London-based management consultant “Peter Smith” recently joined the ranks of the more than 110,000 alumni of the American University of London. He graduated from the for-profit online university with an M.B.A.
It’s hard to say what consultants do, exactly. (A Google search for “What do consultants do?” yields 217 million hits.) But friends who know Pete say that his consulting knowledge is limited, at least for someone with a graduate business degree. Although Pete’s views on ball sports, meat texture and cuddling are finely nuanced, he lacks expertise in a host of other areas. This is because Pete is a dog.
To investigate the AUOL’s M.B.A. program, the BBC created a fake resume for Pete the pooch. BBC reporters gave the dog 15 years of made-up work experience and a degree from a UK university.
The AUOL requires that applicants submit photos of themselves. The BBC did not provide a photo, because the applicant was a dog.
The omission turned out to be no big hurdle for the clever canine. Four days after BBC reporters turned in Pete’s application, Pete received an email saying that his professional experience qualified him for an M.B.A. and that he did not have to complete any coursework. Once the AUOL received his fee of 4,500 pounds (roughly $7,300), Pete would get his business degree.
This scandal is unlikely to send AUOL officials away with their tails between their legs. The online-learning institution is not accredited. It is not a British university, despite its name: to award British degrees, an institution must be recognized by Parliament. The AUOL is based in Saint Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean.
The AUOL attests on its website that its students “work very hard” for their degrees. The school warns applicants: “If your intention is to “buy” a degree, beware! This university is not and has never been a degree mill.”
The BBC-sponsored canine’s success in earning a graduate degree makes for more than a piece of “weird news.” Amusing as the story is, it reminds us that online learning, like so many nascent higher-education movements, is a coin with (at least) two sides.
On the one hand, online learning — particularly massive open online courses — seems like a chance for universities, especially already-established ones, to extend their reach and rethink how they educate students. Proponents of online education, such as Coursera co-founder Daphne Koller, see the online-education world as a frontier rich with possibility for improving pedagogical techniques and extending access to knowledge. Many higher-education leaders view forays into online learning as a 21st-century imperative. With such eminent schools as Stanford and MIT leading the charge, we can’t blame other institutions, such as the University, for wishing to join the grand experiment. In the University’s case, this has entailed putting forth blockbuster teachers like Politics Prof. Larry Sabato to build the school’s MOOC brand.
On the other hand, online learning — as the curious incident of the dog and the M.B.A. shows — is more than a space for energy and innovation. Online learning is also a territory ripe for corruption and fraudulent practices. The canine controversy reminds us that online courses and degree programs carry with them as many problems as they solve.
The main lesson we can take from Pete’s unexpected academic success is that a system of oversight is particularly crucial for distance-learning programs, if they are to attain legitimacy. If we accept that online learning is here to stay, the sooner we can develop sound accreditation models, the better. Yet we must not doggedly pursue online education without regard to the heightened potential for fraudulence that distance begets.
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