{"word_count": 761, "character_count": 4956}
Let's be clear, access to quality lectures for free is a  fantastic achievement, allowing hundreds of thousands  to access  knowledge for its own sake.  But with  Tedx, Coursera and others like  them  taking part in the democratisation of education by removing it  from the shackles of consumerism and the market,  there is a risk that  such developments  will be detrimental to the exploration of knowledge  in the long term.Carole Cadwalladr recently reported in the Observer that free online access to tertiary courses and lectures was set to  revolutionise education. She imagined a United Kingdom where "the  'second-tier' universities … could struggle in the brave new free  education market world". What her piece ignored is that these  universities are already struggling, not because of the "free education  market", but because of the hegemony of free market strategies in  education. This is particularly striking in the humanities, an area of  study to which only one paragraph was dedicated, but that could be the  greatest loser in this recent transformation of the education landscape.A  world where online learning is generalised and ends up replacing other  education delivery modes could seriously impact the original purpose of a  university. Most of the examples cited by Cadwalladr are from what is  often termed the 'hard sciences'. Even in these disciplines, a problem  lies in what seems to me the central element of higher education learning: the development of critical abilities and the potential for  students to express their own original analytical skills. Assessment  marked automatically, where only one answer is correct, does not leave  space for human imagination and, by extension, progress. But critical  skills are also (or should be) central to assessment in the humanities,  from good essay writing to more developed research.The  development of online courses in lieu of university-based teaching also  poses a more practical problem for the humanities. More than other  university areas, the humanities depend on public funds for teaching  students. If students can access online modules for free from Ivy League  universities, they may not want to spend tens of thousands on a degree  at a traditional university.The hard sciences can seek industry  partners for research funding, while the humanities largely depend on  government grants.. In a system where 'impact' is increasingly driving  research, this would be the death knell for many departments who would  struggle to make a case for the short-term practical relevance of their  research in a free-market economy.This is where we hit the crux  of the matter:if we surrender education to the online realm without  prior guarantee, will universities be able to remain (or return to  being?) a space for fundamental thinking about humanity and humankind,  whether that research isprofitable or not?As co-founders of the Melbourne Free University,  we firmly believe that education should be and indeed is within  everybody's reach. Beyond the emancipatory power of free education,  financial pressures will obviously make students think twice about  undertaking expensive courses, if they can do the 'same' online; just  like many tend to think twice before undertaking studies in humanities  as job prospects appear limited.While a strong supporter of free  online education, we are therefore extremely wary of the consequences  this potentially emancipatory project could have on knowledge as a whole  if harnessed by market forces that enter it into competition with other  forms of academic knowledge. If more corporations decide to support the  extension of free online projects to the point where their degrees  become equivalent to that of traditional universities, it could lead to  the further withdrawal of state funding from education and the complete  abandonment of education to laissez-faire politics.This would  allow governments to circumvent their responsibility to fund tertiary  education and research altogether. Once research is required to be  profitable to the private sector, as outlined in Ernst and Young's  manifesto, University of the Future,  it is hard to imagine a prosperous future for the humanities and social  sciences, and beyond that, for critical research whose results are not  immediately applicable to the economy.Imagine a return to a  pre-revolutionary world where such a form of knowledge and study would  only be practised by a very small elite, rich enough to delve into  'unprofitable' questions in their spare time. More than a threat to the  humanities, this would be a threat to democracy, as discussions central  to our future in terms of philosophy, ethics and the human condition  would be left to a small clique of leaders and 'entrepreneurs' of the  future whose interests are bound to be narrower than those of humanity  as a whole.First published in the Guardian's Higher Education network on 7/12/12