Comming MOOC.edu Bubble

In "The Real Winners of the Coming Revolution in Higher Education" (Forbes, 12 March 2013) Bruce Guile provides an analysis of a business sector, the likes of which I have not seen for more than a decade. This reminds very much of the late 1990s when business pundits wrote glowing reports about the dot.com revolution, not understating what the web was, or how it could make money, but raved about it none the less.  It appears we are now at the start of a MOOC.edu bubble, where millions are poured into providing free courses on-line without any clear business model. This will be very good for those who can take the free courses and who sell products and services to the MOOC consortia: those selling shovels always do well in a gold rush, whereas most of the prospectors do not.  There real winners in the education revolution will be educators who work out a sustainable business model, which blends free and paid components of a course, their students, their institution and the community.