Quick Hits (12.4.12)

Will this time be different? The potential of MOOCs to deliver a college education to anyone—anywhere—sounds very similar to what was said about correspondence courses in the 1920s. (NPR)

“(College) credit is currently not as it should be; it’s almost a game.” A college graduate explains how he got an associate’s degree without ever stepping foot on campus. (Say Something/The Chronicle of Higher Education)

The next tobacco? Joe Nocera looks at the unraveling of the NCAA’s case against a USC assistant football coach. Now that the emails in the case are about to become public, he wonders whether the revelations they contain could expose “the essential hypocrisy that underlies college sports.” Will these released documents change the way the public thinks about the NCAA? (New York Times)

Newspaper kids get a lesson in business. When a high school newspaper folded because of funding, students got together to raise money to keep it going. The December issue comes out this week, two months after taking a haitus. (Washington Post)