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Re:MIT and Harvard announce edX by ebiester on Wednesday May 02, 2012 @01:43PM (#3920251)
Just like real world universities, there may be no "victor." but rather many groups catering to individual needs. If it was a mere matter of location, we'd only have one University per city.

For that matter, Western Governors University is still quite large. They could pivot much more easily than Harvard and integrate this into their current system, and they have the advantage of accrediation.

Re:MIT and Harvard announce edX by waterlesscloud on Wednesday May 02, 2012 @01:57PM (#3920326)
EDx is clearly planning to compete on quality. I expect them to be pretty resistant to watering down their course challenge level.

Coursera is likely to head mostly the same way.

Udacity, though, looks like they might lean more towards reducing the challenge to increase the audience. That feels a little dangerous as they're then open to considerably more competition from other schools. The floodgates are about to open.

What Udacity has in the short run to mitigate that possibility is a start-up agility mindset. But they'll calcify in the long run, everyone does, and then what?

What will interest me most is to see how many people can take on the challenge level of EDx. I suspect it will be many more than anyone would have thought.

The people in real trouble are those offering mediocre education for high prices. 5-10 years from now those people will be in a new line of work.