TECHNOLOGY AT WORK

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Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions February 2015
have to navigate a byzantine labyrinth of a system spanning 50 state education
agencies, 14,000 school districts each with a varying approach to procurement, and
upwards of 65,000 individual schools. A survey conducted by the education industry
association found that only 23% of education tech providers are satisfied with the
ability to gain visibility in a school district. InBloom, a well-funded non-profit
education tech start up supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was
recently wound up. Alternatively News Corp has invested approximately $1.1 billion
in its Ed Tech division Amplify since 2010 and has yet to see a significant return in
terms of revenue, with just $130 million forecast in 2015. The pace of technological
change within schools remains slow.
In higher education things are progressing faster, although critics often point at the
drop-out rates associated with online courses, which often exceed 90%. Yet, these
numbers need to be put in perspective. Many leading universities accept fewer than
10% of their applicants. The few students that are accepted and have a high
propensity to pass constitute only a fraction of the number of students that apply.
MOOCs, on the other hand, are accessible to all potential students, and there is
virtually no cost associated with starting a new course while looking for
employment.
MOOCs further have the potential to make geography less important as students
can access the best content and teachers regardless of their location. For example,
of the 155,000 students who registered for MIT’s prototype Circuits and Electronics
course, most came from America, Colombia, India, Britain, and Spain. 146 Thus,
students in deprived areas and relatively poor countries are now able to access
some of the best classes in the world, making even high-end education an option
for many students that could previously not afford it.
MOOCs have the ability to increase
productivity by making time a redundant
factor in education
Perhaps the most promising aspect of MOOCs is their potential to increase
productivity by making time a redundant factor in contemporary education. As has
been forcefully argued by Clayton Christensen, students with different learning
requirements no longer need to conform to rigid academic programmes which span
over a specified period of time. 147 This form of factory-based education that
emerged in the 19 th century, following the industrial revolution, is seemingly out of
date. Today, students with different backgrounds and learning requirements can
complete courses at their own pace. On campus lectures have no pause, rewind or
fast-forward buttons, but MOOCs allow students to learn in ways that suit them the
best. Students can skip some lectures while attending others several times at
virtually no additional cost. They can also take assessments as many times as
necessary until they have gained their desired proficiency in a subject or acquired a
new skill. In other words, digital technologies allow time to become the variable
factor while learning is fixed.
Making time a variable factor in education would also make it easier for people to
acquire skills later in life. In particular, at a time when technology is making the skills
of many workers redundant at a faster pace than perhaps ever before, new
approaches to life-long learning will be essential. This is suggested by the fact that
higher-education enrolment among people aged 35 or above has increased
substantially in America over recent decades. In the 1990s, 314,000 students aged
35 or above enrolled at an institution for higher education. In the 2000s, the
equivalent figure was 899,000. 148 By breaking down the learning process, leaving
students with a menu of skills and competencies they can chose to acquire without
146 The Economist (2012).
147 Christensen and Eyring (2011).
148 The Economist (2014).
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