Here's something that the many academics reading this blog may be interested in. I've mentioned MOOCs (massive open online courses) briefly a couple times. Now I've written something more detailed: A Cato paper called Liberalizing Cross-Border Trade in Higher Education: The Coming Revolution of Online Universities.
I'm really sold on online higher education as a disruptive force in the education sector, one that will transform the industry in the same way books and music have already been transformed. So I went looking for a trade angle to the topic, so I could get on the bandwagon. Here are the basic points in the paper:
-- the Internet has made higher education tradable across borders like it has never been before
-- this is likely to cause a good deal of trade friction
-- free trade in higher education has enormous benenfits, and we should make sure protectionism does not rise up here, like it has in other industries affected by trade
-- let's lock in commitments to liberalization in this sector now, through trade in services negotiations
Not surprisingly, the details get a bit complicated. In the paper, I try to work through a number of difficult issues.
Many of you academics out there have probably thought more about this than I have. I'm curious to get your reaction.
As to how this applies to law schools, I'm a little unsure. I was definitely thinking more about undergraduate education when I wrote this. But perhaps it could apply to graduate law school degrees as well.
