Tyler Cowen Says Online Professors Should Think Like Bloggers

This is the third episode of our new podcast series on the future of higher education. You can subscribe in iTunes to get prior and future episodes.

Many people know Tyler Cowen for his economics blog, Marginal Revolution. A couple of years ago Mr. Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University, looked at the rise of online lectures, course videos, and MOOCs, and decided that the next logical step from blogging was to start his own university. So he and a colleague did it. It’s called Marginal Revolution University, and it’s a rapidly growing collection of free online courses. There’s no campus for this university, of course, and it doesn’t grant degrees. It’s all just a website, so it’s not a real university, right?

“Very quickly, What’s a university and what is not?” said Mr. Cowen. “Those distinctions are crumbling. If we’re not a university, maybe no one else will be either.”

Audio Series

Listen to more episodes:

• Why This MIT Dean Is Leaving Her Job to Start a New Kind of University
• Tyler Cowen Says Online Professors Should Think Like Bloggers
• Google’s ‘Education Evangelist': Students Are Changing Faster Than Colleges

Click here to listen to the full audio. Here is an edited transcript of Mr. Cowen’s two conversations with The Chronicle.

Jeff Young: Hello, and welcome to The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Re:Learning podcast. I’m Jeff Young, an editor here.

I’ve been curious about just how Tyler Cowen went from a blogger to running a home-grown university. Maybe this is a natural path that others will follow and that online courses might be the new blogs. Courses could be a metaphor that will democratize teaching the way blogging changed the way people think about who gets to be a published author. This week we’ll tackle that question based on two interviews I did with Cowen — one in late 2013, soon after he started Marginal Revolution University, and a more-recent conversation, when I caught up with him at an education conference. You might notice a slight difference in the sound quality of the two interviews. We’ll have more from those conversations right after this.

Jeff Young (voiceover): Tyler Cowen still works as a professor at a traditional university, at George Mason University just outside Washington D.C. Marginal Revolution University is a side project like his blog has always been. He co-founded both with Alex Tabarrok, another econ professor at George Mason.

Tyler Cowen: We thought it was the natural extension from blogging. We were very much inspired by Salman Khan’s Khan Academy, which started with math videos, and we thought, “Hey, someone can do this with economics.” Then we thought that should be us. Our audience is educated professionals. It started off as people who read our blog. It’s now spread.

Jeff Young: They started doing it for fun. They’re not trying to get credit or –

Tyler Cowen: There is no credit.

Jeff Young: Right.

Tyler Cowen: We’ll send you an email saying, “Thank you for using Marginal Revolution University.” That’s your credit.

We think when it’s a truly comprehensive library — like, here’s what economists know. One site, one-stop shopping, but at price equals zero. We think that’s an appealing product.

Jeff Young: It sounds like you’re coming to it with a lot of the same kind of feeling you had about blogging rather than about starting a university, you know what I mean, as far as the way you think about it.

Tyler Cowen: Very quickly, What’s a university and what is not? Those distinctions are crumbling. If we’re not a university, maybe no one else will be either. There’s a lot of content on the web. A lot of it’s free. That will be increasingly important. I think it’s already the case on a given day. More people read economics blogs than are taking “Principles of Economics” classes in the United States, so why aren’t the blogs already a kind of university? They’ve sort of won that competitive battle in some way.

The people who read the blogs want to read them. A lot of people in “Principles” class, they’re not paying attention, they don’t want to learn, they feel they have to, so blogs are in some ways doing a better job of educating.

Jeff Young (voiceover): Cowen got an early start in his career in economics. While many kids dream of becoming an astronaut or a firefighter, he was drawn in by the invisible hand of the discipline, even as a teenager.

Tyler Cowen: At age 13, 14 I was reading a lot, studying Adam Smith, wanted to be an economist.

Jeff Young: How did you get that at 13 or 14? How do you come to that?

Tyler Cowen: First I was a chess player. That was great. That was great fun, but I realized pretty early on I wasn’t going to do it for a living for a number of obvious reasons. Then there was economics, which was more interesting, very practical. Of course it’s become my living, and I switched from chess to economics. It didn’t actually feel that different in a way. They’re both about problem solving. Both about analysis.

Jeff Young: Do you still play chess at all?

Tyler Cowen: Never. You know you either have to do it all the way or not at all. I follow on the Internet if there’s a world-championship match, you know. I follow Magnus Carlsen, so I’m in touch with the game, but I don’t play.

Jeff Young (voiceover): He predicts that we’ll see more homespun universities and online courses, many of them by folks outside of the traditional academy. So does he worry about some of that material being wrong or just misleading?

Tyler Cowen: Well, it’s relatively low on my list of worries. My main worry is people who don’t engage at all. I think most people by now know [that] if it’s on the Internet, you need to be if not skeptical, at least realize, look there is another side to this story. Most people get that, and if they hear economists saying things I don’t agree with — I mean that’s part of what economics is — so having come at this through blogging, I’ve already lived with that.

People have learned economics is about a debate, and in fact we have a new class of video. The first one just went up an hour ago. Alex and I debate education. How much is it signaling, and how much is it you actually learn?

Jeff Young: Wow. You mean university education?

Tyler Cowen: Yeah, to teach topics as a debate is an underexplored method, and we’re going to do more of this, so look at that video. It’s just Alex and I. We talk to each other. We sort of call each other names in good humor. The idea is that people maybe learn better through conflict.

You know you get some dry presentation, you sort of vaguely nod, but you never know what’s really at stake here. If you don’t know what’s at stake or why someone might disagree, maybe you don’t understand it. To try to teach this way, we’ll see how they’re received, but it’s one of the things we have coming next.

Jeff Young: What advice would you give to professors who want to try doing this teaching now that you’ve done it for a little while?

Tyler Cowen: I mean my advice is don’t do it.

Jeff Young: Why is that?

Tyler Cowen: It’s hard. That’s my advice.

Jeff Young: What if they’re determined to do it?

Tyler Cowen: Preferably, be single.

Jeff Young: OK, so where does that time comes in? Just doing revision and creating it? Where does the time end up going?

Tyler Cowen: Preparation can take a lot of time. It depends on the topic. If you’re doing one on exactly what you’ve been working on, prep time might be zero. For a single video, that can be true, but if you’re doing dozens or hundreds, that can’t be true. The prep time is extreme.

Jeff Young: OK.

Tyler Cowen: Then recuts, and — did I get that right? — and worry and then the pain of having to listen to yourself, you yourself. Don’t do it.

Jeff Young: [Laughs.] I thought you said you imagined a world in which a lot of these video libraries have popped up in education.

Tyler Cowen: People don’t take my advice on many things.

Jeff Young (voiceover): He started off his online university very low tech. Making lecture videos on his couch at home using an iPad. Essentially layering his voice over PowerPoints. Today, Marginal Revolution University has a small staff, and it has much higher production values. I asked Cowen what has surprised him most as his effort has evolved.

Tyler Cowen: I wouldn’t quite call it a surprise, but I’ve been consistently impressed over the last 10 years, more than 10 years, if you make consistently smart content on the Internet, whatever form, there is an audience there. Whether it’s MOOCS or blogs or whatever, YouTube, there really are people just hungry for stuff. How far you can push them is really impressive.

They don’t have to get every bit of it to take away a lot, and for you to give like your heart and soul, like here’s what I think is the important version of the topic, is better to, like, “Oh, are they going to understand this term?” or “Can I say elasticity?” or “Do they know this?” I think it’s a little bit of poison when you think too much that way. I’m not saying overwhelm them with words they don’t know, but if you believe in the material, I think a lot of them are going to get it. It’s like one thing I’ve really learned.

Jeff Young: Do you think they go and look at somewhere else to look it up too if they don’t know it?

Tyler Cowen: Yeah, of course. They really don’t like lack of authenticity. It has to be something you believe. They can disagree or hear a debate that if it’s … like too canned, I don’t know. I don’t think that’s what works in this media.

Just like there are these YouTube stars that have, like, my goodness, how many followers and so many on Instagram and it’s like I’ve never heard of these people, and what do they even do? Like gardening or flower design. But they’re awesome. They’re communicating their vision of whatever, fashion — I don’t even know — taco joints. And they’re really doing it. You see this in so many different areas. A lot of textbooks lack this. I think it’s becoming a problem. A lot of texts are very glossed over and homogenized. The upcoming generation, it’s not what they relate to.

Jeff Young: So that’s the problem …

Tyler Cowen: It’s not the problem, I’d say it’s a problem.

Jeff Young: I see.

Tyler Cowen: People want texts to be more personal. We try to do that in our text as well.

Jeff Young: Right.

Tyler Cowen: It’s harder in any case in a text than on YouTube, and I think of it in terms of Facebook, like anything you produce — like could someone encounter this on Facebook and it feel like something that would be on Facebook? Sort of the authenticity standard. A lot of higher ed falls short of that. I don’t blame anyone. Facebook’s new, and it’s time to adjust, but we all need to adapt to it.

Jeff Young: You mean, don’t take yourself too seriously when delivering lectures?

Tyler Cowen: I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s fine to take yourself seriously if you mean it. It’s fine to joke around if you mean it. Just like in your Facebook feed. There’s serious stuff. There’s funny stuff. People get that, and I think we’re going to see ... We’re already seeing, but we’re going to see big shifts in that direction.

Jeff Young (voiceover): Maybe the biggest impact of upstarts like Marginal Revolution University will be that traditional colleges will feel more like, well, like blogging. Maybe the line between the formality of college education and the informal materials found online throughout one’s life will blur, and maybe those distinctions will just matter less and less. Authority may sound less like a lecture from a podium and more like a Facebook post.

This has been the Re:Learning podcast. We’re still new at this format, so we welcome your feedback. If you like this and want us to continue the show, please review us on iTunes. Apparently those reviews can really make a difference on how many people find the show. You can also follow us on Twitter @relearningedu or like us on Facebook.

Today’s show was produced by me, Jeff Young, and I’m on Twitter @jryoung. Our theme music was by Jason Caddell. We’ll be back next week with more stories and analysis about the new learning landscape.

Jeffrey R. Young writes about technology in education and leads the Re:Learning project. Follow him on Twitter @jryoung; check out his home page, jeffyoung.net; or try him by email at jeff.young@chronicle.com.

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