prestigious degree holder. But what if all you have done is taken an MIT short course at home? Rampant certification may eventually breed mistrust between employees and employers.
But on the plus side, the current ""non-certification"" approach could greatly benefit learners. If credits were attached, we would have to restrict our open course learning to only a couple of institutions, as cross-institution certification is simply unlikely on a larger scale. As people slave over a ""certificate"" curriculum, the breadth of education becomes severely limited. Education without certificates allows for a more flexible schedule. People can go through each course at their own pace. Statistics show that despite a lack of credit rewards, the popularity of the OCW model hasn't waned a bit. The open courses of MIT have been translated into many languages, such as Chinese, Spanish and Persian.
When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Higher Education Act, he had the ambition to make higher education available to working-class people. Four decades later, higher education remains an elitist choice where only middle class and above can shower in its blessings. Granted, like the Chronicle of Higher Education says, ""free can be expensive."" But higher education entails much more than preaching doctrine in an ivory tower. It is time for it to ride the changing waves. For people eager to learn, it is time to depart from the utilitarian view of certified education.
Qi Gu is a junior majoring in journalism. We welcome all feedback. Please send feedback to opinion@dailycardinal.com
