Replies

Sorry, maybe I'm a Luddite, but I hate this. It looks like another steaming pile of Global Society about to be rammed down our throats.

I'd characterise it more as a tint of xenophobia rather than Luddism. You don't seem to be afraid of technology per se, as long as it stays "American" rather than Indian or otherwise "foreign."

Internet and "communications" in general are "global" so, in theory, yes, you could get online education from a college which is "foreign" i.e., not physically located in the U.S. How about Toronto, Ottawa or Oxford or Cambridge, for example, would they be excluded from the list of "foreign" colleges/professors to be feared/disliked?

How can having more choice be described as being "rammed down our throats"? Did the introduction in the late '50s of cheaper better-made Japanese "toy" cars from Toyota and Nissan/Datsun into the US market ultimately benefit the American consumers and eventually free them from having to buy the American/UAW-made "boxes on wheels" from the Big Three?

This is the technology that can potentially empower consumers (parents and students) to break free from the government-sanctioned and institutionalized power of the "Big Education Industry" and we should object to this development on the lone basis that the empowered education consumers might choose educators who are not "American," rather than trust the [Global Society] marketplace and competition?

Isn't the availability of more, better choices better for consumers? Don't we want the people to be free to "shop" around and choose their education and educators?

Competition always benefits consumer, regulation benefits the governments and the monopolies.

Because education is a huge part of enculturation, I have serious misgivings about the ability of foreign institutions to produce what for lack of a better term I will call "finished Americans." We have enough difficulty with the leftists in our domestic institutions, and I fail to see how predominately 3rd world professors (as you must know they will be, labor costs being what they are) will be less hostile to Western civilization than their US counterparts. So I question the value of what we will ultimately be getting beyond the educational equivalent of cheap, commoditized Chinese crap at Walmart and empty US industrial sites. Maybe it will work differently this time, but I am not hopeful.

It also sounds like a great way to slowly offshore the last vestiges of US research institutions (hey, MIT probably would be cheaper at Chennai) while producing a new generation of people at home who view themselves increasingly as "Citizens of the world." And they are of no use; I have never met a self-described COTW that was not an absolutely flaming internationalist lefty. The market is great for setting the value of fungible commodity items, but I don't view an education as such. Mere technical training, sure, but education is broader, and I think properly imparted it serves to reinforce a sense of nationhood in our young adults.

Sure more choices are better, right up until they lead to fewer choices, as has happened with the decimation of whole swaths of American industry. I suppose some people don't mind seeing highway bridges and national monuments being imported, but it smells of civilizational gangrene to me. Furthermore, just because something is "market driven" doesn't mean it is beneficial or even benign. The market drove captive human labor in America (still does in some places). True, it may eventually have ended the practice when slave maintenance grew expensive enough by comparison to other means, but still. I guess we just fundamentally disagree.