Carey begins with a history of the college system with universities such as Harvard, Dartmouth, and the College of William & Mary dating back to the time of the American Revolution. The hybrid model of combining practical training with liberal arts education has, despite its flaws, lasted until the present era. Carey is critical of boutique classes, the failure of so many colleges to replace ineffective teachers, and a generation of students with $1 trillion of debt.
Now the focus is on innovations in digital learning. Harvard, MIT, and Stanford are the major contenders along with ambitious and well-funded start-ups. Among the winners are Chegg, a company that rents textbooks, and the Minerva Project, where undergraduates study in San Francisco for a year and then spend six semesters living in different global cites while taking classes online.
The boosters of information technology foresee a bright future where "The University of Everywhere" will deliver cheap or free courses, skill-based credentials, and unlimited access. Carey notes that the incredible enrollment numbers in MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have been mostly created by global demand. One million people signed up for Coursera classes in the company's first four months and nearly 2/3rd of them were from 195 countries other than the United States. Finally, in keeping with the yearning many college student have for job placement, The Mozilla Foundaton has come up with the idea of "Open Badges," digital certificates that note the courses you have taken, the skills you learned, a sampler of your work, and the institution that offers this credential.
Carey is a true believer in the power of technology to create new possibilities for those seeking higher education. Universities of the future will no longer be for the elite; they will be accessible to anyone with a computer and access to the Internet. Educational resources such as books and lectures will be free. And, best of all, people will be in charge of their own educational adventures!
