In a look-ahead piece on education for 2020, Derek Newton highlights what seem to be troubling developments that will take hold in the coming year. These include: 1) another LMS vendor going to private hands, 2) more surveillance technology on campuses and online, 3) the continuing decline of for-profit online education providers, 4) a general slowing of the growth of online education, and 5) the movement of independent coding boot camps to colleges.
With the coming sale of Canvas to a private equity firm, the top three LMS platforms will be in private hands, a trend that Newton suggests may cause college leaders to rethink their use of such platforms. But college leaders long ago gave up control of their futures by abandoning home grown applications in favor of commercial platforms even when those platforms emerged from development work on their own campuses. While no one should expect colleges and universities to develop software outside their core activities, it is puzzling how they can so easily forego developing tools for education, instead placing their future in the hands of firms that may come and go with little regard for advancing education. This seems to be the result of a commitment to a long-standing labor-intensive model of delivering learning.
In the case of monitoring technology, college leaders seem too willing to bring new tools for surveillance and control onto their campuses and online operations in the guise of providing support to students. Instead of adopting systems that focus on controlling students and their behavior, educational institutions might support systems that students can use to take control of their learning.
Newton also highlights the declining fortunes of for-profit education providers even during the current for-profit-friendly administration. With former for-profit leaders down sizing, selling to non-profits or just exiting, the landscape for online education is shifting toward traditional non-profit institutions. However, other changes in online education suggest that all may not be rosy for those institutions. While enrollment in online learning is still rising, it is rising at a slower rate than in prior years and students are more likely to enroll in online programs in their immediate geographic area. These developments suggest that colleges moving into online learning to solve their financial problems by developing new revenue streams may be too late.
On the plus side, Newton concludes by noting the emerging trend of stand-alone coding boot camps seeking affiliations with colleges and universities to take advantage of existing facilities and support services. Overall, the takeaway seems to be that when online learning takes the form of traditional post-secondary education with courses and degrees, non-profit colleges and universities offer venues that are hard to beat.
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