Elite colleges all allege to be global institutions, and many are known around the world. But it is simply untenable to claim global leadership in educating a planet of seven billion people when you hoard your educational offerings for a few thousand fortunates living together on a small patch of land.
“MIT Mints a Valuable New Form of Academic Currency” Kevin Carey
It’s one more step in the evolution of the new decentralized education system: inexpensive credentials for MIT’s open courses. This is going to spread from school to school, in a kind of vanguard fashion, I imagine, until at some point someone will call for some sort of systemic standards. Once those standards are in place, people will be able to gather collections of these credentials as the ad hoc equivalent of a college education.
At some point, someone will define how a particular collection of credentials makes up a college degree… We’ll have to figure out if a set of credentials collected online is in every case equal to, less than, or greater than, a credential or set earned in a traditional classroom… Will a set of credentials gathered at several different places be seen as inherently more valuable than a set gathered at one place?
