The market, to paraphrase James Joyce, is a nightmare from which we have yet to awaken. In California– harbinger of things to come, as they say– yet another legislator is arguing that the market is the solution to what ails the Higher Education system.
SB520, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Steinberg, proposes to “solve” the problem of over-enrolled gateway courses at California’s public universities and community colleges by requiring them to grant “full academic credit” for “comparable” courses completed on new for-profit online platforms (such as Coursera and Udacity) and existing for-profit schools (such as Kaplan and Straighterline).
“Online ED is not a Magic Cure for What Ails California’s Colleges” Robert Meister
Amazingly, the law sets no limits on price and apparently establishes no accreditation system for these courses. This is the same two-pronged approach that has worked so well in the public schools: first, deprive the public schools of money and use the resulting problems as evidence that the public schools are not working; two, create a wide open unregulated market that can sell for private profit what was once a public right.
