What Has Higher Education Learned from the Music Industry?
In a post by Clay Shirky, Napster, Udacity, and the Academy, he compares the disruption in the music industry to what is going on currently in higher education.
Remember when the music industry got blind-sided by Napster and other file-sharing sites? Free downloads of content. Industry reaction? Try to shut them down and continue operating as always. That didn't work. Then legitimate companies moved in (iTunes, LastFM, Spotify) and started making money selling the content legitimately and cheaply. They offered albums in mp3 pieces without the packaging and without having to buy the whole album. And the industry changed all around the music old guard, and they are still trying to figure things out.
If you look at what has been happening the past few years in higher education that has been most disruptive, it has been the offering of course content and courses for free. It started with the open courseware movement of MIT and others schools, plus iTunes U and upstarts like P2PU. And the rest of higher ed continued on as always. Then came new companies intent on offering massively large courses that were open to all online and free. And some schools and even a state tried to shut them down. Then legitimate new companies entered (Udacity, Coursera) and began working with some of the top elite universities (as iTunes U had done in 2007) to offer these courses (MOOCs) and without having to register for a degree program or pay for all the packaging (credits, fees).
And higher education is changing, and colleges are just starting to try to figure things out.
But educators are smart. Smarter than the music industry, right? According to Shirky, "We have several advantages over the recording industry, of course. We are decentralized and mostly non-profit. We employ lots of smart people. We have previous examples to learn from, and our core competence is learning from the past. And armed with these advantages, we’re probably going to screw this up as badly as the music people did."
Remember when the music industry got blind-sided by Napster and other file-sharing sites? Free downloads of content. Industry reaction? Try to shut them down and continue operating as always. That didn't work. Then legitimate companies moved in (iTunes, LastFM, Spotify) and started making money selling the content legitimately and cheaply. They offered albums in mp3 pieces without the packaging and without having to buy the whole album. And the industry changed all around the music old guard, and they are still trying to figure things out.
If you look at what has been happening the past few years in higher education that has been most disruptive, it has been the offering of course content and courses for free. It started with the open courseware movement of MIT and others schools, plus iTunes U and upstarts like P2PU. And the rest of higher ed continued on as always. Then came new companies intent on offering massively large courses that were open to all online and free. And some schools and even a state tried to shut them down. Then legitimate new companies entered (Udacity, Coursera) and began working with some of the top elite universities (as iTunes U had done in 2007) to offer these courses (MOOCs) and without having to register for a degree program or pay for all the packaging (credits, fees).
And higher education is changing, and colleges are just starting to try to figure things out.
But educators are smart. Smarter than the music industry, right? According to Shirky, "We have several advantages over the recording industry, of course. We are decentralized and mostly non-profit. We employ lots of smart people. We have previous examples to learn from, and our core competence is learning from the past. And armed with these advantages, we’re probably going to screw this up as badly as the music people did."
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