Why academics shouldn’t predict the demise of “old media”

With a company offering flat rate, unlimited course offerings online at just $99 a month, academics, intellectuals and pundits who want to proclaim the pending demise of “old media” in general and print media in particular should look in their rearview mirrors before offering any more prognostications.

Even without online classrooms entering version 2.0, colleges and universities have indicated in the last couple of years their intent to use adjunct faculty for more and more of their teaching positions in the future. So, without too much schadenfreude, some of the pundits may want to join the misery of media-world layoffs, etc.

And, there are other similarities. Yes, while it’s a stereotype, the “old,” “mainstream” media did at times come off as a cult, priesthood, or keepers of the flame, choose your metaphor.

But, don’t universities, “old,” “traditional” universities, vs. more explicitly for-profit models that mix bricks and mortar with modems and mouses, like the University of Phoenix, let alone vs. online-only collegiate learning centers, come off in exactly the same way?

Short answer? Hell, yes.

Longer answer is that there are differences.

The media, even at its peak, never had anything comparable to North Central or other collegiate accreditation agencies. Agencies that, at the beck and call of bricks and mortar, have no compunction about bullying the new, online-only learning centers.

Read the full, in-depth analysis piece for examples of this bullying and various ways in which some of the online-only collegiate learning centers (I’m not ready to use the word “universities”) are either doing creative partnerships or else are fighting back.

Given that North Central, et al, are already putting these folks to a degree of scrutiny they never turn on State U., if one of these online centers gets bought by a financier with deep enough pockets, you WILL see an antitrust lawsuit.