that will be put on them, and is uncharacteristically wrong about the analogy. MP3s could replace vinyl/CDs completely. Free MOOCs can't replace the higher education system because much of the cost of education has little to do with the educating element. Taking a MOOC for interest is one thing, but when career prospects depend on it, then different demands will be placed on MOOCs that currently don't exist. If MOOCs were to replace higher education, they would need to find ways of realising the following:
- Dealing with student appeals
- Coping with a diverse range of students and abilities
- Ensuring quality control of content
- Developing assessment methods and procedures that can be defended
- Ensuring robustness of service
- Ensuring accreditation reliability and trustworthiness
- Complying with numerous regulations on issues such as accessibility
- Ensuring a supply of high-quality course production
- Providing pastoral care
All of these requirements have financial implications beyond the current content focus (which is subsidised by the very universities that MOOCs are supposed to replace). Inevitably, MOOCs as universal education method would soon begin to cost more and more. They may be cheaper than the existing model, which would be dramatic, but they would soon cease to be free or open.
It is not the focus of this book to explore various funding models for higher education, but the 'education is broken' argument is rarely stated as 'funding for education is broken', and if the debate that society needs to have is about how to fund higher education,
