There's just no reason to believe that MOOCs are "super cheap." Nor is there any real reason to believe that the internets are some disruptive education technology that DVDs and scantron answer sheets weren't. Also, too, books and correspondence courses. Also, even more too, this disruptive technology has been around and widely available (as in, in the homes of most people) for 10 years without anyone managing to make it work well for this purpose.
They're just the latest grift which gullible or fingers in the pie administrators will throw lots of money at. The latest fad in education is that the biggest problem with education is that you actually have to pay people to educate, so the fantasy of the course in the box which costs nothing and lasts forever will be around for awhile. That so many highly educated elites who should know better are enamored with them puzzles me, but they tended to love the Iraq war, too.
