MOOCs: Business as Usual

MOOCs: Business as Usual, the Economist, June 4^th 2014

Usually Economist articles are short and to the point; this one is certainly short but it misses a number of points.

It starts off by raising the issue of whether MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses – are a threat to traditional business schools.  The article is built around research by Harvard Business Review into MOOCs offered by the Wharton School, one of Harvard’s leading competitors; this is hardly the context for objective findings and the article fails make this reservation.

I decided to look at this research in more detail and found it on the HBR blog, published the day before the Economist; obviously the article was a rush job and it shows.  The Harvard study concludes that the MOOCs offered by Wharton are not adversely impacting top business school numbers as had been widely predicted; instead these online offerings are opening up new markets, mainly outside the USA.  And they are threatening the smaller business schools, particularly local providers.

There are so many missed points in the article that it is difficult to know where to begin.  Firstly there is no distinction between MBA courses and the much shorter Executive Education programmes offered by most schools.  It does not need research to tell you that online MOOC courses that are mostly offered for free and provide no recognised qualification, are unlikely to be an alternative to any kind of MBA programme.  A more feasible possibility – raised by the HBR article but not by the Economist – is that some companies might recommend a MOOC rather than send managers on a two or three week business school executive programme.  The Harvard research – perhaps self-servingly – suggests that this is not the case.

Both articles miss another point about MOOCs; the quality of learning and the very high drop-out rates, some as high as 90%.  Our experience at MTP is that online learning can achieve many of the benefits of face to face, as long as there are high levels of motivation and interaction.  The drop-out rates raise issues about motivation and the MOOCs we have seen have limited interaction compared to the live virtual sessions that many top companies are asking for, to improve their cost effectiveness and global reach.

The appeal to overseas students – and the threat to local providers of business education-  is easy to understand.  It is likely however that this is based on the belief that local employers will be impressed with a certificate of completion from a top US Business School and not realise the extent to which it is probably less rigorous and valuable than an MBA from the local university.   It is questionable whether, in the long term, MOOCs from the big business school brands will produce better management performance, which is the ultimate test.

The article makes a further interesting point – that MOOCs appeal to men more than women, more so than for MBAs,   The writer suggests that this is because women in the developing world face greater barriers to business training; my alternative suggestion is that women are more discerning and are better at seeing through the superficiality of a limited product offered by a powerful brand!

Read the article here