First, the focus of edX is on "coursework" which has been the central activity of traditional schoolwork on university campuses for ages. So, if the current content-based, lecture-focused schoolwork remains unchanged and edX digitizes all courseware, it will for sure have a major impact on students's on-campus learning experiences. However, some schools may still argue that online education only offers an alternative means to access the unique learning experiences (i.e., the end) that are only available from their campuses. Hence it is inconsistent for them to sweat the MIT/Harvard step now when they were unconcerned about the University of Phoenix then. Unfortunately, such an means-end argument based on uniqueness of the end of campus schoolwork (e.g., arguments such as "my lectures are better than yours") may not hold true anymore due to the reasons explained below.
Next, the delivery of these digitized courses is online through the Internet, which has traditionally been regarded as an ineffective means to offer rich learning experiences. However, the reasons against online course delivery in the past may not hold true anymore in the future due to rapid advancements of eLearning technologies in recent years. For example, the technological platform of edX will include video lessons, embedded testing, real-time feedback, student-ranked questions and answers, collaborative web-based laboratories, and student paced learning. Walk around any university campuses today, you will immediately realize that these online activities promised by EdX are already much more than what our students actually do when they take traditional lectures in classrooms. Since edX intends to provide open-source software to any interested institutions to join edX with their own educational content, the uniqueness of any campus-specific and local-instructor-only coursewark will soon disappear completely.
Last, the price of these digitized online courseware from anyone is free of charge to everyone. This is indeed a major blow to all players who have been operating with the pay-to-play business model of education over centuries. Trying to be cheaper than the cheap is possible and doable only to an extent. But how can you complete with the free? You cannot be cheaper than the free! How can universities keep charging top dollars for a 4-year degree if courses they offer are available online to anyone at no cost? Will then we all be diminished or distinguished? No! - some may argue that this end-of-the-world scenario will only happen if the market demand is completely elastic. While admitting that demand for course contents is elastic, they suggest that all of the evidence thus far shows that demand for credentials from research universities is relatively inelastic (hence no worry for those guys!). Not only is such argument of detaching contents from credentials self-contradicting (to their above argument that "my lectures are better than yours"), but also the real difference between the two is disappearing rapidly as the uneven quality of course contents being equalized by the online courseware available to all everywhere.
In short, the edX focus is coursework, delivery is online, and price is free. Then, is it shaking the world and breaking a new ground? It might have been true that the past online courses provided an alternative means to access, rather than a new model to replace, the traditional schoolwork (i.e., classroom lectures). In fact, even the developer of edX admits that "...though this (i.e., edX) will never replace the traditional residential model of undergraduate education, it will serve to improve and supplement the teaching and learning experienced...". But it is important to realize that the advancement of delivery technology and the zero price of digitized contents that are happening now have already pushed online education pass the strategic inflection point (SIP) where nothing short of fundamental changes will do. Indeed, the ground of traditional universities is now shaking valiantly because the schoolwork on these campuses remains to be content-based lectures in the classroom.
We are no longer competing on the same old S-curve which governs the pay-to-play education model over the past century. A brand new S-curve that uses a much superior set of technologies and takes out price consideration completely has been created by edX which represents a discontinuous innovation in high education this time around! Although this new S-curve is still one the same plane as the old one (i.e., it offers the same kind of products for the same population of customers), in due time, it will completely subsume and replace those classroom lectures as we know of them today. As digitized courses by the best faculty in the field are available online for free, any universities which continue to focus on the traditional lecture-based schoolwork in classrooms will soon see the end of their world.
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