online education hypocrisy?

In the comments on a recent post, a few people noted the hypocrisy of online education: If online education is so great, why do the people who run online education have traditional “bricks and mortar” college degrees?

I am not saying that the people who run online courses are bad. I am merely arguing that institution of online education has limits and these limits are illustrated by online education. The reason that we are willing to take the time to do an online course from a Stanford computer science professor is because she has degrees that signal that she’s not a loser. She’s probably a graduate of a fancy engineering school like MIT, Michigan, or Berkeley, which indicates that she’s probably competent and high quality.

Would millions of people take online courses from, say, a graduate of the Orgtheory Online Management Academy? If you think the answer is no, then you know why the economic value of online education will be limited. If you say “yes, an Orgtheory graduate will make tons of money,” please send me an email.

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