“Ten years from now college is going to look a lot different,” says Senior Fellow Stuart Butler in this podcast. Butler, an expert on the future of higher education, economic mobility, budget process reform, and federal entitlement reform, explains how developments in education technology, such as MOOCs, are driving college costs down, changing university business models, and could have a dramatic effect on social mobility in this country. “If you have a higher education system that actually does provide students with the skills they really need at a much lower cost than today,” he says, “that’s good for everybody, and good for the economy.”
Plus, in “Wessel’s Economic Update,” David Wessel, director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, discusses the re-release of Arthur Okun’s classic book, “Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff.”
Show Notes:
- New Arizona State-edX MOOC: Another blow to traditional college
- How Google and Coursera may upend the traditional college degree
- Beyond College Rankings: A Value-Added Approach to Assessing Two- and Four-Year Schools
- Reimagine College
- Tottering Ivory Towers
- City & Guilds
- Social Mobility Memos
Subscribe to the Brookings Cafeteria on iTunes, listen on Stitcher, and send feedback email to BCP@Brookings.edu.
Commentary
PodcastMOOCs, college costs, and the future of higher education
Stuart M. Butler and
Stuart M. Butler
Senior Fellow
- Economic Studies
@stuartmbutler
Fred Dews
Fred Dews
Managing Editor, New Digital Products
- Office of Communications
@publichistory
May 8, 2015