(Interview of Stuart Butler by Fareed Zakaria on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS”):

Fareed speaks with Stuart Butler, a Brookings scholar, who’s written extensively on massive open online courses, or so-called MOOCs, and Anant Agarwal, who runs edX, a MOOC outfit founded by two bricks and mortar institutions.

(Video of Stuart Butler interview)

Stuart, explain first the kind of crisis in what you’ve called the business model for higher education.

Well, it certainly is a crisis that they’re facing. First of all, the costs of traditional education have been going up and the indebtedness associated with it. Now student tuition debt in the United States exceeds credit card debt. Secondly…

And it’s $1 trillion, right?

Butler: Yes, exactly. Secondly, you’re seeing different kinds of information coming forward so that people can actually evaluate the success of going to one college or another, whether it actually pays off.  CONTINUE READING HERE