Is Online Education Widening the Digital Divide? |

Universities across the country are experimenting with MOOCs (massive open online courses) as a way to make higher education more affordable and accessible to all  students. The premise of MOOCs has, to some, come to mean the democratization of quality higher education, a way of equalizing the playing field for students of every demographic.

“[Students] can take these courses and say, ‘Wait a minute, I can aspire to these colleges, to Stanford, Princeton or Columbia, and therefore I’m going to try to apply there.’” said Daphne Koller, co-founder of Coursera, in an interview recently. “We hope it opens the door to a much higher success rate for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.”

Aspirational as that may seem, it may not always be the outcome.

“We … continue to be concerned that folks might imagine they are getting an Ivy League education, when in fact, they are watching other people get an Ivy League education,” says Lillian Taiz, president of the California Faculty Association and professor of history at California State Los Angeles.

Several professors at San Jose State University began creating MOOCs in January, which students could take for credit. Peter Hadreas, professor and Philosophy Department Chair at San Jose State University, says when administrators asked his department to replace lectures in an ethics class with a Harvard MOOC, faculty saw some questionable race and class implications.








Is Online Education Widening the Digital Divide? |