NY Times piece on online education

This isn't a bad article, but its a shame that they lump the current brand of MOOCs in with online courses offered at community colleges. MOOCs are taught by world class professors working hard to make world class online courses. Online community college classes are taught by overstressed adjunct professors trying their best to scrape out a living in the lower tier of academia.

Did anyone check the original source to see if they controlled for the students taking the respective classes? It would be interesting to know how comparable the students taking the online and physical classes were. (in case it's not obvious, I suspect some adverse selection going on, with those choosing online classes perhaps being less capable/committed/motivated)

Nonetheless, I think the "MOOCs are best for the capable and self-motivated" concern is very real. IMHO enabling MOOCs to work well for the majority of students is a major hurdle on the road to MOOCs being broadly useful (and being most successful in the marketplace).

And buried in the article is this:

Interestingly, the center found that students in hybrid classes — those that blended online instruction with a face-to-face component — performed as well academically as those in traditional classes. But hybrid courses are rare, and teaching professors how to manage them is costly and time-consuming.

It will be interesting to see how the Udacity/SJSU pilot goes. I think that will shed some light on the concerns expressed in the NYT article.

Re: @Ben Haley's answer, has anyone here taken both the community college classes discussed in the article and a sample of the MOOCs we usually discuss here? It would be interesting to see an informed comparison.