Video: How the Dismal Science Got Its Name

In the following video, Marginal Revolution University's Professor Alex Tabarrok explains of the origins of the derogatory allusion of economics as "dismal science"

(hat tip Prof Don Boudreaux)

Online Education: Movement for College Credits Gain Momentum

One of the main objections to online education has been in the aspect of credentials, i.e. it is not recognized by traditional universities and or colleges which makes them less appealing to prospective employers.

I’ve been saying that the deepening of information age will radically transform people’s lifestyle which should include education.

This will happen for many reasons; such as cost efficiency (more profitable), increasing network (more online graduates percolating the job markets will become future bosses, thus will likely decrease resistance; an estimated 4 million students are enrolled online in the US), better performance, greater specialization and or simply more tolerance for online graduates or a combination of all these and perhaps more unidentified factors.

In his defense essay at Cato Unbound on the online education debate, George Mason University Professor and Marginal Revolution blogger Alex Tabarrok (who along with colleague Professor Tyler Cowen has their own free online learning platform university called MR University)  notes of the other advantages:

1. Leverage of the best professors teaching more students.

2. Large time savings from less repetition in lectures (students in control of what to repeat) and from lower fixed costs (no need to drive to university). 

3. Greater flexibility in when lectures are consumed (universities open 24 hours a day) and in the lecture format (no need to limit to 50 minutes).

4. Greater scope for productivity improvements as capital substitutes for labor and greater incentive to invest in productivity when the size of the market increases.

5. Greater scope for randomized controlled trials of educational strategies thus more learning about what works in education.

Read the insightful arguments on the online education here.

Academicians can debate the merits or demerits of online education but the world has been moving forward: traditional colleges are now considering to give credit to online courses.

Notes the USA Today:

The American Council on Education, a non-profit organization that represents most of the nation's college and university presidents, is preparing to weigh in on massive open online courses — MOOCs, for short — a new way of teaching and learning that has taken higher education by storm in recent months.

A stamp of approval from the organization could enhance the value of MOOCs to universities and lead to lower tuition costs for students, who could earn credit toward a college degree for passing a particular course. At issue is whether the quality of the courses offered through MOOCs are equivalent to similar courses offered in traditional classrooms.

The popularity of MOOCs, which have been around for barely a year, has intensified quickly. Top faculty at dozens of the world's most elite colleges and universities are teaching hundreds of online courses in a variety of disciplines to millions of students around the world. The courses are free, but they don't count toward traditional degree programs

Online education will pop the government inflated education bubble and democratize ‘education’ via the competitive free markets. 

In the future I envision the proliferation of domestic graduates of Mises Academy, Coursera, Khan Academy, Academic Earth, MIT-Harvard, MR University, Stanford, University of People and more.

Traditional universities will either have to adapt or perish.