Learning outcomes replace college?

Back to the “self-educated” man concept from the Renaissance, what if we really believed that learning outcomes were all that mattered and not “inputs” or the format in which those outcomes were delivered. With existing and developing on-line resources, could people skip the credentialing middle-man (higher education institutions) and take their self-developed skills and learning outcomes directly to employers? Perhaps, though the model presented in this article assumes some things about higher education that we would not completely agree with here at JBU.

http://chronicle.com/article/Online-Learning-Portals-/127694/

If higher education is only about information delivery and skill development, then yes, there are probably other ways to develop and demonstrate those outcomes. But if higher education is also about the signaling of a certain “prestige,” social interactions, and whole person development, then this type of self-directed credentialing can’t measure up. Nonetheless, it is true that for many people, these other functions of higher education are not that important (or at least will not be seen as that important). And if “information wants to be free,” we’re going to have difficulty running our university for “free.” Straighterline, for instance, offers many of our Core courses for $100/course compared to our TUG costs of roughly $5,000/course. In short, we can’t compete, especially when it comes to “general education,” if all that matters is just information delivery and skill development. We clearly need to be about (and be seen as being about) much more than just that.

http://www.straighterline.com/