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Free Online Education Unwelcome In Minnesota
An anonymous reader sends this quote from the Chronicle of Higher Education:
"[Minnesota's] Office of Higher Education has informed the popular provider of massive open online courses, or MOOC's, that Coursera is unwelcome in the state because it never got permission to operate there. It's unclear how the law could be enforced when the content is freely available on the Web, but Coursera updated its Terms of Service to include the following caution: 'Notice for Minnesota Users: Coursera has been informed by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education that under Minnesota Statutes (136A.61 to 136A.71), a university cannot offer online courses to Minnesota residents unless the university has received authorization from the State of Minnesota to do so. If you are a resident of Minnesota, you agree that either (1) you will not take courses on Coursera, or (2) for each class that you take, the majority of work you do for the class will be done from outside the State of Minnesota.' Tricia Grimes, a policy analyst for the state's Office of Higher Education, said letters had been sent to all postsecondary institutions known to be offering courses in Minnesota."
I suspect there is a lot more to this story than anyone in the universities or legislature would ever admit publicly.
But I suspect the real impetus here is that the state legislators don't want anyone coming into their state without having to lobby (aka bribe) them first. Every state university has to come to them once a year with hat-in-hand, and they sure don't want anyone bypassing this system by coming in from out of state without paying their largesse. The patron expects his coin before you do business here, citizen.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
I read "Minnesota," (and MOOC) and instantly had flashbacks to grade school, Apple-II, and Oregon Trail. Here's hoping no one contracts dysentery.
I know what you're thinking. Did I forward 65,535 packets or 65,536 packets?
Scary politicians
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
But I suspect the real impetus here is that the state legislators don't want anyone coming into their state without having to lobby (aka bribe) them first. Every state university has to come to them once a year with hat-in-hand, and they sure don't want anyone bypassing this system by coming in from out of state without paying their largesse. The patron expects his coin before you do business here, citizen.
Or they're sick and tired of fake online universities charging their citizens or occupying peoples' time for degrees that aren't worth shit. Total nanny state action but your accusations of bribery are completely without merit or citation. Do you know what accreditation is? Why aren't you accusing accredited universities of paying a local authority?
Given that it's non-accredited and doesn't give you a degree or anything official, how is it really any different than any article on the Internet? Does YouTube need permission from each state because they have educational videos on a variety of subjects?
Yep, if Bachmann and her type are going to remain in power then they have to keep the population (i.e. peasants) as dumb as a box full of rocks.
Why is Snark Required?
Minnesota institutions have the right to not recognize credits from any university they choose to ignore. That's where it should stop. They don't have the right to tell someone not to read or learn something...
For a accredited degree granting institutions that would be true. I will grant that there has to be some type of regulation, but I would quibble that they would have to register with every single state – but that is off topic and for another debate.
Coursera is not this. It not accredited so from an academic viewpoint why does it need to be regulated?
And is there anybody here from Minnesota that has any good ideas on how to get this changed? I am going to e-mail Minnesota Office of Higher Education, but I suspect that is only the first step.
Political donations are often considered bribes. That's very often the wrong understanding.
Much of the time they are donations to people who agree with you, but we just presume corruption.
But when corruption does exist, it's usually an extortion payment and the cost of doing business. We complain about businesses, but in reality if the government wants to crush a corporation or an individual that person or group of people are toast.
If you want to get the money out of politics, get the politics out of money.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
They're not saying colleges can't use Courseera, they're saying no one in MN can use it. The issue stems from the fact that Coursera is free and doesn't offer degrees - making it little different than watching HowTo videos on YouTube.
A Ms. Grimes was quoted in the article, "This has been a longtime requirement in Minnesota (at least 20 years) and applies to online and brick-and-mortar postsecondary institutions that offer instruction to Minnesota residents as part of our overall responsibility to provide consumer protection for students,” However, Coursera is free, so how do consumer protection laws come into play? Also, take a look at some of the participating institutions : Princeton, Duke, Illinois, Brown, University of Michigan, Columbia... I'm glad the Minnesota officials are so vigilant about protecting Minnesota residents.
The State of Minnesota will do the following for people who have Coursera degrees:
They will not hire you
If you work at a company that has a State contract you may not work on the State project in any capacity.
Fines, lawsuits, etc.
I worked for the state for about three years. They have a lot of contracts in the private sector.
But feel free to take the courses. I'm sure it will all work out.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
Looking through their site, while they never claim to be accredited, they strongly imply they are equivalent, including throwing around 'university' quite a bit.. though very carefully never actually calling themselves one. To people familiar with the venture this probably seems fine, but to someone just glancing over it, it looks pretty shady, like the layed things out so it was just technically within the law but gives the consumer an impression it is more then it is.
However, since it is free, I am not sure how it all ties together. I suspect regulators looked over the site and said 'this looks fishy', and this could be cleared up with a couple of phone calls.
I could buy that - expect that the "Comic Book College of Knowledge", which is located in Minneapolis, has not recived a letter to shut down their .... errr ... text book store on 4 color sequential art
This just shows the strength of the Teachers Unions in MN, and why they need to be broken.
What they're really saying is "Coursera, by offering the simple stuff for free, you ultimately threaten the jobs of all the shitty, worthless, lazy time-serving teachers we have as dues-paying members, and we cannot allow you to continue to do so. This is not about "the children" or the consumer, it's about protecting our own, and preserving that massive political power. We've spent millions fighting merit pay, teacher-quality review, and any sort of system where parents get to exercise any choice in their childs' (short of home-schooling, and everyone knows they're religious crazies anyway), and we'll be goddamned if you take away the easy, simple-to-teach online coursework forcing human teachers to focus on the more challenging materials to justify our existance."
-Styopa
How is this constitutional? Education is speech, and speech is protected. Surely no one in Minnesota has to accept completion of a Coursera course as meaning anything, but they have no right to prevent anyone from taking the course.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
In many states, offering an equivalent education is all that is needed to actually be an unaccredited school/university. For example, since I homeschool in Indiana, my house is an unaccredited school called "The Matthews Academy", I can register for anything an accredited school would register for (educational discounts, field trips, Book It, etc. etc.), and I can even give diplomas. There's nothing at all shady/fishy about that site; the issue is that they're giving out real education for free.
No they are not. They are saying that any post secondary education institutions offering courses within the state has to register with the state.
The law says (**PDF warning) "All schools located within Minnesota and all schools located outside Minnesota which offer degree programs or courses within Minnesota shall register annually with the office."
It clearly says courses. So all they need to do is simply register with the state to comply. It's a consumer protection law that is supposed to weed out scams. It doesn't seem to make a distinction between charging to attend or not.
Do Coursera's courses actually educate students? Do they educate students at least as well as classes at an accredited university?
The answers are, "Nobody knows" and "Nobody knows." Minnesota residents are not forbidden from visiting Coursera; Minnesota's schools are forbidden from using Coursera in lieu of classroom instruction.
Palm trees and 8
Coursera's answer should simply be "We're not operating in Minnesota. Our servers are in $PLACE. Minnesota has no jurisdiction in $PLACE. Have a nice day."
I use Coursera and many of the comments show that few posters haven't a clue what Coursera is.
1. Coursera IS a collaborative effort among major Universites (I am using it to take courses from
the University of Michigan, Duke and Stanford). There is no such thing as a Coursea course, it is
only a channel by which existing well respectedUniversities offer their courses to the larger online community.
2. More specifically Coursea is a channel for self education and does not offer ANY academic credit
from institutions that use that channel for their courses. They also do not charge. There is no such
thing as a "Coursera transcript"
3. Coursera is not unique. There is a similar collaborative effort between Harvard and MIT to offer their
courses on line in a similar manner called edx.org.
The law is clearly misapplied since Coursera is not a university or academic institution no does it claim to be, the
law would only apply to all the Universities that use Coursera. Of course I suppose once you really have to
keep an eye on those shady, fly by night operations like Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Harvard and Yale.
It is interesting that it took sumdumass to point out the actual issues. Aren't there any smartpeople out there?
You obviously don't read too well if that is the conclusion you came to.. Coursera is not an institution but a common delivery platform for Universitues like Berkeley, Duke and Stanford to make their courses available for free and without offering academic credit to the community at large. Of course the throw the term University around a lot because it is the delivery channel for top notch universities to give something to the community at large. Oh wait, content for free? I see your point, from the US point of view that would be a threat to IP so yeah.. def shady. Better sue Stanford, Duke and all those bad peoples and hand it all over to the MPAA and disney
Let's assume a professor at Harvard publishes a series of articles about his specialty (say, astronomy), and syndicates it to newspapers around the country as the delivery mechanism. I use this example to clarify the constitutional issues. I think it is pretty clear this falls under freedom of speech, and the state cannot restrict what he says. Now substitute video for written article, and the consumer's ISP as the delivery mechanism (which is how Coursera works). From a legal standpoint, has anything changed because the professor's words are delivered a different way? I think not.
Coursera is acting as the syndicator, just like newpaper columnists work through syndicators to get their columns distributed to multiple newspapers. ISPs replace the newspaper as the way to deliver to the home. Just because the content being delivered is educational, it does not lose first amendment protection, and cannot be restrained the Minnesota is attempting to.