The best, globally speaking, possible digital Master’s degree, a student, theoretically speaking, could get, is actually not possible to get, at this moment in time. Such a type of Master’s degree simply does not exist, at any place on the whole planet. One might wonder: will we ever be able to get that one?
If comparing the situation described here to the music industry, and the streaming services we nowadays have, the same situation would look something like this…
You could stream and play any single song that you like, which is part of the library the streaming service you use provides for you. Most of them have up to 30 million songs.
.
You could also stream and play full albums that single artists provide – several songs from that musician played in a row.
You could even create your own playlist, your own ‘album’, of all songs that exist at that library/streaming service, and give it a name – you creating a ‘personal library’.
I guess you know that playlists, today, are very important for music listeners that use streaming services. They are important just because the whole library a streaming service provides you with has 30 million songs – no-one listens to all of them.
But…that playlist you just created, even though it might be the best one ever according to you, is not very likely be accepted by the rest of the world.
At least no-one, with credentials, is likely to put their name on it and call it ‘important’.
In other words; the playlist you just created might feel useful to you on a personal level but not to anyone else.
A MOOC, as such, is not really the one providing you with degrees – even though it might look as if they do (check the details on their diplomas). The only ones providing degree are the educational provides that are partners to these MOOCS: The universities. And they do not accept a degree where each single course have been take by different universities.
MOOCs, in this sense, only provide you with access to the course-providers – the ones providing the degree.
A curious person would now probably start thinking about how the world of education would have to look in order to make that possible – meaning; how this industry structure would/should need to change, compared to how it looks today, to make this possible.
Will we get that kind of structure in the future, or will we never get it?
Disruptive Education 