The MOOC Top Ten

16 January 2013, 1837 EST

I should probably be wary of taunting the coming moopocalypse, but, as everyone knows, I laugh in the face of obsolescence. So, without further explanation, here are my top ten reasons for MOOCs:

10. The “sage on a stage” isn’t just dead… she’s undead and in high-definition.
9. Web 1.0 monetized those eyeballs like nobody’s business.
8. When your acronym is homophonous with “mook” what could possibly go wrong?
7. MMOCs would probably be too much fun to count as college-level education.
6. MIT and Harvard won’t rest until they’ve achieved total world domination… and only Stanford can stand in their way!
5. The tree of education needs to be refreshed from time to time with the blood of a few college presidents.
4. Too many parents live with the curse of empty basements.
3. University administrators are running dangerously short of buzzwords.
2. It wouldn’t be higher education without something to have an existential crisis over.

And, for all my colleagues and students out there:

1. Georgetown has totally mastered the whole “classroom technology” game already!

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.