The School of Engineering and Applied Sciences on the campus of Harvard University. Who wouldn't want a degree from Harvard for free? Photograph: Matthew J Lee/Boston Globe/Getty ImagesI have never liked the idea that in the future we should think of students as "customers" with a relationship to universities defined by money. For me, students are primarily learners – a controversial position, I readily concede, but in my defence I see this in the context of new models, new institutions, new technologies and new relationships for learning.
There are some who argue that the future of learning and the student experience is online. Such projections are as old as the internet itself, but they have recently enjoyed renewed interest through the idea of moocs (massive open online courses) where universities provide open access to their learning content through online platforms. Some serious brands have tentatively engaged with the model such as MIT, Harvard, Princeton and Berkeley. These platforms include Udacity and the Khan Institute. One of these, EdX, has said it hopes to teach a billion students; another, Coursera, advertises with the strapline "Take the World's Best Courses, Online, For Free".
On the surface this might appear to be a serious threat to some campus institutions: what simpleton wouldn't want a degree from Harvard for free? Of course, that is not what is, was, or ever will be on offer, but such headlines are irresistible. So far, most mainstream institutions have breezily dismissed the idea of moocs as a genuine threat, specifically because there is no credit or certification offered with these courses (nor, for that matter, much academic or pastoral support either, though you might get a certificate of completion).
Well, some of that might be changing very quickly. Last week, the American Council on Education (ACE) announced the launch of a project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to evaluate the suitability of courses in moocs for academic credit and then how to award such credit when students have paid for and completed an invigilated assessment. Interestingly, the project's other two strands involve a "presidential innovation lab" (to facilitate "conversations about new academic and financial models inspired by the disruptive potential of moocs") and research into effective pedagogic practice. A "presidential innovation lab" sounds like the ultimate oxymoron to me and research into online pedagogy is nothing new, even if often heralded as such. But I digress.
The broader social agenda here, of course, is in part creating low-cost higher education at the US community college level, with better completion rates. However, there is a danger that moocs with elective assessment and credit will reinforce rather than disrupt a two-tier education system in the US, and eventually in the UK, with campus-based learning as premium elite education and online learning as a basic offering. Helping the poor get a better version of what is ultimately a derivational form of education is a feeble kind of disruption and more of a reproduction of structural educational disadvantage.
Whatever the merits of moocs, and there are many, I instinctively find myself thinking about experiences that cannot be meaningfully created online. For example, at my own institution we have a large "going global" programme where students who might not otherwise get the opportunity are funded to travel overseas on innovative placements. These have included working with Georgian NGOs, Brazilian deforestation prevention teams and Ugandan sexual-health projects.
Similarly, we have an undergraduate research internship scheme where students work alongside our professors, not only gaining advanced methodological and laboratory skills, but also getting a chance to demystify the research culture and open up further research study as an option. More prosaically, I really do not expect to see our practical BSc sport therapy going on to a mooc any day soon.
For me, the answer is Customised Global Collaborative Environments, a concept I have been working on now for the better part of several minutes. In this model, students at universities engage with communities of peers around the world to examine practical and theoretical issues from multiple points of view. But mostly they would help to connect real shared experiences across people, time and space – because in the end that is what education is really about, what computers alone cannot deliver and what student customers, through money alone, cannot buy.
• Professor Patrick McGhee is vice-chancellor of the University of East London
Debate the future of online learning in our live chat, Friday 23 November, 12-2pm at www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/live-q-a
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