Digital Diploma Mills

Citation

Abeles, T.P. (2002), "Digital Diploma Mills", On the Horizon, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 37-39. https://doi.org/10.1108/oth.2002.10.1.37.1

Do not write this book off as a reprint of David Noble’s three‐part neo‐luddite screed on e‐learning that was published in several places on the Internet. The essays have been updated and two new sections added. First there is an insightful discussion on the US Department of Defense’s entrance into e‐learning, leading with the approximately 600 million dollar contract to PriceWaterhouseCoopers to manage a consortium of universities creating eArmyU, a distance education network providing courses to the US Army around the world. He has also added an appendix, “Business goes back to college”, which thoughtfully analyzes one dimension of the increasing influence of the corporate world on the direction of post‐secondary education.

Few in the academy and environs are neutral on Noble’s writings and lectures which shout, like “Chicken Little”, that e‐learning has knocked out the keystone which will bring the entire post‐secondary edifice down around the heads of academics and turn the academy into a “Fordist” enterprise. His earlier essays argued eloquently that academic administrators, concerned about decreasing revenues, have been bitten by the e‐learning gold bug. And these individuals, in their stampede to these gold fields, have trampled on the entire raison d’être of post‐secondary education, compromising laws, abusing the core, the faculty, and defying all rational reason and common sense. These articles, revised and updated, have only strengthened his former arguments with additional examples and details and Noble’s well‐crafted writing. I mention the latter because few academics write with his clarity, precision and an economy of words.

While many will have seen Noble’s ideas quoted, this book is a welcome read because of his inclusion and discussion of both the role of the US Department of Defense in creating the market which was slow to grow and his critique of the increasing influence of the corporate sector on the direction of the academy, not just in research but in its support of business in its ongoing concerns with government regulation. In the case of the Department of Defense, e‐learning becomes another venue that has been boosted from an idea into a viable enterprise because of government support in development and the role of government as a major user of the technology, once developed. Noble’s concern here is straightforward. The military does its business “by the numbers”. Here there is the thought that post‐secondary education will become a matter of creating “learning objects” that can be combined in a uniform fashion, reducing the intellectual experience to a packaged experience.

The corporate/university relationship is seen by Noble to be more insidious than just buying certain programs or controlling research agendas. Noble seems to see academics as the proverbial fish which does not perceive the pond in which it is swimming. The illusionist, Uri Geller, is reported to have remarked that he preferred performing before scientists rather than magicians because the former group “saw” by a set of rules that structured their reality, whereas magicians looked for the violation of these rules. Noble believes that many faculty and, particularly, administrators are not aware of what is happening when they accept the corporate equivalent of the “king’s shilling”. One example that he cites is the common bond that both have forged in mutual support of reducing government regulation and oversight. This comes at a time when the USA has had its largest corporate failure in Enron.

While one can appreciate his arguments, the book itself is disappointing in that Noble, given a new platform, has failed to address his many critics. Choosing to just upgrade his past essays, he has seemingly decided to ignore the larger criticism and, even, the outright dismissal of his essays.

One of the main critiques has been that Noble is attempting to preserve a past that never was for a future that never will be. It is not so much that the issue of e‐learning is in danger of corrupting the traditional academic community of learners and scholars, but rather that e‐learning makes much of what has and is changing visible and open to question. His appendix on the building of the relationship with corporation and academia says little about the issues that are raised in his “digital diploma mills” essays and more about the larger changes that are occurring. Here Noble might suggest erosion of faculty rights in determining directions of the institution is dominant.

Ever since the first coins were earned by scholars selling their time to knowledge seekers at the libraries of Alexandria, academics have had to market their skills. Currently, in the developed world, education requirements for a career have been elevated until it is not K‐12 but K‐16. Simultaneously, faculty in K‐12 have been raising their credentials until many have, or soon will have, degrees similar to those in the academy, leading one to see both the learners and the faculty as a seamless continuum. This is potentially of greater impact on the issues that are Noble’s concern than the issues surrounding e‐learning.

Similarly, the capabilities of the technology, hardware, software, and wetware are in their infancy in providing a platform to enhance skills in accessing and effectively using knowledge in one’s personal as well as professional path. Noble’s original arguments are based on a snapshot in time. To extrapolate from that point may have created a problem. First, there is no assurance that the death that Noble warns against has not already occurred without the help of the digital age. Second, his concern regarding external pressures that are entering the cloister may overlook the possibility that such liaisons may have always existed, but the parties and relationships many have been different. Given Noble’s refusal to take the opportunity to address his critics, one can only wonder whether the essays and this volume are the only vehicle in his armamentarium to address the battle already joined long before e‐learning materialized on the scene.