Century Foundation Report Warns Online Learning Companies' Impacts on Public Higher Ed
As colleges and universities flock to take their academic programs online, many of them work with outside contractors to handle some or all of the course development, marketing and back-office management of the programs. That's even true of Harvard University, which announced a partnership with one of these online program management companies Monday.
A warning about the nature of those arrangements -- and the risk they might play to the nature of public higher education -- came Monday from the Century Foundation, which describes itself as a "progressive, nonpartisan think tank" aimed at reducing inequality. The report, “The Private Side of Public Higher Education,” was released under the foundation's "for-profit education" banner, which (inspired by one of its senior fellows, Robert Shireman, who led the Obama administration's regulatory crackdown on for-profit colleges) focuses mostly on corporately owned educational institutions. . .