Study Suggests College Courses May Be Old School

By Dr. Marciene Mattleman

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - "People buy songs, not albums. They read articles, not newspapers." So begins a report in The Chronicle of Higher Education suggesting that matching modules rather than locking into 12-week university courses may be a way to change college education.

That's the major theme of a 213-page report, 18 months in preparation, released by a committee at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, exploring how the 153-year-old "powerhouse" could change student expectations, innovating with new technologies.

Twenty-five percent of the professors surveyed suggested that their courses could benefit from a modular approach and the article notes that students could assemble their own choices of online courses, easily adapted by the engineering and science courses at MIT, but not in philosophy.

An open-comment period begins now after which leaders will decide whether to adopt a more "unbundled" curriculum.