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As California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom said on a press call for the edX announcement, “The old educational financing model frankly is no longer sustainable.”

based on an unusually promising pilot course

Even edX President, Anant Agarwal, urged caution with the results. “I would not take this number to the bank,” he told me.

1) Due to budget constraints, community colleges often do not have access to excellent online content

2) community colleges are often “commuter schools” where part-time students travel to the campus for classes and then go home. In the latter scenario, there’s far less opportunity for students to interact with the content and each other.

For MOOCs, several target audiences have emerged: 1. Internal students on course – cost savings on volume courses 2. Internal students not on course – expanding student experience 3. Potential students national –major source of income 4. Potential students international – major source of income 5. Potential students High school – reputation and preparation 6. Parents – significant in student choice 7. Alumni – potential income and influencers 8. Lifelong learners – late and lifelong adult learners 9. Professionals – related to professions and work 10. Government – part of access strategy

Those surveyed were none too keen, however, on massive open online courses­—and they were particularly wary of the idea that MOOCs would prove to be good sources of revenue for their colleges. While a little more than half of those surveyed agreed that MOOCs were an effective model for online education, only 29 percent said they were a reliable way to gain new revenue.

Now play that record backwards, as the first generation of MOOCs (cMOOCs) – that allowed anyone from anywhere to participate however they liked in experiences built from openly licensed course materials – gives way to a new generation of walled gardens that call themselves “open” but require registration, use copyrighted materials, and take investment capital. They even prohibit students from using their services in the most useful ways: “You may not take any Online Course offered by Coursera or use any Statement of Accomplishment as part of any tuition-based or for-credit certification or program for any college, university, or other academic institution without the express written permission from Coursera” (Coursera Terms of Use). David Noble saw something like this coming. I’m not sure he was wrong.

Pledge $500 or more 0 backers DS106 in a Box - All of the above, plus a complete software setup for your own online course framework with hosting for 1 year at the domain of your choice and 5 hours of consulting. Estimated delivery: Jun 2012

Offering MOOCs through edX is hardly free. There are options available to institutions that want to build their own courses on the edX platform at no charge, but for partners who want help developing their courses, edX charges a base rate of $250,000 per course, then $50,000 for each additional time that course is offered; edX also takes a cut of any revenue the course generates.

In the debate at Amherst, which boasts a $1.64-billion endowment, money was no object, and the faculty committee devoted to weighing the pros and cons of joining edX did not seem worried about MOOCs as a distraction to teaching and service.

On a larger scale, MOOCs might create a "new and different kind of competition" that could jeopardize more-vulnerable colleges, if not Amherst itself; they could "enable the centralization of American higher education" and "create the conditions for the obsolescence of the B.A. degree."