In his new book, The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere, Kevin Carey lays out a dystopian future for American higher education as we know it. Colleges and universities will cease to exist, with the exception of perhaps “15 to 50” of them, and will be replaced by the “University of Everywhere,” which will provide “abundant and free” educational resources that for centuries have been locked up in the monopoly enjoyed by universities. The reasons for this revolution? Carey ascribes his predictions largely to the availability of massive open online courses and the coming revolution in badging, or microcredentials.
In Carey’s educational future, students will no longer need to spend tens of thousands of dollars per year for four (or often, six) years on a bachelor’s degree. Any courses they could take at an accredited institution will be available for free on the Internet, and third-party certification organizations will crop up that will attest to the learning achieved in each of these courses. These certification badges, in Carey’s model, will verify free or at very low cost the equivalent education and training that students today receive in a bachelor’s-degree program. Voila! The end of college.