UC Berkeley

In the early 2000s a small handful of computer science and artificial intelligence researchers stitched together a platform to teach undergraduate computer science courses to tens of thousands of students simultaneously. These course, which became known as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) instigated a wave of debate about the future of higher education, as well as a series of reforms at campuses across the country. This dissertation analyzes why this moment materialized in 2012, and how three elite universities at its center crafted organizational strategies in response. Using field theory and literature on academic capitalism, this dissertation will argue that MOOCs were a recent flashpoint in the increasing competition over leadership in academic computer science that is collapsing historical distinctions between arts and science universities and applied science schools. Part I analyzes the origins of the MOOC movement and charts changes in frames within the field using LDA topic modeling to show that online higher education moved from the periphery of the field of higher education to its center in the early 2010s. Part II leverages 45 primary interviews with leaders of three campuses most closely associated with the MOOC movement: Stanford, MIT, and Harvard. The analysis shows that Stanford administrators responded to unanticipated and provocative actions from entrepreneurial faculty members with the creation of a for-profit MOOC spin-off. While these actions conformed to theories of academic capitalism, the ultimate diffusion of MOOCs across the country led universities in Cambridge to reject profit as a central consideration in their strategic response, demonstrating that academic capitalism is not necessarily contagious. This dissertation argues that the tools of field theory provide insight into competition over the future of higher education which is contested along multiple simultaneous dimensions. Rather than competition over revenue, MOOCs represented intensification of overlap in the field of higher education between tradition arts and science based incumbents, and newly ascendant universities more closely associated with applied science and engineering.