Letter Of Admission Spring 2012 - California State University: Fill & Download for Free

We need more information. What year in college are you? What is your SAT score? What college are you attending? What school do you wish to transfer to? What is your high school GPA? What is your major? What is your expected college GPA? What courses are you taking? How many credits? Did you apply to the school that you wish to transfer to and if so, were you wait listed or denied?The information may help decide whether achieving good grades in your present classes is sufficient to show that you can handle college level coursework, and therefore, not a risk in admitting you as a transfer student.You may need to do more if the school is highly selective in accepting transfer students.”Should you retake the SAT/ACT if you are applying to transfer? If your college grades are all A’s and your score is within the school’s 25th/75th percentile score, you do not need to retake the SAT or ACT. “How to Transfer Colleges Successfully: Complete GuideSAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and TipsPosted by Dora Seigel | Aug 29, 2015 6:24:47 PMCOLLEGE ADMISSIONSTransferring colleges can be a very difficult decision to make, but you need to find the college that is the right fit for you even if it means transferring. Whether you are trying to transfer from a 2-year school to a 4-year school or from one 4-year university to another, this article is to help you on your journey to transfer!Why transfer?There are many valid reasons to transfer, and before you apply to transfer, you need to figure out what your reason is. The school you're applying to transfer to will want to know why you are choosing to leave: Did you not fit in with the other students? If so, did you try to fit in? Did you join any clubs, teams or Greek life? Did you attend events?Do they not have your desired program of study? Did you decide to switch majors and your school does not have your new major? Did you apply undecided and realize you have a passion for a specific major your school does not have?Did you graduate from a 2-year program with an associate’s degree and now want to pursue a bachelor’s?These are all very valid reasons to transfer. If you are looking to find a college to transfer to, I recommend using the College Board College Search Portal to help you find the right college for you. This portal allows you to search by school size, location, major, diversity, if transfer credits are accepted, and by many more options. If you felt like your school is too small, search by school size to find a larger university, or if you want to be a fine arts major, search by major and find a school with a fine arts program. Whatever you are looking for, before starting your search, make sure you qualify to transfer.Do I qualify to transfer schools?Most universities require that you have completed at least 8 courses at another university to qualify as a transfer student; otherwise, you must apply as a freshman. So long as you have those credits, most schools will let you apply to transfer as either a sophomore or junior (some schools let applicants apply to transfer in either the spring or fall; others only let applicants transfer in the fall) to find out a school’s exact policy, search “[College Name] transfer policy” in Google.Note: high-school students, who dual enroll at a local community college during high school, still apply as freshman, not as transfer students.How hard is it to transfer?It depends on the school. If you want to know a school’s specific transfer rate, search “[College Name] Transfer Acceptance Rate.”At some schools, it is more difficult to be admitted as a transfer than as a freshman; while at others, it may be easier to be admitted as a transfer. Some schools only admit transfers if students admitted as freshman choose to dropout or take time off, leaving very few spots for transfer applicants. Other schools plan to take transfer students, holding spots for these students. Some schools may take more transfers because these applicants are stronger, having proved their academic prowess at a 4-year or 2-year college institution. Other schools have lower qualifications for transfer students in order to fill up their classes (and make the most money), since transfer students are not factored in to the school's freshman admit profile (or their overall admission rate) both of which are published and are typically used as a assessment of the school's prestige and academic rigor.Also, transfer applications are often need-aware such as at Brown University, meaning that a transfer applicant’s ability to pay for tuition, room and board is factored making an admission decision. Whatever the school's reason, the difference in freshman admission and transfer admission is striking.Check out the transfer admission rates for Harvard and Notre Dame: Harvard University takes about 15 transfers per year out of about 1500 applicants (1% admit rate for transfers vs 5.9% for freshman) while Notre Dame takes about 190 out of 500 applicants (37% admit rate for transfers vs 21.2% for freshman). You can check out transfer statistics on several schools from the 2012 fall class here.What is the transfer application like?Some schools may vary slightly from this format, but in general, the transfer application is very similar to the normal college application. The transfer application includesCommon Application including Personal Statement and SupplementTranscripts, High School and CollegeMid-Year Report *****different from the normal college applicationSAT or ACT Score (most schools)Letters of RecommendationMajor Specific Requirements: Portfolio, Resume, or Additional Writing Sample (only for certain majors at certain schools)To check a school’s specific requirements, search “[College Name] Transfer Application.” I will delve into more on each of these components below.Personal Statement and SupplementThese are two of the MOST crucial parts of your transfer application. As I said before, you need to tell your story of deciding to transfer and this is your opportunity. If you do not tell it in your personal statement and/or supplement, the admissions officer will not know why you should be invited to attend their school. Be open and honest about why you are deciding to transfer and why you NEED to transfer. Try to explain why their school is truly your perfect fit.If you don’t believe me, here's a quote from the Yale University Admissions Office: “Transfer candidates should also have particularly compelling and well-defined academic reasons for wishing to attend Yale. Wanting to leave one’s current school is not a sufficient argument for admission to Yale. Transfer candidates should explain in their application essays how studying at Yale would give them an educational opportunity particular to their interests that could be experienced nowhere else. The Admissions Committee also gives serious consideration to a transfer applicant’s motivation, curiosity, energy, leadership ability, and distinctive talents. The personal essays and evaluations from college faculty members, deans, and secondary school counselors provide a great deal of insight into these qualities. We hope to find students who have made significant contributions to their college and local community.” How do you explain how their school is your perfect fit? Well, here is a sample mini-transfer personal statement:“My reason for wanting to transfer arises from a desire to search for those people I really fit in with. I have had a fine experience at my college so far; I enjoy my classes and have made many friends, but something is missing. I yearn for that intellectual challenge surrounded by students who inspire me to be great. I have tried to make this school right for me and search for potential lifelong friends. I have joined the Cooking club, club softball team, and the Oscar Wilde fan club. My experience at my school has convinced me more than ever that your school is my perfect fit, not because I long for the prestige of your institution, but because I long to be with the people who will truly challenge and inspire me everyday.” In addition to the personal statement, most schools require a supplementary essay (usually much shorter than the personal statement), and in the supplement, you have to address a school specific question. Typically, the supplement asks, "Why Our School?"You really need to have a great answer for that question. These two essays (the personal statement and supplement) are very similar, but there is an important distinction between the two. The personal statement needs to show who you are through a story and explain why you, as you are, want to transfer or did not belong at your former school (as I did above in the example). On the other hand, the supplement needs to explain for what academic reason do you want to transfer.Here is the personal statement prompt for all UC Schools such as UC Berkeley and UCLA, "Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?" Again, the focus is on you and your uniqueness, why you as you are, don't fit in at your school. What personal reason do you have for transferring? Were you at a school that was too small for you? Too big? Did you not fit in with the students at that school? Did you visit a friend at Notre Dame and realize you fit in there? Here is the transfer supplement prompt for all UC Schools such as UC Berkeley and UCLA, "What is your intended major? Discuss how your interest in the subject developed and describe any experience you have had in the field — such as volunteer work, internships and employment, participation in student organizations and activities — and what you have gained from your involvement." The focus here is more on the institute you are applying to. Why do you want to go to that school and study that major? What academic reason do you have for transferring? Did you realize your passion for fashion journalism and NYU has a top journalism program in a city where you could intern at fashion magazines? Try to answer both prompts as specifically as you can. Do not be general or vague.BAD for supplement essay: I want to attend Yale because your school is better than my school.GOOD for supplement essay: I want to transfer to NYU because I have discovered my passion for fashion journalism through my fashion blog that has 100,000 subscribers. My school has no journalism program, and NYU’s is the best program for fashion journalism in the country. I know NYU would help me achieve my dream of becoming editor of a fashion magazine.TranscriptsIn addition to the personal statement and supplement, you will need to provide a transcript from your high school (just as you did for college applications) and a transcript from your college. If you are applying from a 2-year school with a completed Associate’s degree, your transcript from college must show all of your grades and that your Associate’s was received. If you are applying after completing 1 semester at a 4-year university, you cannot send in your transcript until you receive your first semester grades, so that the school can take those grades into consideration. Hopefully, your transcript looks slightly more official. Note: Do not give up on your classes at your current school when you decide to transfer. These grades are EXTREMELY important. If you get B’s at your school and are applying to a more competitive and academically challenging school, the admissions officer may question how you will do at their school. You also cannot give up on your classes once you submit your application.Mid-Year ReportThe Mid-Year Report is a grade report you send to the schools you are applying to in the middle of the spring semester (typically April 1). From the UPenn Admission Office, “you will need to print out the form, available through the Common Application, and ask each of your professors to provide a mid-term grade (the grade they would give you if they were to give you a grade at that point in the class) and a signature.”In the report, all of your CURRENT spring semester professors fill out a paper predicting your FUTURE grade in the class and have to sign off on it. You read that right. You have to ask your spring semester teachers to give you a grade prediction and to sign off on it. This can be extremely intimidating, but again is another important part of your application.Again, this is why you CANNOT slack off in your classes at your current school. You need to get the best grades possible to better your chances to transfer. Try to form close relationships with your spring semester teachers. They will be much more willing to slightly inflate your grade (A- to A) on this prediction report if you are an active participant in class and if they like you. Trust me, these professors will be willing to slightly inflate your grade on this sheet to help you transfer if they like you, as this is not guaranteeing what they write will be your actual grade. Again, you cannot give up on your classes at your current school when you decide to transfer. If you got A’s first semester and B’s on your mid-year report, the admissions office may question how you will fair at their school. They do also consider SAT or ACT Scores.SAT or ACT ScoreSome schools may not require you to send these scores, but most universities do require transfers from other 4-year colleges to send their SAT or ACT scores. If you are applying from a 2-year school with a completed Associate’s degree, some schools require you to submit your SAT or ACT score while many others don’t.You should find the university’s policy on SAT/ACT scores for transfers when you search for the school’s application requirements. Again, to find a school’s specific requirements, search “[College Name] Transfer Application.”For students applying from 4-year universities, your SAT/ACT score will definitely play a role into whether or not you are accepted, but it is not weighted as heavily as in freshman admissions. When you applied as a freshman, the admissions officers didn’t know how you would do at a 4-year university, so they used your score as a measure of that. However, now they have your college grades and can see how you are performing at a 4-year university. If you have straight A’s in all of your biomedical engineering classes at University of Florida but got a 30 on your ACT, the A’s seem very impressive and make the 30 less meaningful. Should you retake the SAT/ACT if you are applying to transfer?You can, but I would only recommend it in certain situations. Your SAT/ACT score is only valid for 5 years, so if your score is older than 5 years, you will be required to retake it. To decide if you should retake the SAT or ACT, find out the 25th/75th percentile scores for current students at the school you are applying to. The 25th/75th percentile scores means that 25% of the students attending have a score at or below that number (this is below average). 75th percentile means that 75% of students have a score at or below that number. In essence, the 25th/75th percentile covers the middle 50% of all students admitted to the school.If you score at the 75th percentile for any school and have great grades from your current college, you have a great chance at getting in. If you're at the 25th percentile, you'll need to have a strong application to boost your odds of getting in.To find the 25th/75th percentile scores for current students at the school you are applying to, search “[College Name]” freshman admission profile” or “[College Name]” ACT” or “[College Name]” SAT”Let’s say, you are applying to transfer to an Ivy (most 25th/75th percentile scores between 34-36 ACT or 750-800 on all sections of the SAT). As I said, your grades are more meaningful than your test score on your transfer application, but that being said if your grades are not perfect (A’s and B’s) with a test score below 31 on ACT or below 2100 on SAT, I would consider re-taking the test to try to improve your score and improve your chances of being admitted.If your college grades are all A’s and your score is within the school’s 25th/75th percentile score, you do not need to retake the SAT or ACT.Letters of RecommendationMost schools require that you submit at least 2 letters of recommendation from COLLEGE professors or teaching assistants. Some schools prefer the letters to come only from professors and NOT teaching assistants such as UPenn, who said, “The Admissions Selection Committee prefers to review recommendations from professors. We encourage you to meet with your professors and ask for recommendations. However, we understand that some classes may be too large for a professor to write a detailed, personalized recommendation for you. If you ask a teaching assistant to write your recommendation, the class professor MUST sign off on the written recommendation.” Hopefully, your recommender is a little more expressive. You will find a school’s policy on letters of recommendation when you search for the transfer application requirements. You are NOT supposed to reuse your letters of recommendation from your high school teachers. You need new letters from college professors or teaching assistants.Make sure you are forming relationships with your professors and teaching assistants. You need them to like you enough to be willing to write you a letter of recommendation. Go to their office hours! Participate in class! Study! You need their help. If they don’t have a relationship with you, your letter will most likely turn out pretty mediocre. For more guidance on your letter of recommendation, check out our other article Who Should I Ask to Write My College Recommendation Letter?Major Specific RequirementsIf you are applying to a specific major or program (such as film, acting, dance, art, music), you may also be required to submit an additional application component such as a portfolio or do an audition. Find out by searching for the specific program you are applying to, search “[College Name] [program] Transfer Application” such as USC Film Transfer Application. Make sure to also check the deadline for your program. Oftentimes, arts programs (theatre, film, dance, music) will have earlier deadlines than the general university transfer deadline.For help with your major specific application requirements (if you are applying to film school), check out our other article, How to Get Into Film School by a USC Alum. Now that we have covered all components of the application, let’s talk deadlines:Application DeadlinesSchools have transfer application deadlines ranging from December 1 to March 1 for Fall admits or November for Spring admits. When you search for the school’s specific requirements (search “[College Name] Transfer Application”), you will find the deadline. Again, make sure to also search for the specific program you are applying to, search “[College Name] [program] Transfer Application.” Oftentimes, arts programs (theatre, film, dance) will have earlier deadlines than the general university transfer deadline.Make sure to create a schedule for yourself working back from the timeline. I recommend completing the first drafts of your personal statement and supplement at least one month before the application deadline, so you have time to review and rewrite. Ask teachers to write letters of recommendation at least 2 months in advance of when the application is due. Send transcripts and scores as soon as possible. Check the transfer requirements to see when the last available ACT or SAT testing date is. According to Yale, “Scores from the February ACT or the March SAT test date should reach [the admissions office] in time for consideration,” but this may vary from school to school, so check the schools you are applying to. Once you submit your application, your journey is not over.Decision Letters and Making the Decision to Transfer or StayYou will receive your decision letters typically in Mid-May for Fall Admission. You typically have only a few weeks to make a final decision. Before making the decision to transfer, consider thisWill transferring make you happier?By transferring, will you be more likely to achieve success in your chosen field?If you need financial aid, will you receive financial aid?Will you be able to complete your degree on time? How many of your units will transfer? How many of your units will count towards your degree? Will you need to spend extra time and money to complete your degree?Most schools only let you transfer up to 2 years of credit, so if you applied to transfer in your junior year, you will most likely be restarting as a junior at the next school. Are you okay with that?I also recommend creating a pros and cons list for your current school and the school your were accepted to. I know it may sound old-hat, but it works! Once accepted, you want to make sure transferring is the best decision for you. Remember that when you transfer, it may take time to make friends at your new school. Try to get involved and go to school sponsored events to help meet people and make your transition easier.Another PrepScholar writer transferred schools, and she said at times it can feel at first like being a stepchild or like being someone who married into the family. However, she and the other transfer students bonded; her closest college friends ended up being the other transfer students. She is so happy she transferred. Transferring can be a great experience! Just don’t be shy and get out and meet people!Points to RememberThink about why you want to transfer and convey that to the admissions office through your personal statement and supplement.Work very hard in your current classes (participate and go to office hours), so that you have good grades on your transcript and you have professors who are willing to write you letters of recommendation.Consider whether or not you want to retake the SAT or ACT (if you need to send your scores for your transfer application)Check application deadlines and set up a schedule to complete your application on time.When your decision letters come, really think about whether transferring is the best choice.What’s next?Get more help with your application:Who Should I Ask to Write My College Recommendation Letter?What is a Good GPA? What's a Bad GPA for College?What College Should You Go To? How to Choose a College.10 Tips For Prospective College Transfer Students12/30/2011 02:53 pm ET | Updated Feb 29, 2012Rebecca Joseph Associate Professor, California State University, Los AngelesDo or did you have an unhappy college freshman home for the winter holidays? Going away to college is stressful for many kids (and, yes, parents, too). Creating a new life away from home can be daunting, and stress is normal. Learning new academic and living norms is difficult for many. And it’s completely natural for freshmen to come home and regress. They may sleep a lot and ask you to do things you haven’t done for years. That is fine. You may be doing loads of laundry and taking them to lots of doctors’ appointments.And in that pool, some kids come home believing they made the wrong college choice. And that is entirely possible for 10 to 20% of them. The larger majority of others need some love and understanding.In Chinese, the word for crisis also means opportunity. So as you talk with unhappy your college freshmen, please remind them that no matter what you will help them make a plan. This crisis can turn into a great opportunity to think about what makes your student truly happy. A psychiatrist friend of mine who is an expert with teenagers said that parents (and counselors) need to be as supportive as possible but also try to distinguish between real depression and situational challenges. Some kids do need professional help and a visit to your doctor or therapist may be a great first step.I field several calls each winter holiday break from confused college freshmen. I listen to what is making them unhappy, and I often hear patterns. They didn’t like their original choices and are now attending what they consider to be a safety college. They did not like their fall classes and did not do as well as they could. They don’t like their roommates, or they are not very active on campus. Some truly dislike the type of college they selected, while others are bored.So after I listen, I begin to talk to them about the need to have short and long term goals. I remind them that unfortunately transferring during and after freshmen year means that they must be doing the best they have ever done academically and be involved on and off campus. It is often a junior-senior year of high school redux — often with much less support.That is often a challenge for an unhappy freshman. But tough words are critical. Also I remind them that as freshmen they traditionally can only transfer into schools that they would have gotten admitted to or did get admitted to as seniors. If they reject that option, I remind them that transferring may take two application cycles. Most colleges that accept larger numbers of transfers like USC and the University of Southern California take larger numbers of junior transfers.As I speak to kids after I listen to their worries, I help them develop short terms strategies which help them two ways: they help build up their transfer profiles and more importantly help them become happier. When the world is falling, small steps really help. When speaking to a young man who is desperately unhappy at his college, I realized he had higher expectations than reality. I reminded him that a low fall GPA would limit his chances of transferring and told him that colleges will look at his senior year grades and his active involvement on his current campus. No transfer college wants excuses, so I explained that the excuses have to stop.Listening to him, I felt his isolation. He had taken large lecture classes and got involved with a few clubs that rarely met. He wasn’t exercising and many of the friends he had met transferred out for spring. So I told him he needed to start over. He needed to take smaller classes, classes that counted as major prerequisites or GE requirements. He needed to get involved with some active clubs. I listened to what he liked to do and noticed he wasn’t exercising, so I recommended getting involved with intramural basketball or soccer. Many physically active kids in high school stop exercising in high school as they are no longer part of formal teams. Exercising often makes them feel so much better.I also told him about special service learning classes at his college, where he could get involved with community service activities with small groups of students. I also told him to go to office hours and to get to know several professors as he would need a professor recommendation.I also gave him several short term tasks to perform over the holidays. That gave him a focus and set him going. He needed to organize his transcripts — both high school and college so they could be sent out. He needed to contact his high school counselor to find out what he or she could do to help and how to get forms completed. I also had him collect all the transfer requirements of each college on his list — transcripts, letters of recommendation, high school forms, standardized grades, mid-term instructor updates, and required essays. I also told him to get an immediate internship over the winter break and to get think of how he was going to spend his summer. I kept him so busy that I felt his mood immediately improve.The longer term goals come out over time. They need to think about what happens if they don’t get into their desired colleges the first time they apply as transfer students. Do they want to take a leave of absence from their current college and return home sophomore year to take classes? Do they need to take summer classes to build up their GPAS? What courses do they need to take to prepare for transferring in as a transfer? What ongoing activities can they participate in and what internships, community service, or jobs can they get? Colleges expect engaged, active transfer students who can immediately begin their majors and get involved immediately on campus. One caveat I give them is that joining a fraternity or sorority is great for many reasons, but once they join a Greek society, they must join that Greek society at their transfer college (Greek rules).As I was speaking to one young lady last year, I explained that she needed to get high grades and take classes that prepared her to transfer. That got her involved in classes related to her major, and then she realized that she wanted to narrow her major focus. I also told her to meet her professors during office hours as she needed to get some letters of recommendations, and she began doing some research for a professor. I also told her to get involved in activities. She opted to join a sorority and write for the school newspaper. She two internships over the summer and winter breaks and built up a great resume. She spent the break doing an internship and her applications. She made a large group of friends and realized that she could be happy at the college, but she would outgrow the offerings for her major. Transferring, therefore, makes sense. And she is a much stronger candidate than when we first met.In conclusion, preparing to transfer is a bear and requires lots of upfront planning. Also while working with these kids, they often decide to stay where they are. Some discover becoming a visiting student at a campus, which can serve as a nice introduction to a campus they want to transfer to.The most important thing I do is provide a supportive realty check. I listen to what has made them unhappy, and I try to present a way for them to try one more semester. If they can’t, then I tell them we can try to help them transfer, and if necessary, take a leave of absence while returning home to go to community college. Then they need a really strong transfer plan as community college is a much tougher place to get required courses than ever. There is no reason for an unhappy kid to stay at a very expensive college, when he or she sees no reason to stay. But sometimes there are great reasons for a kid to stay and give a college a real chance.Crises often do turn into great opportunities for students. They can see what they really want from a college. They can see how to get involved in a new community, and they can learn so much more about what they are capable of doing. Most importantly they need to stay active and the short and long term planning lead to many happy outcomes.P.S. Boyfriend or girlfriend transfers are completely different. If a kid leaves a college for a partner, then something is truly wrong as partners should want the best for their significant others. So if your child wants to do a boyfriend transfer, I usually refuse to help, but I do tell parents to make sure their kids take a leave of absence because break-ups do occur.Below are the tips I give to students and their families with unhappy college freshmen if they can’t imagine staying any longer than necessary at their current college.1. Prior acceptances — Are you willing to consider a college you got into senior year? If that is the case, then contact the college and see if they will make you re-apply. Some won’t. Others will make you re-apply, but you have a good chance, especially if you follow these steps as well.2. Senior year grades — Your senior year grades must be top notch to transfer into any college as a sophomore. I hope your second semester grades were really high.3. Deadlines. Sophomore fall, Sophomore spring, Junior fall — These are the most common times to transfer. The closer to high school, the more high school and test scores count. Early applicants most likely will not get into any college you couldn’t have gotten in while in high school your first year. Transferring as a junior is much easier. Each college has different deadlines so keep track of them.4. Post senior year and freshmen summers — You need to have done or do something — work, volunteer, service, etc.5. Freshman and sophomore years of college — You need to do all of the following —a. Academics- You need to excel in each and every class. That’s hard to do when you’re not happy, but you must.b. Professors- You need to connect with one or two professors who can write letters of recommendation for you. You need to explain that you will outgrow major or need to be closer to home. Don’t blame your original college.c. Engagement- You need to get involved in activities on and off campus. So use your winter break to do volunteer or work. Go back second semester and get busy.d. Prerequisites- Each college has different transfer requirements. Some take sophomore fall applicants. Some only take juniors. Some have major prerequisites for GE and for majors. So check. Each has different requirements fori. Testingii. Units completediii. High school transcripts and counselor formsiv. College dean formsv. Instructor formsvi. Essays. You need to really write great essays about why you want to transfer. Be specific and contact us for essay tips.6. Applications — Applications vary but are critically important.i. Common Application- Many colleges use the Common Application which has one essay. But remember supplements-they have them too. The application is the only online portion. Everything is else is hard copy.ii. Other universities have their own applications.7. Visit colleges — You ideally need to visit the colleges to which you plan to transfer. Ideally visit during the spring or summer. But if you can’t, contact them via email. Talk with students there and really research the academic programs there — that’s the core reasoning for your transferring process.8. Research visiting programs — Many colleges allow students to attend as a visiting student. Barnard is one college that has a great transfer program (women only). Sometimes that’s a back door into the college. Then you apply to transfer. Some don’t allow students who applied before to apply. Some do.9. Give your original college a chance — If you can’t, you need to lead a double life and be as successful as you possibly can. If you can’t, then let us know about our transfer tips if you decide to come home and attend a community college. Never criticize your original college to officials at the original college. Tell them you need to move closer to home or have found a college that meets your major requirements.10. Leaves of absence — When you transfer, always take a leave of absence from our original college. You may just decide to go back.Follow Rebecca Joseph on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@getmetocollege

Kevin Carey’s recent book, The End of College, starts with a great story. He introduces us to one of the most famous professors in the world, Eric Lander. His background is about as impressive as it gets. He’s a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine, led the Human Genome Project, and has expertise in his field that only a few in the world can even hope to approach. But aside from his accomplishments with the genome, he is also known as one of the best teachers at MIT. His class, introduction to Biology, is mandatory, and legendary. He has adoring fans gather around his desk after each class. More importantly, at least as far as the thesis of the book, his class has reached thousands of people around the world, for free, as a MOOC.Massively Open Online Courses were, a few years ago, trumpeted by companies like Udacity and others as the death knell of traditional education as we know it. Carey, like Malcolm Gladwell in his books, knows that we are wired for stories more than for data and overviews of research. While these latter things are what should be used to ‘prove’ his thesis, Carey’s book depends largely on profiles of the people in Silicon Valley, Cambridge, and a few other places who are at the forefront of the MOOC revolution. Sebastian Thrun, who was one of the first to create a MOOC, famously said that in 20 years there would only be a few dozen colleges and universities left.Since then, the death of traditional brick and mortar education has received a lot of comment from pundits and educators. Most think, as the cliché goes, that rumors of their death have been greatly exaggerated. Instead of MOOCs heralding a Gutenberg-level revolution, most see them as yet another set of bells and whistles that will help some people around the world get exposure to a huge range of topics and subjects, but won’t make much of difference to the way education works in the US. Colleges and universities will continue to bring students to campus and train them for the job market and for graduate school, perhaps with some implementation of MOOC technology, but not much will happen to force schools to either join the on-line revolution or sink into oblivion.Carey’s book attempts to show how they are wrong. His first chapter is instructive in several senses of the word. Carey himself takes Lander’s MOOC and earns a certificate for completing the same work as first year students at MIT. He has completed all the challenging problem sets and passed each of them. He has reached out to the TAs online for help and participated in online chat rooms with other students from all over the world. To put it simply, he has demonstrated mastery in a challenging MIT class and has a certificate to back it up. He even takes time to visit the class in real time — and comes away thinking online is better. Online, he can hit the pause button during the lecture to write notes in a more complete way than trying to write down words as they stream out in real time. He can concentrate on the class in a quiet way in the comfort of home, instead of being distracted by the student next to him who is focused far more on his phone than what is going on in class. He can hear Lander better and has multiple camera angles to see what he does, instead of seeing him a long way away at the back of a lecture hall.Carey convinces me that this particular class teaches students the material in ways that are even better than if he were there taking it in person. In addition, Carey also underscores how the new technology, combined with the discoveries in the fields of neuroscience and education science about learning, can help to individualize the experience of taking MOOCs.I advise anyone who is primed (the last word as it is used in neuroscience) against MOOCs to read this first chapter and then come up with reasons why Carey's experience does not convince you that this class is as good or better than taking the exact same class at MIT. I think if this chapter stood alone as an article it would get many to question their assumptions, and I think this is great. His interview for US News, “It's the End of College As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” is a good introduction too.Much of the rest of the book unfolds in chapters that introduce us to some of the early leaders of the online education revolution. We hear about wonderful professors who have made their work accessible, for free, to people around the world. To give just one example of what this can mean, there is a person in Nigeria who has taken more than 250 MOOCs:Jima Ngei. Ngei, who lives in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, has completed and passed 250 MOOCs, all through Coursera, since September 2012. His self-styled education has included courses in English common law and Chinese history, data science and Latin American culture, social epidemiology and the life of Thomas Jefferson, to name a few.Of course Mr. Ngei is at the very far end of the bell curve of MOOC takers; he has taken and passed more courses than it would take to earn 5 undergraduate degrees. The data shows that people around the world, with neither the opportunity or the money to attend traditional schools in the US, can become “educated citizens” (to use Thomas Jefferson’s phrase).Another way that Carey sees education changing in the not-too-distant future has to do with the way colleges and universities will use deep data to select students in ways that some forward thinking businesses currently do. Jeffrey Selingo, whose own book, College (Un)Bound should be required reading for anyone who wants to get informed about data and education, has this to say about Carey in The WashingtonPost:In a compelling new book about higher education, The End of College, its author, Kevin Carey, lays out a future where admission to a college is based on the massive amounts of data and information already collected on students from an early age rather than a snapshot made in one moment in time for an application deadline.“Instead of waiting for applications to arrive, colleges will be able to conduct extensive searches of data that students and parents choose to make available,” writes Carey, who directs the education policy program at the New America Foundation.Under such a scenario, admissions would become something more akin to how employers now search LinkedIn and other online databases to recruit talent to their organizations rather than wait for an application to arrive in response to a job advertisement. LinkedIn already has lowered the minimum age to join the professional network to 14, partly in an effort to persuade more students in middle school and high school to begin building their profiles. As more students do, the day might not be that far away when a LinkedIn profile becomes the foundation for a college application or the place where admissions officers search for their next class of freshmen.Both Carey and Selingo believe that looking at a student’s data over many years — not just at transcripts, a set of tests, and an essay — is a far better way to predict success in college. If this all sounds unrealistic, I will simply add a quote from a very smart counselor who shared this with me in a discussion about this issue: “I spoke with an Eli Lilly exec the other day who told me that they almost solely hire from LinkedIn and MOOCs now. Try explaining that to high school students who have never heard of either.”In some cases, companies are hiring people who do not have a college degree but have the skills they are looking for — coding being one that many are searching for. I know a high school student who was brought in as an intern at Google based upon his MOOC certificates and recommendation from his MOOC professor. I am not saying that admissions will change dramatically in the next year or two, but schools are already using data to predict yield and to recruit prospective students. If they find that these alternatives will help them enroll more and stronger students, then the way students apply to schools may change radically in the next decade.While I like much of what Carey has to say as he tries to convince readers that colleges and universities will be falling by the hundreds (or even thousands) in the next several decades, he does not convince me that he has proven his thesis. He marshals a lot of evidence to make his case, but he also leaves out at least 5 things that will, I think, undercut any relatively fast transformation of the education landscape in the US.Habits and beliefsMany hold a deep and longstanding belief that the US education system — and our way of giving students access to great centers of learning — is the best in the world. It is part of the American Dream, something that many (rightly, I think), hold up as a shining beacon on the hill. The number of students who have flowed in from the rest of the world over the last two decades demonstrates that it isn’t just those in the US who believe the best schools in the world are here, it’s common wisdom. (For those who read much of what I write, you know I always use this last phrase as a way of turning the conversation in a new direction away from the common wisdom.)We are all guided by habits and beliefs to interpret the world through ideological and experiential frames. There are some (like Dan Ariely and Yuval Noah Hariari), who think that we think most of what we do with anything but rational approaches to issues.I mention this as most people I know think that traditional education, on a campus, is invaluable preparation for the real world. Some talk about the importance of liberal arts; others about the networking and career building skills that are a part of being in and out of classes among faculty and students and administrators. For many, then, it is "common sense" that on campus experiences make for a much deeper and fuller preparation for what will happen after graduation.Even if they are confronted with data (for example, over a third of students graduating from college today have no increase in critical thinking skills after 4 years and a degree—see the book "Academically Adrift" for the research on this), there is still the feeling that college should happen on a campus. We are slow to change the way we view things even if confronted with data. There are a majority of US citizens who think that evolution is not the best way to explain how we as humans have come to dominate the planet. I think the evidence is compelling but they do not. My citing data has virtually never changed someone’s mind on this issue. I am not sanguine that a few ‘experts’ who believe that the current way many receive an education today needs to change will be enough to shift the paradigm anytime soon.Schools ThemselvesIf Carey believes that the thousands of traditional colleges and universities will embrace the changes he proposes in education lightly then he too is not approaching things rationally. Some do not like to say that higher education is a big business but the way things run at most schools these days it is hard to find out why they think this. Larger and larger administrative bodies tightly run schools. They oversee budges, enrollments and fund-raising. The largest increase in hiring over the last decades has been on the administrative side as schools recognize that they need to be business savvy to keep things afloat. Many schools are already struggling. A few have closed already. What Carey proposes is yet another huge challenge to many school’s survival. As with any business under threat from competitors, there will be efforts to dismiss the data that Carey uses and efforts to undercut any big changes in the status quo. Everyone who works at a brick and mortar school has a stake in on-line options not gaining a large market share. There will be faculty, administrators, alumni and students who will all be on the side of the schools. They will be passionate advocates for what they offer. There will be media blitzes, studies released, and lots more to critique on-line education. Trying to separate the "signal from the noise" (I use the phrase that data guru Nate Silver uses as the title of his great book on this topic) among competing data will be difficult at best. There are billions of dollars at stake, untold thousands of jobs, and communities that will be in trouble too should local schools close. Will schools go the way of the newspapers? They were for many years the traditional way that many found out about the world. With the exception of a few strong brands, on-line resources have largely replaced newspapers.Seminars and LabsWhile I agree with Carey when it comes to the effective dissemination and evaluation of students on-line in introductory classes that are, by and large, lecture based, he does not address how students would complete labs, participate in seminars, or do individualized research on-line. I do not know how some of the things that require hands on activities could be reproduced on line—at least not yet. The labs, equipment and other resources are simply not there for student located all across the globe. Likewise, there is something special that can happen in a small seminar that cannot happen in a large lecture. If what I have said it accurate, then it may be that on-line education will permit student to learn something but that student will still need to travel to traditional campuses to take advantage of the resources there. Student may be able to earn credit and graduate in 2 years and there are some majors and areas of study that could be done completely remotely. But the technology is simply not there yet to give students who are not actually doing experiments and not actually doing group work with others on case studies etc. that have been created that have any data to back up that they are good enough to match what happens on a real campusTesting CompaniesIt may not seem readily apparent why testing companies would have a stake in caring if on-line classes earn credit, but they will stand to lose a huge market should this happen. The College Board is responsible not only for the SAT I and 2 tests, but also for the Advanced Placement program. As ETS has lost its market share to the ACT over the SAT I, they have needed to do a number of things to keep their business, non-profit as it is, getting students to pay for tests. The AP program has been increasingly important as many colleges and universities use AP classes and scores to determine admission. Schools all over the US and the world now offer APs. Each of these tests costs over 100.00 dollars so taking 5 or 10 (the typical number for students applying to selective schools) adds up to a lot of money. If student could take MOOCs instead either free or for a lower fee, and get credit for them and be looked at as equivalent or better than APs then the College Board would have another huge challenge to address. In addition the International Baccalaureate program also costs a lot to implement within a school and then they charge for the tests themselves. If student could take MOOCs instead of IBs and these ere also looked at as good or better, the number of student ad schools choosing the IB might drop at well. Like the schools themselves, the testing companies have a vested interest in trying to keep things the way they are and they will have people doing research to try to prove that there exams are better than MOOCs.SecurityThe last issue that I think is the one that represents the biggest challenge for giving credit for MOOCs and other on-line learning options centers o security. As the College Board has found in the past several years making sure tests are secure and that cheating isn’t going on has become an issue they still have yet to solve. Student, especially in Asia, have found ways to beat the test and score well. For MOOCs there is currently no way to assure that someone is not hiring an expert to take the MOOC for him or her. While this has not been an issue to date that is only because there is not a credit issue yet. Should schools move toward giving credit there will have to be a great deal of work done to create a way that ensures colleges and universities that the certificate students earn for courses represent the work of each individual challenge. I see this as the biggest problem of all the ones I have cited, as I do not know how security can be assured remotely. If the College Board has problems with people on-site taking the tests I cannot begin to guess how this issue will be solved simply or in a cost-effective way. Given this I would imagine that many schools would use security as the issue to refuse to grant credit.***********************************************************************If it seems I have now proven that the revolution has been hyped and that the status quo will continue along as it stands with just a few minimal changes then I need to also address how there is some evidence that Carey may be right about the transformative power of MOOCs.From the fall of the Berlin Wall, to 9/11 and its aftermath, to the sad outcomes of the Arab Spring, almost all pundits have missed the biggest changes headed our way. Taleb calls them Black Swans and I agree with you that we do not have the ability to predict what will happen years from now (let alone this afternoon). On the other hand, I do agree with William Gibson too (who was right about a lot of the things that have come to pass in technology --except he did it as so many visionaries have—through fiction/art): “The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.”Now that schools are offering degrees on line for masters programs the door is open for schools to start offering credit for undergraduate courses. A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education outlines how these programs are already in place at a number of elite schools:Paid online courses for professional graduate programs.Yale University recently unveiled a new master’s program for aspiring physician assistants, offered through its medical school. The program will also involve a lot of fieldwork, but much of the academic coursework will be delivered online. It is the second program Yale has created along these lines; the other is a partially online doctoral degree in nursing, which the university announced in 2011.Degrees in fields like health care and teaching are in high demand, and many lesser-known players have grabbed big chunks of that market online by assuring prospective students that they can go back to school without upending their lives. Yale is not alone in its effort to claim its slice of the pie; graduate schools at the Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, the University of California at Berkeley, and others have also started offering online versions of their professional master’s programs.Online does not fundamentally threaten the appeal of professional programs, where the "student experience" is not as sacrosanct as it is at undergraduate colleges. Most people who enroll are working adults who already went through dorm life and student organizations and late-night philosophical chats with future members of their wedding parties. They are now mainly interested in learning a trade.One well-respected school, The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has just announced it will offer an MBA degree via MOOCs. How this will work out and whether this model will be implemented by other schools is something that has yet to be determined, but it does signify that at least some places are taking the MOOC options seriously:"As with any MOOC, the content is available for free. Learners who wish to earn a credential but have no need for academic credit can pay a small fee, $79 a course, for an identity-verified certificate. Students can also apply to the College of Business and, if accepted, pursue the full M.B.A. degree. Finally, students can choose to take the courses individually for credit, postponing a decision about whether to go for a degree until they are well into the program."More significantly, at least as far as the large term effects on on-line education versus MOOCs, the first major university, Arizona State, has just announced that it will give a year’s worth of undergraduate credit for MOOCs The President of ASU, Michael Crow, put forward a number of radical changes in his recent book, "Designing the New American University". He has now opened the door for other schools to follow his lead in offering a lost cost option for students to earn credit for their first year of college. This move represents a significant challenge to the education establishment:Arizona State University, in partnership with edX, this fall will begin to offer credit-bearing massive open online courses at a fraction of the cost of either in-person or traditional online education.ASU’s faculty members will create about a dozen general-education MOOCs, the first of which -- an introductory astronomy course -- will launch this August. Anyone can register for and take the MOOCs for free, but those who pay a $45 fee to verify their identity can at the end of each course decide if they want to pay the university a separate, larger fee to earn academic credit for their work.By fall 2016, ASU anticipates it will offer enough MOOCs so that students can complete their entire freshman year online through what edX and the university are calling the Global Freshman Academy.After completing the courses, students can receive a transcript from ASU showing that they have earned enough credits at the university to transfer to a different program or institution as sophomores. Since the university stresses the MOOCs are just a new form of delivering courses it already offers, the transcripts won’t specify which type of course -- in-person, online or massive online -- students enrolled in to earn the credit.“What this does is it really opens up new pathways for all students, no matter where they are in the world,” edX CEO Anant Agarwal said in an interview. “There are no admissions requirements -- no SAT scores, no GPAs, no recommendation letters.”One would think that many in education would be thrilled to hear about this low-cost way for students to earn full credit for introductory courses. The transcript for these courses will look exactly the same as for those who take the courses on campus. Student can earn credit, skip introductory classes and possibly graduate in 3 years. The savings to them would be substantial, and given the student debt crisis it would seem to be a wonderful yet daring innovation.The reaction to this move has been swift, but not the way I would have thought. Questions about accreditation and whether such courses should count have already been raised. Some educators have already gone on record as calling this attempt to give credit “retrograde”.Paul L. Gaston, a Trustees Professor at Kent State University and author of Higher Education Accreditation: How It’s Changing and Why It Must, nevertheless called the Global Freshman Academy a “retrograde action” for an institution he praised for its innovation.“It’s a kind of compromise with the values that they have demonstrated in terms of clear learning outcomes and creating exciting environments for learning,” Gaston said. “I do think it represents a shift in the character of the kind of commitment that ASU has been known for.”The move by ASU and the reaction represents the conflicts that will be fought in the near and long term. Should MOOCs be incorporated as part of earning credit for degrees not just at ASU, but at many other schools, then things will change I n at least some of the ways Carey predicts. If the education establishment prevails and ASU fails to prove these courses prepare students for success, then MOOCs will still exist as a part of graduate programs and as a way of students and others from around the world of learning skills like coding and learning about an huge range of topics and subjects. They will not, however, become a threat for most of the colleges and universities who see the current model of brick and mortar education not as an outdated paradigm, but as what has made the US system of education the best in the world for the generations.Carey’s book does repeat itself in its unswerving allegiance to the transformative power of MOOCs. By the last chapter the tone earns the phrase 'religious fervor'. He himself wants MOOCs to become a sort of religious cathedral that will draw acolytes from all over the world. (The religious trope is his not mine.) They will learn from the scripture of the sciences and reason and a new dawn of humankind will begin. Ok, I am exaggerating a bit here, but not by that much. He does invoke religion and belief and that seems a bit over the top.But if the histories of religious differences throughout history are any guide, the war, at least of words, credit and cost will not be settled without causalities. If I had to guess the changes at the margins that are happening now would have to be embraced by the public at large perhaps based on the inability of most in the middle class and below to afford traditional education on campuses without incurring significant debt. Whether the casualties that may result are the colleges themselves or the MOOCs, is, for me at least, too hard to predict.***********************************************************************In the interest of full disclosure, I should add that I have taken a MOOC and learned a great deal from it. I have also had some debates with educators who think MOOCs are not useful in comparison to teaching students in a classroom. I mention this as I do not wish to pretend that I can approach this topic with anything approaching pure objectivity. All of us have cognitive biases.REM: the end of the world as we know it

Kevin Carey’s recent book, The End of College, starts with a great story. He introduces us to one of the most famous professors in the world, Eric Lander. His background is about as impressive as it gets. He’s won some of the top awards a scientist can earn, led the human genome project and has expertise in his field that only a few in the world can even hope to approach. But aside from his accomplishments with the genome, he is also known as one of the best teachers at MIT. His class, introduction to biology is mandatory, and legendary. He has adoring fans gather around his desk after each class. More importantly, at least as far as the thesis of the book, his class has reached thousands of people around the world, for free, as a MOOC.Massive Online Open Courses were, a few years ago, trumpeted by the companies like Edacity and others as the death knell of traditional education as we know it. Carey, like Malcolm Gladwell in his books, knows that we are wired for stories more than for data and overviews of research. While these latter things are what should be used to ‘prove’ his thesis, his book depends largely on profiles of the people in Silicon Valley, Cambridge and a few other places who are at the forefront of the MOOC revolution. Sebastian Thern, who was one of the first to create a MOOC famously said that in 20 years there would only be a few dozen colleges and universities left after a couple of decades.Since then, the death of traditional brick and mortar education has received a lot comment from pundits and educators. Most think, as the cliché goes, the death has been greatly exaggerated. Instead of MOOCs heralding in a Gutenberg revolution most see it as yet another set of bells and whistles that will help some people around the world get exposure to a huge range of topics and subjects but won’t make much of difference to the way education works in the US. Colleges and universities will continue to bring students to campus and train them for the job market and for graduate school, perhaps with some implementation of MOOC technology, but not much will happen to force schools to either join the on-line revolution or sink into oblivion.Carey’s book attempts to show how they are wrong. His first chapter is instructive in several senses of the word. Carey himself takes Lander’s MOOC and earns a certificate for completing the same work as first year students at MIT. He has completed all the challenging problem sets and passed each of them. He has reached out to the TAs on line for help and participated in on line chat rooms with other students from all over the world. To put it simply, he has demonstrated mastery in a challenging MIT class and has a certificate to back it up. He even takes time to visit the class in real time and comes away thinking on-line is better. On line he can hit the pause button during the lecture to write notes in a more complete way than trying to write down words as they stream out in real time. He can concentrate on the class in a quiet way in the comfort of home instead of being distracted by the student next to him who is focused far more on his phone than what is going on in class. He can hear Lander better and has multiple camera angles to see what he does instead of seeing him a long way away at the back of a lecture hall.Carey convinces me that this particular class teaches students the materials and delivers it in ways that are even better than if he were there taking it in person. In addition, Carey also underscores how the new technology, combined with the discoveries in the fields of neuroscience and education science about learning can help to individualize the experience of taking MOOCS.I advise anyone who is primed (the last word as it is used in neuroscience) against MOOCs to read this first chapter and then come up with reasons why Carey's experience does not convince you that this class is as good or better than taking the exact same class at MIT. I think if this chapter stood alone as an article it would get many to question their assumptions and I think this is great. His interview for the US News, “It's the End of College As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” is a good introduction too.Much of the rest of the book unfolds in chapters that introduce us to some of the early leaders of the on-line revolution. We hear about wonderful professors who have made their work accessible to people, for free, to people around the world. To give just one example of what this can mean, there is a person in Nigeria who has taken more than 250 MOOCs:Jima Ngei. Ngei, who lives in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, has completed and passed 250 MOOCs, all through Coursera, since September 2012. His self-styled education has included courses in English common law and Chinese history, data science and Latin American culture, social epidemiology and the life of Thomas Jefferson, to name a few.Of course Mr. Hgei is at the very far end of the bell curve of MOOC takers; he has taken and passed far more courses than what most students take to earn 5 undergraduate degrees. The data out there shows that people around the world, who have neither the opportunity or the money to attend traditional schools in the US can become “educated citizens” to use Thomas Jefferson’s phrase.Another way that Carey sees education changing in the not too distant future has to do with the way colleges and universities will use deep data to select students in ways that some forward thinking businesses currently do. Jeffrey Selingo, whose own book, College (Un)Bound should be required reading for anyone who wants to get informed about data and education. He has this to say about Carey in The Washington Post:In a compelling new book about higher education, The End of College, its author, Kevin Carey, lays out a future where admission to a college is based on the massive amounts of data and information already collected on students from an early age rather than a snapshot made in one moment in time for an application deadline.“Instead of waiting for applications to arrive colleges will be able to conduct extensive searches of data that students and parents choose to make available,” writes Carey, who directs the education policy program at the New America Foundation.Under such a scenario, admissions would become something more akin to how employers now search LinkedIn and other online databases to recruit talent to their organizations rather than wait for an application to arrive in response to a job advertisement. LinkedIn already has lowered the minimum age to join the professional network to 14, partly in an effort to persuade more students in middle school and high school to begin building their profiles. As more students do, the day might not be that far away when a LinkedIn profile becomes the foundation for a college application or the place where admissions officers search for their next class of freshmen.Both Carey and Selingo believe that looking at a student’s data over many years, not just at a transcripts and a set of tests and an essay is a far better way of predicting success at a college. If this all sounds unrealistic I will simply add a quote from a very smart counselor who shared this with me in a discussion about this issue: “I spoke with an Eli Lilly exec the other day who told me that they almost solely hire from Linked In and MOOCs now. Try explaining that to high school students who have never heard of either entity.”In some cases, companies are hiring people who do not have a college degree but have the skills they are looking for—coding being the one many are searching for. I know a high school student who was brought in as an intern at Google based upon his MOOC certificates and recommendation from his MOOC professor. I am not saying that admission will change dramatically in the next year or two, but schools are already using data to predict yield and to recruit prospective students. If they find that these alternatives will help them enroll more and stronger students then the way students apply to schools may change radically in the next decade.While I like much of what Carey has to say as tries to convince readers that colleges and universities will be falling by the hundreds or even thousands in the next several decades, he does not convince me that he has proven his thesis. He marshals a lot of evidence to make his case, but he also leaves out at least 5 things that will, I think, undercut any relatively fast transformation of the education landscape in the US.Habits and beliefsThe belief that many hold that the US education is the best in the world and that our way of giving students access to great centers of learning is deep and longstanding. It is part of the American Dream and something that many, rightly I think, hold up as a shining beacon on the hill. The number of students that have flowed in from the world over the last two decades demonstrates that it isn’t just those in the US who believe the best schools in the world are here--it’s common wisdom. For those who read much of what I write this last phrase is always used as a way of turning the conversation in a new direction away from the common wisdomWe are all guided by habits and beliefs to interpret the world through ideological and experiential frames. There are some like Dan Ariely and Yuval Noah Hariari,who think that we think most of the time with anything but rational approaches to issues. I mention this as most people I know think that traditional education, on a campus, is invaluable preparation for the real world. Some talk about the importance of liberal arts; others, about the networking and career building skills that are a part of being in and out of classes among faculty, students and administrators. For many, then, it is "common sense" that on campus experiences make for a much deeper and fuller preparation for what will happen after graduation. Even if they are confronted with data (for example, over a third of students graduating from college today have no increase in critical thinking skills after 4 years and a degree—see the book "Academically adrift" for the research on this), there is still the feeling that college should happen on a campus. We are slow to change the way we view things even if confronted with data. There are a majority of US citizens who think that evolution is not the best way to explain how we as humans have come to dominate the planet. I think the evidence is compelling but they do not. My citing data has virtually never changed someone’s mind on this issue. I am not sanguine that a few ‘experts’ who believe that the current way many receive an education today needs to change will be enough to shift the paradigm anytime soon.Schools ThemselvesIf Carey believes that the thousands of traditional colleges and universities will embrace the changes he proposes in education lightly, then he too is not approaching things rationally. Some do not like to say that higher education is a big business but the way things run at most schools these days it is hard to find out why they think this. Larger and larger administrative bodies tightly run schools. They oversee budges, enrollments and fund-raising. The largest increase in hiring over the last decades has been on the administrative side as schools recognize that they need to be business savvy to keep things afloat. Many schools are already struggling. A few have closed. What Carey proposes is yet another huge challenge to many schools' survival. As with any business under threat from competitors, there will be efforts to dismiss the data that Carey uses, followed by efforts to undercut any big changes in the status quo. Everyone who works at a brick and mortar school has a stake in on-line options not gaining a large market share. There will be faculty, administrators, alumni and students who will all be on the side of the schools. They will be passionate advocates for what they offer. There will be media blitzes, studies released, and lots more to critique on-line education. Trying to separate the "signal from the noise" (I use the phrase that data guru Nate Silver uses as the title of his great book on this topic) among competing data will be difficult at best. There are billions of dollars at stake, untold thousands of jobs, and communities that will be in trouble too should local schools close. Will schools go the way of the newspapers? They were for many years the traditional way that many found out about the world. With the exception of a few strong brands, on-line resources have largely replaced newspapers.Seminars and LabsWhile I agree with Carey when it comes to the effective dissemination and evaluation of students on-line in introductory classes that are, by and large, lecture based, he does not address how students would complete labs, participate in seminars, or do individualized research on-line. I do not know how some of the things that require hands on activities could be reproduced on line—at least not yet. The labs, equipment and other resources are simply not there for students located all across the globe. Likewise, there is something special that can happen in a small seminar that cannot happen in a large lecture. If what I have said it accurate, then it may be that on-line education will permit students to learn something but that students will still need to travel to traditional campuses to take advantage of the resources there. Students may be able to earn credit and graduate in 2 years and there are some majors and areas of study that could be done completely remotely. But the technology is simply not there yet to give students who are not actually doing experiments and not actually doing group work with others on case studies etc. that have been created that have any data to back up that they are good enough to match what happens on a real campusTesting CompaniesIt may not seem readily apparent why testing companies would have a stake in caring if on-line classes earn credit, but they will stand to lose a huge market should this happen. The College Board is responsible not only for the SAT I and 2 tests, but also for the Advanced Placement program. As ETS has lost its market share to the ACT over the SAT I, they have needed to do a number of things to keep their business, non-profit as it is, getting students to pay for tests. The AP program has been increasingly important as many colleges and universities use AP classes and scores to determine admission. Schools all over the US and the world now offer APs. Each of these tests costs over 100.00 dollars so taking 5 or 10 (the typical number for students applying to selective schools) adds up to a lot of money. If students could take MOOCs instead, either for free or for a lower fee, and get credit for them and be looked at as equivalent or better than APs, then the College Board would have another huge challenge to address. In addition, the International Baccalaureate program also costs a lot to implement within a school and then they charge for the tests themselves. If students could take MOOCs instead of IBs and these were also looked at as good or better, the number of student and schools choosing the IB might drop at well. Like the schools themselves, the testing companies have a vested interest in trying to keep things the way they are and they will have people doing research to try to prove that their exams are better than MOOCs.SecurityThe last issue that I think is the one that represents the biggest challenge for giving credit for MOOCs and other on-line learning options centers -- security. As the College Board has found in the past several years making sure tests are secure and that cheating isn’t going on has become an issue they still have yet to solve. Students, especially in Asia, have found ways to beat the test and score well. For MOOCs there is currently no way to assure that someone is not hiring an expert to take the MOOC for him or her. While this has not been an issue to date, that is only because there is not a credit issue yet. Should schools move toward giving credit there will have to be a great deal of work done to create a way that ensures colleges and universities that the certificate students earn for courses represents the work of each individual student. I see this as the biggest problem of all the ones I have cited, as I do not know how security can be assured remotely. If the College Board has problems with people on-site taking the tests I cannot begin to guess how this issue will be solved simply or in a cost-effective way. Given this I would imagine that many schools would use security as the issue to refuse to grant credit.*********************************************************************************If it seems I have now proven that the revolution has been hyped and that the status quo will continue along as it currently stands (with just a few minimal changes), then I need to address how there is some evidence that Carey may be right about the transformative power of MOOCs.From the fall of the Berlin Wall, to 9/11 and its aftermath, to the sad outcomes of the Arab Spring, almost all pundits have missed the biggest changes headed our way. Taleb calls them Black Swans and I agree with him that we do not have the ability to predict what will happen years from now (let alone this afternoon). On the other hand, I do agree with William Gibson too (who was right about a lot of the things that have come to pass in technology --except he did it as so many visionaries have—through fiction/art): “The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.”Now that schools are offering degrees on line for masters programs, the door is open for schools to start offering credit for undergraduate courses. A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education outlines how these programs are already in place at a number of elite schools:Paid online courses for professional graduate programs.Yale University recently unveiled a new master’s program for aspiring physician assistants, offered through its medical school. The program will also involve a lot of fieldwork, but much of the academic coursework will be delivered online. It is the second program Yale has created along these lines; the other is a partially online doctoral degree in nursing, which the university announced in 2011.Degrees in fields like health care and teaching are in high demand, and many lesser-known players have grabbed big chunks of that market online by assuring prospective students that they can go back to school without upending their lives. Yale is not alone in its effort to claim its slice of the pie; graduate schools at the Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, the University of California at Berkeley, and others have also started offering online versions of their professional master’s programs.Online does not fundamentally threaten the appeal of professional programs, where the "student experience" is not as sacrosanct as it is at undergraduate colleges. Most people who enroll are working adults who already went through dorm life and student organizations and late-night philosophical chats with future members of their wedding parties. They are now mainly interested in learning a trade.One well-respected school, The University of Illinois Champaign Urbana, has just announced it will offer an MBA degree via MOOCs. How this will work out and whether this model will be implemented by other schools is something that has yet to be determined, but it does signify that at least some places are taking the MOOC options seriously:"As with any MOOC, the content is available for free. Learners who wish to earn a credential but have no need for academic credit can pay a small fee, $79 a course, for an identity-verified certificate. Students can also apply to the College of Business and, if accepted, pursue the full M.B.A. degree. Finally, students can choose to take the courses individually for credit, postponing a decision about whether to go for a degree until they are well into the program."More significantly, at least as far as the large term effects on on-line education versus MOOCs, the first major university, Arizona State, has just announced that it will give a year’s worth of undergraduate credit for MOOCs The President of ASU, Michael Crow, put forward a number of radical changes in his recent book, "Designing the New American University". He has now opened the door for other schools to follow his lead in offering a low cost option for students to earn credit for their first year of college. This move represents a significant challenge to the education establishment:Arizona State University, in partnership with edX, this fall will begin to offer credit-bearing massive open online courses at a fraction of the cost of either in-person or traditional online education.ASU’s faculty members will create about a dozen general-education MOOCs, the first of which -- an introductory astronomy course -- will launch this August. Anyone can register for and take the MOOCs for free, but those who pay a $45 fee to verify their identity can at the end of each course decide if they want to pay the university a separate, larger fee to earn academic credit for their work.By fall 2016, ASU anticipates it will offer enough MOOCs so that students can complete their entire freshman year online through what edX and the university are calling the Global Freshman Academy.After completing the courses, students can receive a transcript from ASU showing that they have earned enough credits at the university to transfer to a different program or institution as sophomores. Since the university stresses the MOOCs are just a new form of delivering courses it already offers, the transcripts won’t specify which type of course -- in-person, online or massive online -- students enrolled in to earn the credit.“What this does is it really opens up new pathways for all students, no matter where they are in the world,” edX CEO Anant Agarwal said in an interview. “There are no admissions requirements -- no SAT scores, no GPAs, no recommendation letters.”One would think that many in education would be thrilled to hear about this low cost way for students to earn full credit for introductory courses. The transcript for these courses will look exactly the same as for those who take the courses on campus. Students can earn credit, skip introductory classes and possibly graduate in 3 years. The savings to them would be substantial and given the student debt crisis it would seem to be a wonderful yet daring innovation.The reaction to this move has been swift, but not the way I would have thought. Questions about accreditation and whether such courses should count have already been raised. Some educators have already gone on record as calling this attempt to give credit “retrograde”.Paul L. Gaston, a Trustees Professor at Kent State University and author of Higher Education Accreditation: How It’s Changing and Why It Must, nevertheless called the Global Freshman Academy a “retrograde action” for an institution he praised for its innovation.“It’s a kind of compromise with the values that they have demonstrated in terms of clear learning outcomes and creating exciting environments for learning,” Gaston said. “I do think it represents a shift in the character of the kind of commitment that ASU has been known for.”The move by ASU and the reaction represents the conflicts that will be fought in the near and long term. Should MOOCs be incorporated as part of earning credit for degrees not just at ASU, but at many other schools, then things will change in at least some of the ways Carey predicts. If the education establishment prevails and ASU fails to prove these courses prepare students for success, then MOOCs will still exist as a part of graduate programs and as a way of students and others from around the world of learning skills like coding and learning about an huge range of topics and subjects. They will not, however, become a threat for most of the colleges and universities who see the current model of brick and mortar education not as an outdated paradigm, but as what has made the US system of education the best in the world for the generations.Carey’s book does repeat itself in its unswerving allegiance to the transformative power of MOOCs. By the last chapter the tone deserves the phrase "religious fervor". He himself wants MOOCs to become a sort of religious cathedral that will draw acolytes from all over the world. (The religious trope is his, not mine.) They will learn from the scripture of the sciences and reason and a new dawn of humankind will begin. Ok, I am exaggerating a bit here, but not by that much. He does invoke religion and belief and that seems a bit over the top.But if the histories of religious differences throughout history are any guide, the war, at least of words, credit and cost will not be settled without causalities. If I had to guess the changes at the margins that are happening now would have to be embraced by the public at large perhaps based on the inability of most in the middle class and below to afford traditional education on campuses without incurring significant debt. Whether the casualties that may result are the colleges themselves or the MOOCs, is, for me at least, too hard to predict.*******************************************************************************In the interest of full disclosure, I should add that I have taken a MOOC and learned a great deal from it. I have also had some debates with educators who think MOOCs are not useful in comparison to teaching students in a classroom. I mention this as I do not wish to pretend that I can approach this topic with anything approaching pure objectivity. All of us have cognitive biases.I originally wrote this book review for my blog.