互联网能否令商学院消亡？

    1981年8月1日12点01分，MTV频道开始第一次播放节目，播放的是巴吉斯乐队（Buggles）的名曲《录像带杀死广播歌星》（Video Killed the Radio Star）。音乐行业革命的大幕由此拉开，许多人通过电视预测到了音乐行业的未来，这引起了他们相当大的担忧。当然，如今MTV已经让位于YouTube，因为和DJ相比，YouTube可以让音乐家更快成名。但录像带并未杀死广播——多项调查显示，超过90%的美国人仍会每周听广播。这可不是一个穷途末路的行业该有的迹象。革命或许确实发生了，但是并未产生许多人预想的那种破坏性后果。

    如今，随着大规模在线公开课程（MOOC）的激增，高等教育界也出现了类似的担忧。从2008年第一节在线公开课程出现至今，人们一直在问，我们是否还需要传统课堂？既然只需要连接互联网就能听到最优秀的大学教授授课，我们为什么还要上昂贵的大学？毕竟大学学费的增速远远超过了通胀速度。著名的免费MOOC提供商可汗学院（Khan Academy）和EdX等，都曾多次引发媒体类似的发问。

    然而，在担心大学命运的时候，我们不能忽视传统课堂的独特优势——正是这些优势，使得课堂教育抵挡住了历史上的无数次创新，例如函授课程或电视大学等。毕竟，人们在很久以前就可以从图书馆里借阅知名教授的教科书，免费汲取知识，但这种免费的、易于获得的教育，并未减少大学申请人数。很显然，坐在课堂里与教授和其他学生互动，是有效学习的一个不可替代的部分。在真实课堂教学中，教授也可以更有效地评估学生的学习，根据直接的、非语言反馈对课堂策略进行调整。他们还可以创造一种很舒适但具有挑战性的环境，让学生实现知识上的突破。

    高科技带给高等教育的冲击力既可以说太多，也可以说太少。

    商学院本身可以作为一个研究案例。在线课程便可以满足人们对证书的需求（例如，你知道如何做某件事情吗？），甚至成本更低的在线学位，有可能取代课堂体验——前提是这种课堂体验无法带来学生之间、师生之间丰富的知识、信息与观念交流。

    而商学院所面临的在线课堂的竞争，并没有那么激烈，因为在商学院，学术效益主要取决于学生、教师和商学院从业者网络之间的有形联系。因此，在线教育对优秀商学院造成的破坏，远远低于评论家们的预测。

    At 12:01 a.m. on August 1, 1981, MTV began its first broadcast by playing a video for the hit Buggles song, “Video Killed the Radio Star.” It was an opening salvo for a revolution in the music industry, which caused no small amount of anxiety for many who foresaw a future of music via television. Of course, MTV has since given way to YouTube, which will make musicians famous far quicker than a DJ will. But video has not killed radio—multiple surveys show that more than 90% of Americans still listen to radio every week. That is hardly the sign of a dead industry. A revolution may have happened, but it did not have the destructive effect a lot of people thought it would.

    There is now similar anxiety about a revolution in higher education, as massive open online courses, or MOOCs, proliferate. Since the first such course appeared in 2008, people have asked whether we still need traditional classrooms. Why attend expensive colleges and universities—where costs have far outpaced inflation—when you can receive an education from world-class professors for the cost of an Internet connection? Popular free MOOC providers, like Khan Academy and EdX, have prompted many a headline of this variety.

    To worry about the fate of universities, however, you have to overlook the unique advantages of the traditional classroom—advantages that have allowed residential education to withstand numerous innovations in the past, from correspondence courses to television academies. After all, it has long been the case that you could receive a free education from a world-class professor by borrowing his or her textbook from a library, but that free and easy access has not lessened the volume of university applications. Clearly, being physically in a classroom, interacting with a professor and other students, is an irreplaceable component of effective learning. Professors can better assess a student’s learning in person, and adapt their in-class strategies based on immediate, non-verbal feedback. They can also create a comfortable but challenging environment where students will make the leaps that lead to intellectual breakthroughs.

    Too much and too little is being made of disruptive forces from technology shaping higher education.

    Business schools can serve as a case study. Online courses can meet a demand for certification (i.e., do you know how to do a particular thing?), and even an online degree can be a potentially lower-cost alternative to classroom experience—if that classroom experience does not offer a rich exchange of knowledge, information, and perspectives with fellow students and faculty.

    That competition is much less for the best business schools, in which so much of the academic benefit reflects physical connections among students, faculty, and the schools’ practitioner networks. In that sense, the disruption from online education for top schools is likely smaller than many commentators think.