Customer Reviews

Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Eduction

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David Noble effectively makes the case against online education. He points out that the rush to "clicks" means not only the replacement of "bricks" but also the replacement of people (or, more accurately, replacing many people who think with fewer people who count, but don't think.

Noble is a first-rate essayist-his "In Defense of Luddism" (in Progress without People) is wonderful. One problem is that Noble will have persuaded many readers after five pages, but won't have persuaded others after reading five volumes. A second is that readers could skim the basics of Noble's argument for free online (currently at [URL) and send a donation to the Monthly Review Press (a worthy cause). The book contains some added prose, but doesn't add much to Noble's argument.

I am neither a Marxist nor of the P.C. Left, but I taught dozens of on-line courses for various schools at all collegiate levels and to all kinds of students. Noble's assessment hits the bullseye. He wrote this book back in the early 2000s, and in the ensuing four years when I taught on-line, I saw his observations and predictions amply confirmed. It's why I don't teach on-line anymore. Sadly during this time, the abuses that Noble warned about became the norm, and pre-processed 'McEducation' came to be what on-line college students expected.