The "ification" of higher education ... #edcmooc

There are few areas of important human endeavour where change is presumed bad not good. Better breaks on my car good, faster computer download speeds on my computer good, organisational change for improved services, generally good. Change to the organisation and delivery of education, bad. 

Why, is it because we cherish the education of our childhood, a phase of life that can't be repeated. See others get a better version, perhaps makes us jealous or nostalgic. In the UK this debate is played out over standards. Standards have slipped, exams are easier, grades are inflated. It is most definitely not like it was in our day, but is it worse?

This discourse in higher education is conducted through successive theories aimed at denigrating progress or change. These are in more or less chronological order:

dumbing down or comprehensivistaion (to many students with a comprehensive education or simplified for lower quality students) the idea that education is being simplified and packaged to make it easier, too much "meja" and Golf studies and not enough courses taught through the medium of Latin. I may have over stretched my point, 

comodification  a close friend of massification anyone with money can get an education, students are now customers and university courses are now products,  

now we have gameification and Disneyfication the idea that education is entertainment, imitating the screen based world of networks, mobile devices, apps and computer games. One might speculate that this is a reaction as surface deep as the screens it opposes, based possibly on the basis that a blackboard and chalk is better than what follows, more traditional more "real",

Where is the real debate about new technology?  Is it a new medium to deliver the same old stuff, faster and with pictures? Does it deliver in new ways and develop new skills (sometimes called literacies) connections and interaction, debate and creativity?  Does it complement, enhance or replace traditional higher education? Perhaps we need to MOOC it over.