Reengineering Elite Universities: Massive Open Online Courses and the Rise of Applied Science in American Higher Education By Benjamin Hidru Gebre-Medhin A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Neil Fligstein, Chair Professor Jennifer Johnson-Hanks Professor Jenna Burrell Summer 2018 Abstract Reengineering Elite Universities: Massive Open Online Courses and the Rise of Applied Science in American Higher Education By Benjamin Hidru Gebre-Medhin Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology University of California, Berkeley Professor Neil Fligstein, Chair In the early 2000s a small handful of computer science and artificial intelligence researchers stitched together a platform to teach undergraduate computer science courses to tens of thousands of students simultaneously. These course, which became known as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) instigated a wave of debate about the future of higher education, as well as a series of reforms at campuses across the country. This dissertation analyzes why this moment materialized in 2012, and how three elite universities at its center crafted organizational strategies in response. Using field theory and literature on academic capitalism, this dissertation will argue that MOOCs were a recent flashpoint in the increasing competition over leadership in academic computer science that is collapsing historical distinctions between arts and science universities and applied science schools. Part I analyzes the origins of the MOOC movement and charts changes in frames within the field using LDA topic modeling to show that online higher education moved from the periphery of the field of higher education to its center in the early 2010s. Part II leverages 45 primary interviews with leaders of three campuses most closely associated with the MOOC movement: Stanford, MIT, and Harvard. The analysis shows that Stanford administrators responded to unanticipated and provocative actions from entrepreneurial faculty members with the creation of a for-profit MOOC spin-off. While these actions conformed to theories of academic capitalism, the ultimate diffusion of MOOCs across the country led universities in Cambridge to reject profit as a central consideration in their strategic response, demonstrating that academic capitalism is not necessarily contagious. This dissertation argues that the tools of field theory provide insight into competition over the future of higher education which is contested along multiple simultaneous dimensions. Rather than competition over revenue, MOOCs represented intensification of overlap in the field of higher education between tradition arts and science based incumbents, and newly ascendant universities more closely associated with applied science and engineering. 1 Dedication For my family; those who are with me only in memory, those who sustain me every day, and those who’s light is just beginning to shine. i Contents ABSTRACT 1 DEDICATION I CONTENTS II ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IV 1. INTRODUCTION 1 MOOCs: A New Frontier 2 Theory 3 Organizational Fields and Stability 4 Higher Education 6 Data and Method 13 Case Selection 13 Data/Method 16 Chapter Overview 18 Part I: Reframing Online Higher Education 18 Part II: Reengineering Elite Universities 19 PART I: REFRAMING ONLINE HIGHER EDUCATION 20 2. A BRIEF HISTORY OF ONLINE HIGHER EDUCATION THROUGH THE MOOC MOVEMENT 21 Distance Education Prior to the Internet 21 Harvard: University Extension and Community Relations 22 Stanford: Industrial Origins 23 MIT: The Pursuit of Practical Tradition 25 Early Experiments with the Internet: Content Delivery 25 MIT: The Politics of Freedom and OpenCourseWare 29 Stanford: Proving the Market and Boosting the Bottom Line 32 Harvard: Extension Expanded 33 The Birth of the MOOC Movement 34 Stanford: Entrepreneurs Beyond the Academy 36 MIT: Corporate Competition 38 Harvard: A New Frontier 39 3. REFRAMING MARGINAL PRACTICES: TOPIC MODELING TO CHART A NEW ONLINE HIGHER EDUCATION MOVEMENT 43 MOOCs: Reframing and Relocating 44 Method 45 Data 46 Results 47 Conclusion 56 PART II: REENGINEERING ELITE UNIVERSITIES 57 4. STANFORD AND THE START OF THE MOOC MOVEMENT 58 An Abundance of Riches: Student programmers and spare capacity 58 Discovering a Global Market 64 From CourseWare to Coursera 66 Entrepreneurialism from Above 71 ii Faculty Engagement Pacification via New Platforms 81 What’s the Matter with Cambridge? 86 Conclusion 91 5. MIT 93 OpenCourseWare - Origins, Resistance, Continuity 94 The Origins of OCW 94 Resistance to OCW 96 OCW to edX: Continuity or Break? 97 Administrative Imperative and Perceptions of a Changing Field 99 Administrative Imperative and Capacity at MIT 100 Visions of the Field - Competition from Stanford, Cooperation with Harvard 102 Resistance: Discipline, Status, and Epistemology 105 Resistance: Epistemologies 105 Resistance: Discipline & Status 108 Conclusion 110 6. HARVARD 112 MOOCs at Harvard: In Pursuit of Profit? 114 Harvard Extension School: An Unsuitable Home for MOOCs 114 Harvard Business School: A Model Without a Business 115 Arts and Science: Disinterested Skeptics 117 Perceiving and Responding to The Field: The MOOC Decision 118 Elite Administrators: Pursuing Profit or a Hedge? 118 Perceptions of the Field: Origin Stories and Identity Questions 120 High-technology: Competition and Reform 121 Faculty Participation: Resistance and Unanticipated Opportunity 125 Resistance: In Defense of Harvard culture 126 Big Data & Learning Research 128 Pacifying Resistance 129 Conclusion 130 7. CONCLUSION 133 MOOCs: Back to the Margins 133 MOOCs: Successful Failures? 136 Implications for the Future 138 BIBLIOGRAPHY 141 APPENDIX A: GLOSSARY OF TERMS & ABBREVIATIONS 150 iii Acknowledgments If you are reading this, a project many years in the making has come to fruition. As with any endeavor of this size, I am deeply indebted to many others for the essential support, encouragement, and insight they provided along the way. My peers at Berkeley who were so often by my side in the arduous task of personal sustenance: Nora Broege, Michel Estefan, Trevor Gardner, Gabriel Hetland, Roi Livne, Aaron Platt, Aaron Shaw, Fithawee Tzeggai, and countless others. I will forever be grateful to you all. I am also extremely grateful for the support of funding and support agencies who helped make this work possible. They include the Berkeley Sociology Department, the Graduate Division at Berkeley, the Spencer/NAEd Dissertation Fellowship, the US Department of Education Javits Fellowship, The Gardner Seminar led by Carol Christ, the NSF/Demography trainee program, and the Institute for the Study of Social Issues at Berkeley. I may not have had the opportunity to embark on this project if it were not for the wisdom and understanding of Victoria Bonnell, who saw in me, and in this work, potential to make a contribution to sociology at a time when I myself was deeply apprehensive about that prospect. Jennifer Johnson-Hanks was essential in helping me further advance the reinvention of my intellectual agenda and in providing me the space and encouragement to pursue this project. My orientation to this work has been shaped by a number of senior scholars who have transformed and initiated a number fields. Jerome Karabel, who was at the twilight of his illustrious career when I entered Berkeley, put me through my paces and helped me map the disparate landscape of the sociology of higher education. Neil Fligstein, who generously agreed to chair my dissertation, has been a consistent champion of my work. Regrettably, it has been my experience that individuals possessing a list of intellectual accomplishments as long as Neil’s do not frequently possess the positive, selfless, and humane overall disposition that seem to be essential features of his personality. As a mentor, advisor, and champion, he has been remarkable. Completing this project was not easy, and the process was far from perfect, but I can say unequivocally the challenges I faced were never of Neil’s making. Beyond my committee, I have been honored and charmed to have had the opportunity to write with and learn from Mitchell Stevens. From the inception of this project Mitchell has inspired and encouraged me forward. There are too few sociologists as intellectually, ideologically, and professionally boundless as Mitchell, and his ability to facilitate fruitful conversation across siloed domains puts him in rarified company. I may not be able to fill his shoes anytime soon, but they are always such nice shoes it would be a shame not to try. Finally, I would like to thank my long time editor (and mother) Priscilla Gebre-Medhin. As an ABD in sociology who’s curiosity never diminished in spite spending her life outside of the academy, I couldn’t have dreamed of a better first reader of so much of my work over the years. While this degree will have my name on it, I hope that this represents something of a culminating endeavor for her detour from sociology. iv 1. Introduction What might the world look like if education beyond high school was freely available to any person around the world who had an internet connected device? What would the future of the faculty in a given discipline, say sociology, look like if teaching and learning were treated as a technical system to be engineered, optimized, and scaled? How might our great universities reimagine themselves so as to persist and remain essential