The providers of massive open online courses have rapidly expanded in the past year, aided in part by a series of potentially lucrative no-bid deals with public colleges and universities, including for services that may extend beyond the MOOC model… The deals include contractual language that could be used to divert untold amounts of taxpayer or student tuition money to outside vendors… “We’re in this situation that is sort of nonsensical,” Hill said. “So you have very strict procurement processes for pretty easy decisions, like a $30,000 piece of software. Yet at the same time you have a multimillion-dollar decision that is completely going outside of the procurement process.”

Read full article [here].
by Ry Rivard, Inside Higher Ed.

Posted: July 17th, 2013, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.