Ah, MOOCs.  The decade’s most over-hyped higher education fad: indeed, possibly the most ludicrously over-hyped fad the sector has ever seen.  About three years ago, I chronicled the decline of MOOCs from the dizzying heights of 2012 onwards.  But in the last couple of weeks, there have been a few developments which suggest that the MOOC era may be well and truly dead.

First up was the news that Arizona State University was letting its “Global Freshman Academy” wind down.  The Global Freshman Academy was created in 2015, a relatively late addition to the MOOC world.  The idea was that Arizona State – an institution that has grown enormously over the last couple of years, unlike most other research-intensive universities – would offer all its freshman courses free online through EdX (one of the two major American MOOC platforms).  For a fee equal to about half of normal tuition, students who completed these courses would be allowed to count them as credit.  The pitch was that it made first year both more affordable and globally accessible, which made it potentially a game-changer in terms of opening access and attracting non-traditional students to the school.

The reality was underwhelming.  Over the four years the program was in existence, 370,000 students registered for courses, but the completion rate was below 3%, which is terrible even by the low standards of MOOCs.  Of those, only 2% sought credit for their courses.  Of this 2%, less than 10% used those credits to pursue a full degree.  It is not clear how much money exactly ASU sunk into this venture, but given that it developed 20 courses for this program, the likelihood is that the cost was in the low seven figures, which easily outweighs the benefits of having an extra 150 students enroll.

The Global Freshman Academy program has been discontinued, but the courses have been transferred over to something called “Earned Admissions”, which is marketed at an older, midcareer market. As a result, it is being portrayed as a pivot rather than a failure.  But however much ASU might be lauded for taking a chance on an untested model and for being the first major university to offer credit for MOOCs, the fact is this was a major proof of concept, and when it came down to it, there simply wasn’t that much demand for MOOCs as a route to a degree.

Second was the news that Coursera – the largest and in many ways the Ur-MOOC platform, the one that many gullible people (<cough>Don Tapscott!<cough>) thought would radically transform or replace traditional universities – has now decided to start selling access to its archived MOOCs to universities and colleges under the title “Coursera for Campus”.  Thus, far from replacing universities, it is now turning into something like a courseware vendor for universities.  This may, in the long run, be a profitable business for Coursera.  But boy howdy, it’s a long way from those claims about universities heading into a mass die-off thanks to disintermediation, like the music or newspaper industries.

Michael Feldstein of eLiterate has an in depth and thorough treatment of the subject here (his coverage of these issues is always great, but this piece is transcendently excellent).  His key point is that after all the experimentation with MOOCs, the kind of online programs that seem to have enough quality to generate stable demand and sustainable revenue look a fair bit like traditional online programs, only with larger numbers.  And so far, they only seem to work at the Master’s level – for instance, as with the Georgia Tech/AT&T MOOC Master’s and MIT’s “Micromasters” programs, both of which appear to be successful, yet are drawing few imitators.  Not only do they not seem like the future, but it’s not even clear they will be more than a historical footnote, like the University of the Air.

But enough speculation: I think it’s time for retribution.  To anyone who had the faintest idea how higher education worked, there was never any credible evidence that there would be nearly enough paying demand for these things to cover their cost of development and operation.  And yet all sorts of tall tales and scare stories were told about them, about the “revolution” of change that was coming.  A tremendous amount of BS was generated around MOOCs in 2011 to 2013, and many good people were prevented from doing good work on other, more important things, to deal with this pernicious crap.  And those responsible need to be shamed.

I’m not just talking about the EdTech boosters here.  They were just talking their own book, though this is a lesson that, in general, when it comes to higher education, these people need to be ignored.  Nor am I just talking about the Clayton Christensens and the Don Tapscotts of this world, or the Clay Shirkys and the Michael Barbers, all of whom tried to act as intellectual midwives to the movement, and all of whom should be prohibited from ever opening their mouths about higher education ever again.  Or the Economist, whose enthusiasm was pretty embarrassing.

I am also talking about all the consultants and journalists who talked up the craze and advised educational institutions about how to navigate this new world.  And not just Ernst & Young (though they were perhaps the most egregious offender); there are lots of other small and medium-sized consultants who parroted the media hype.  They shouldn’t get away scot-free with talking crap.  Seriously, if you’re a university or college manager, the next time you hire a consultant, find out what they said about MOOCs in the early 2010s.  It’s a good check on their critical thinking, and maybe you can save your institution some money as a result. Unfortunately, this is wishful thinking.  The penalties for bad punditry are low.  And thus, we ensure another round of hype about some other ridiculous innovation a few years hence.