Former FCC Leader Says Colleges Must Aggressively Compete With Online Education

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By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

Mr. Hundt, a senior adviser on information industries to McKinsey & Company, said at a recent conference about the future of the Internet that leading colleges must "embrace massive experimentation" to compete with online choices available to students.

Q. You said that what has happened to the music industry — whose sales are plummeting — could happen to colleges. What do you mean?

A. Look at it this way — the music industry had the following view: We'll package the songs, and you're going to buy the package we sell you. Maybe you'll like one of the songs a lot, but the rest will be our way. And it maybe strains the analogy a little bit, but it's not entirely inaccurate to say it. But in a way colleges are now saying, OK here: You're going to take these 25 courses. We're going to give you a degree. Some of the teachers you'll really like, others maybe not, but we're telling you what you have to do. That basic model is under assault when you create so many different channels of supply online.

Q. What about the open-access efforts by some elite colleges to make scholarship and teaching materials free online? Isn't that a change?

A. Partly they're responding to immediate pressures being put on them, but really they're — maybe not completely intentionally — revealing that this is the way that seven billion people are going to get taught one day.

Q. But just offering free materials on the Web is not the big change you're talking about?

A. That's not the big change. That's very passive. It's a step in the right direction.

Q. What is the big change?

A. The good thing about this problem is that it hasn't really been solved. But earlier today we were talking about how Wikipedia evolved. You don't start out knowing what it's going to look like. You start out feeling I have some kind of dream that's a little big vague

Q. Is it going to require more of a financial investment by these universities?

A. It could be an investment, it could be a willingness to embrace massive experimentation.