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If non-elite colleges and universities want to avoid the fate of travel agencies and film companies, what should they do in the age of free MOOCs?

I'm tired of being used by the digital tools.

Have I told you how much I love audiobooks? Have I mentioned how much I enjoy the instant purchasing, lower prices, and multi-platform flexibility of Kindle e-books? Have we talked about our concerns about the ever widening gap between the curriculum and consumer content experience? Well, things have just gotten better. And things have just gotten worse.

So we've made it through the first two weeks of my semester, and the first week of Nick's. And what have I learned so far?

Last year’s student protests in Chile had as one of its main targets the pursuit of profit in education. The argument defended by demonstrators and shared, according to opinion polls, by a large majority of Chileans, was that financial gain from education is morally illegitimate and ought to be legally banned. Most people seemed to believe that education cannot be, under any circumstances, a business enterprise.

After talking to dozens (perhaps hundreds) of sustainability staff on a wide range of campuses, I've come to the conclusion that almost all of them fall into one of two categories: either they're administrators or they're strategists. (OK, that's a gross over-generalization, but when have I let a little thing like that stop me?)

If credits are available for free, what will colleges sell?

Reflections on the new academic year, online courses, the OECD's forthcoming Education at a Glance (2012), and international consortia of universities.