Online Higher Education Commodity

Overview & Synopsis

This article analyzes the current trend towards online education. It examines some of the reasons for the trend and the ramifications it may have on students, faculty and institutions of higher learning. The success and profitability of online programs and institutions such as the University of Phoenix has helped to make the move towards online education more appealing to other institutions, as well as, helped to change how online education is viewed by the public. Reasons such as cost, accessibility and flexibility are often presented as motivations for why many students and institutions use online learning. However, the reasons behind the movement towards more online learning may be more motivated by capitalistic ideals associated with an ever increasingly knowledge-based economy than that of providing quality and more accessible education. The movement towards more online learning coupled with the increased corporatization of higher education may be helping to contribute to the commodification of knowledge and the changing role of institutions and education itself. Thus potentially leading to a state in which education is further transformed into a commodity, students becoming more like consumers, faculty into entrepreneurs, and institutions of higher learning into storefronts for knowledge.