(Un)Bundled Services: A Stakeholder´s Framework for Understanding the Impact of MOOC-Like, Third-Party Online Courses

Due to the rise of MOOC-like courses available from third-party providers, the services universities offer students have the potential to become unbundled. Yet the possible impacts of these changes are not well understood. Few university stakeholders can articulate the actual value students receive from a university education, aside from instruction in their chosen field. How universities are doing in this regard is not well known. Furthermore, different stakeholders may have different answers to these questions. This paper proposes a framework that stakeholders-including students, faculty, and administrators-may use as a basis for inquiry into these important questions at institutions of higher education. This effort also lays the groundwork for future scholarly research about the impact of and responses to third-party online courses on higher education and its stakeholders.