2014/2/15 「線上課程夯 搶食高等教育大餅」

線上課程夯　搶食高等教育大餅

摘錄自：天下雜誌 經濟學人電子報                        2013/2/14

2014-02-12 Web only 作者：經濟學人

圖片來源：flickr.com/photos/yourdon/

十一世紀至今，大學並沒有太大改變。教學一直受制於科技，不久之前，學生還得待在講堂聽教授講課。然而，創新正在消除這些限制，為高等教育帶來徹底改變。在美國，大學已經向必然之事低頭，與各個新創企業合作，透過大規模免費公開課程（MOOCs）提供獨立課程。

大學的成本根基於兩大力量。其一為實體設施之需求；增加學生得建造更多建築、雇用更多教師，其成本相當高昂，因此大學的邊際生產成本非常高。其二，提升生產力並不容易，因為大學教師每學期最多只能教導數百名學生。

MOOCs則完全不同。教學網站Marginal Revolution University共同創立者、喬治梅森大學的經濟學家塔巴拉克（Alex Tabarrok）指出，線上課程最突出的特質即為邊際成本極低，教導額外學生幾乎不需要成本。然而，建立線上課程的固定成本相對高，得設立課程、撰寫並錄製上課內容，還要打造能促進討論和回饋的互動網站。

低價可以讓註冊人數和利潤最大化，但在價格朝邊際成本靠近之時，低價競爭的空間也會越來越小。塔巴拉克表示，反之，MOOCs可能是在品質上競爭；與吸引更多學生相比，高製作成本只是小小的代價。

最棒的課程會吸引最多學生，獲利亦十分豐厚；以此觀之，線上教學可能會比較接近電影製片等資訊產業，而非理髮這樣的服務產業。教師市場也會改變。最棒的教師會極具生產力，可以教導數十萬名學生，因此其人數可能會大幅減少，就像是娛樂產業中的超級明星。

史丹佛的經濟學家哈克斯比（Caroline Hoxby）認為，MOOCs將以不同的方式威脅不同大學。比較不挑學生的大學與MOOCs較為相近，MOOCs可以提供類似的體驗，而且更具彈性、費用更低。

精英大學面臨的情勢則極為不同；哈克斯比指出，它們為能力強的學生提供補助和勞力密集的教育，目標為培養歸屬感，希望能在數十年後從成功校友手上獲得捐款。諷刺的是，擁抱MOOCs可能會威脅它們的商業模式；線上課程可能會打破學生與大學之間的連結，讓畢業生不再覺得自己是獲選的少數人。對頂尖學校來說，保有其排他性或許才是最好的選擇。（黃維德譯）

©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2014

經濟學人英文原文

The Economist

Free exchange

Massive open online forces

By The Economist

From The Economist

Published: February 12, 2014

Feb 8th 2014 | From the print edition

The rise of online instruction will upend the economics of higher education.

UNIVERSITIES have not changed much since students first gathered in Oxford and Bologna in the 11th century. Teaching has been constrained by technology. Until recently a student needed to be in a lecture hall to hear the professor or around a table to debate with fellow students. Innovation is eliminating those constraints, however, and bringing sweeping change to higher education.

Online learning takes many forms. Wikipedia, a user-generated online encyclopedia, contains wonderfully detailed explanations. YouTube offers instruction on how to boil an egg as well as lectures on cosmology. Within many universities the online is displacing the offline. Professors publish course materials and videos of their lectures on the web. Students interact with each other and submit assignments by e-mail. Even those living on university campuses may nonetheless learn largely online, skipping lectures and reporting only for the final exam.

In America, bowing to the inevitable, universities have joined various startups in the rush to provide stand-alone instruction online, through Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. Though much experimentation lies ahead, economics can shed light on how the market for higher education may change.

Two big forces underpin a university's costs. The first is the need for physical proximity. Adding students is expensive—they require more buildings and instructors—and so a university's marginal cost of production is high. That means that even in a competitive market, where price converges towards marginal cost, modern education is dear.

It is also hard to raise productivity. University lecturers can teach at most a few hundred students each semester—the maximum that can be squeezed into lecture halls and exam-marking rosters. Because it is so labour intensive higher education relies on large numbers of instructors paid relatively modest salaries.

MOOCs work completely differently. Alex Tabarrok, an economist at George Mason University and co-founder of an online-education site, Marginal Revolution University, reckons the most salient feature of the online course is its rock-bottom marginal cost: teaching additional students is virtually free. The fixed cost of creating an online course is relatively high, however. Getting started means putting together a curriculum, producing written and recorded material to explain it, and creating an interactive site that facilitates discussion and feedback.

Having invested in the production of a course, a provider's incentive is to sell it to as many students as possible. After the initial cost is covered each additional unit sold is pure profit. A low price maximises registrations and profit. But as prices converge towards marginal cost, there will be little scope for undercutting the competition. Instead MOOCs are likely to compete on quality, Mr Tabarrok reckons. Higher production costs are a small price to pay to attract much greater numbers of students. Such markets often evolve into winner-take-all, "superstar" competitions. The best courses attract the most customers and profit handsomely as a result. In this respect online education may more closely resemble information industries such as film-making than service industries such as hair-cutting.

The market for textbooks already fits this description. New textbooks are costly to write and design but can be reproduced fairly cheaply. Not surprisingly, only four introductory economic texts account for half of the American market, according to Mr Tabarrok. Indeed, says Tyler Cowen, a co-founder of Marginal Revolution University, it is possible that textbook publishers are better equipped than universities to develop MOOCs profitably.

The market for instructors will also be transformed. The best teachers will be fabulously productive, reaching hundreds of thousands of students. There may therefore be far fewer of them, each compensated like superstars in the entertainment industry.

MOOCs' low marginal cost is responsible for some of the bad press they occasionally receive. Consumers risk little by signing up, so both registrations and drop-out rates are high. Yet that is not necessarily a reflection of poor quality. An analysis of over 1000 studies of online-course results conducted by America's Department of Education found that people who complete such courses do better on average than students in face-to-face instruction.

Ivory glowers

Caroline Hoxby, an economist at Stanford University, argues that MOOCs threaten different universities in different ways. Less selective institutions are close substitutes for MOOCs. Course content is often standardised and interaction with professors is limited in order to keep costs down. Students generally pay the cost of their education themselves and upfront, but drop-out rates are nonetheless high. MOOCs can provide a similar experience with more flexibility and at much less cost. Though some such institutions could prosper as portals for courses developed elsewhere, or by awarding degrees based in part on mastery of MOOCs, most are at serious risk of displacement.

Elite institutions face very different circumstances, Ms Hoxby reckons. They operate like venture-capital firms, offering subsidised, labour-intensive education to highly qualified students. They aim to cultivate a sense of belonging and gratitude in students in order to recoup their investment decades later in the form of donations from successful alumni.

Ironically, these universities may have threatened their own business model by embracing MOOCs. Online courses break the personal link between students and university and, if offered cheaply to outsiders, may make regular graduates feel more like chumps than the chosen few. For top schools, the best bet may simply be to preserve their exclusivity.

©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2014