Evgeny Morozov and Jaron Lanier, themselves lapsed true believers in the Internet gospel, warn that the widespread and quasi-messianic enthusiasm for the Internet underwrites a technocratic agenda inimical to the survival of democracy. But their critiques never fully grapple with larger political and economic questions.
The initial promise was that Massively Open Online Courses would function as a free educational commons, along the lines of other free internet resources. The new MOOC strategy, however, involves rich universities being paid by poor ones.
Early on in the 2012 presidential campaign, the New York Times reported on Mitt Romney’s promotion of a for-profit Florida university called Full Sail. This advocacy, which seems to have helped Romney expand his donor base (the Times found that …
