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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?
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?
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...
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.
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.
We assume corruption because we built a system that depends on and rewards it. It is corrupt by design, not by accident. Voters have to be 'bribed' into voting for the guy who makes the most outrageous promises, and that takes money. So, at this point money and politics are integral, they are one, entirely inseparable.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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
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.