MOOCs and the Liberal Arts: Threat or Opportunity?

Despite the ugly acronym, MOOCs are the talk of higher education today. Most of the debate centres on the quality of the free online courses with mega-enrolment figures offered by the likes of Coursera, Udacity, edX, FutureLearn, and OpenupEd. MOOCs elicit a double-edged fear: either that they are too dumbed-down to justify the hype or that they might be successful enough to revolutionise the whole sector. In the latter scenario, bricks and mortar universities reliant upon the large lecture hall are in for a rude shock. But if MOOCs do indeed transform the delivery of higher learning and knowledge what are the implications for the transmission of the liberal arts, namely the non-Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines?