AMERICAN PERISCOPE. US university crisis

The rising cost of college tuition in the United States is now widely recognised as a matter of grave concern. The average tuition at a private college for one year was estimated at about $30,000 (about ₹18 lakh) and about $9,000 (about ₹5.4 lakh) at a public college, an increase of about 80 per cent in just the last decade.

Student debt at the time of graduation has reached an average of $29,000 (about ₹17.4 lakh).

With the economy continuing to struggle to provide the required jobs, many are beginning to wonder if the return justifies the investment in education.

Some public universities have risen to the challenge of soaring costs of private education by shoring up their programmes, paying attention to quality, and keeping a lid on costs and this has paid off.

The various locations of the University of Massachusetts system, a public university, have seen enrolments increase 20-60 per cent.

President Obama announced a plan to deal with the crisis. The plan includes using technology and innovation to cut costs and encourage competition, and helping students manage their debt better. “It is time to stop subsidising schools that are not producing good results, and reward schools that deliver for American students and our future,” he said.

The big push in technology that can make an impact on the costs of education have been the MOOCs, or the massive open on-line courses. Although distance education has been around for a while, the MOOCs brought in new features.

They are free, and reputed universities provide content and delivery. Although a few have started charging for their courses, the costs are still much below what one would pay a brick-and-mortar institution.

Yet, this model is still in an experimental stage; while these courses are good for furthering one’s education, the systems and structure are not in place wherein credits so earned would translate into a degree at some time..

Khan Academy, an avowedly non-profit venture provides videos that have become very popular for learning math and science subjects, and they are free.

Some public schools in the US now recommend to their students to watch Khan Academy videos.

But the competition that the President was looking for has begun. EdX, one of the MOOC providers has begun offering free courses at the school level reportedly to better prepare students who come to college.

And the MOOC providers, such as Udacity, EdX and Coursera are also trying to carve out their domains.

Yet, the availability of all such material in the public domain, including the popular TED talks, have provided traditional instructors a variety of alternatives.

Course study material such as text books are another area where costs have risen steeply and a counter movement has now arisen to provide open-source textbooks, which are free. These are peer-reviewed and so have some credibility.

Here again, a consortium of reputed universities such as Carnegie Mellon and Rice University has stepped forward to maintain a repository so faculty can screen and select what is best suited for their course.

But one area which we thought was a freebie is now being monetised. That is the class notes. Now, a start-up firm in the US has begun to provide a platform for buying and selling class notes!

The writer is a professor at Suffolk University, Boston, and at Jindal Global Business School

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