ASSIGNMENT FOR #OPED12
"In your blog/discussion forum reflections, address the distinctions of openness in terms of access vs. cost. What are the concerns that this raises for open universities?"
Once your given a topic to do its amazing the amount of noise one begins to hear in this area it appears that some of the debate reflects a concern that open anything may hurt the viability of education which is a bit sad as we gather from our readings the opposite effect has been fairly well proven through research undertaken.
Looking at these articles again I have strayed somewhat off the path with publication costs oops.
http://theconversation.edu.au/anu-vice-chancellor-issues-moocs-warning-9881#comments
The comments on this by several Australian academic professors is enlightening.
"I think that the funding model for our higher education sector is in need of a major national review. If it does not come in the near future it will come eventually as the government's level of funding fails to keep all current institutions going."
&
"Perhaps one of the reasons university administrators are having trouble getting their head around MOOCs is because its not about revenue, it's about public good."
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/10/04/does-open-access-tackle-perpetuate-or-exacerbate-the-matthew-effect/
I did even know about this before.
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| Folio 27r from the Lindisfarne Gospels contains the incipit Liber generationis of the Gospel of Matthew. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
In
sociology, the Matthew effect (or accumulated advantage) is the phenomenon where "
the rich get richer and the poor get poorer".
[1][2] In both its original and typical usage it is meant metaphorically to refer to issues of fame or status but it may also be used literally to refer to cumulative advantage of
economic capital. The term was first coined by sociologist
Robert K. Merton in 1968 and takes its name from a line in the
biblical Gospel of Matthew:
For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath.
—
Matthew 25:29,
King James Version.
http://www.jmmsweb.org/issues/volume3/number2/pp97-99
"Many OA advocates (myself included), will often frame OA as an almost Socialist ideal: free information for the masses, or at least for those free thinkers who wish to consume it. But we cannot forget that we operate within an academy that has an unnerving habit of co-opting labor in a rather unsavory fashion, as seen in Mark Bousquet’s (2008) blistering How the University Works. There is a danger that the ideals of OA can be utilized by a corporate ideology which seeks to further co-opt unpaid academic labor, as well as [page 99] making professional editing redundant (in much the same way as teaching by tenured PhDs is replaced by the contingent labor of graduate students). Mandated requirements for OA by universities and government agencies certainly have the potential to unbind scholarly communication from the economically privileged. However, when such mandates rely on unpaid labor, they also have the potential to erase the skills of academics and publishing professionals who may otherwise reasonably demand an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work. "
