Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Silicon Valley for-profit Coursera, on the Coursera blog:
The job market is changing rapidly, and to meet new employer and student demands, universities must also evolve. Today, I’m excited to announce that Coursera and the University of Texas System (UT) have launched a new industry micro-credential program with a goal to prepare every UT campus student, faculty, staff, and alumni for the state’s workforce demands, at no cost to them.
Adds Maggioncalda:
This innovative new program shows where the future of higher education is headed.
The post is full of innovate-or-die braggadocio. The rhetorical cocktail of hype and “must evolve” necessity is, here as elsewhere, in the service of corporate capture of the nonprofit university tradition. It’s depressing to read UT describe the deal—an embarrassing surrender-cum-outsourcing of its core educational mission—in the same breathless key.