Universities just will not collaborate

So does anyone think that Universities have an inflated sense of their own value ? It seems as if Internet-based learning is here to stay - but without really good content there is a risk of a devalued learning experience for many people. Surely, one might suppose, Universities have course content that can be transformed into the new medium ?

Well, you might have though so. But there are lots of problems here. Firstly, quality content is not easy to locate since lots of Unversity course materials are not packaged well for re-use.

Secondly, Universities generally want to guard 'intellectual property' very closely - even if it's not their own. Getting them to collaborate on co-development of eLearning is a nightmare because their common 'business' models don't allow them to think really creatively. Ownership is the chief criterion for decision-taking. And exercise of bureaucratic decision processes takes too much time - products have to be innovated, brought to market and changed within 3 months. Any longer and the ship has moved on.

Getting their hands on money ('research funding') is a primary goal of institutions. Sharing assets in a collaborative way is very low on their list. Universities really want all of the cake - they think they have good undergraduate teraching content, they think they are central to all R&D and they believe they can market/sell internationally. And they really do not understand co-financing at all !

Of course, the last point is crucial. The value of on-line diplomas/degrees has been severly diluted by the number of them available (and from disreputable sources in many cases). We suggest that Universities need to recognize that the key is to target co-produced and co-branded digital products at specific markets (and corporate training is the one most dear to our hearts !).

There are some good exceptions - MIT's OpenCourseWare is making vast swathes of course materials freely available oneline. And the Open University (UK) too. This is good news for people that want access to good content across a range of subjects. But bad news because commercial re-use is prohibited.