When MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) burst onto the education scene in the early 2010s, they were hailed as the future of learning. With the promise of democratizing education by providing free access to world-class courses from top universities.
Leading universities rushed to put their courses online, venture capital poured in, and platforms like Coursera and edX grew rapidly. Yet today, while MOOCs still exist, they’ve largely retreated to the margins of education. Meanwhile, long-form podcasts have emerged as a surprisingly powerful force in American intellectual life.
Is this ironic? I wanted to learn a bit about MOOCs while I took a walk before writing this blog post. I typed “MOOCs” into the Apple Podcasts search bar.
One of the first results was: John Cochrane on Education and MOOCs
I learned about MOOCs from Russ Roberts at a reasonable pace (when I listen to podcasts, I do it at 1x speed but I’m almost always doing something like driving or folding laundry).
I consider myself a lifelong learner. I buy and read books. Like hundreds of millions of people around the world, I like podcasts. I will attend lectures sometimes, especially if I personally know someone in the room. I did sit in classrooms for course credit throughout college and graduate school. I took extra classes that I did not need to graduate purely out of interest, and yet I have never once been tempted to sign up for a MOOC.
Enough introspection from me. My viral “tweet” this week was: “MOOCs never took off, as far as I can tell, and yet long-form podcasts are shaping the nation.”
Did MOOCs fail? Many millions of people signed up for MOOCs. A much smaller percentage of people completed MOOCs. Some users find MOOCs worth paying for.
However, if you listen to the podcast with John Cochrane in 2014, you can see the promise that MOOCs failed to live up to. The idea was that many people who did not have access to a “top quality” education would get one through MOOCs. Turns out that access is not the bottleneck.
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