Recalling T.S Eliot’s The Hollow Men, “not with a pop but a fizzle.” The higher education bubble ends with inevitable disaggregation of classes from the universities that offer them, and soon. No bang but a slow whimpering hiss. Classes, lectures, minors and majors are now being created by IT champions in partnership with credentialed professors and stored on racks outside of the university, then sold back to the universities to accredit them. This is the trajectory of folks like Udacity, Kahn Academy and others who have been creating courses separate from accrediting institutions. That is disaggregation.
MIT and Harvard are developing their own joint web site to head this off. But the lid is already off the university’s course creating privilege. Now even Harvard has to compete with every rogue philosopher with an Internet connection.
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- Sent in by CrayonEater
I'm always amused when writers can in one sentence complain that a university degree doesn't provide a return on investment, and therefore universities are doomed - then in another sentence suggest that online profs will provide better quality education for less money. Where's the return on investment for the online profs? The author seems to think we'll all just wander the (digital) countryside like Socrates.
ReplyDeleteSo listen Duuude. If you're going to to seek the cheapest credential you can get, you can't complain if your 'digital profs' sell you the cheapest education they can get away with.
Oh, and by the way, it helps if you proofread your work before you pontificate about education.
Strooth!
A reader writes:
ReplyDeleteThis song might go well with CrayonEater's post on the coming Internet doom of college.
1) WTF is "PJ Media?"
ReplyDelete2) Anyone who uses the phrase "monetize your education" can go F themselves.
PJ Media is sort of the right-wing equivalent of DailyKos or the Huffington Post, only a lot lamer. (I know this, unfortunately, because one of my grad school classmates insists on linking to about ten articles a day.)
DeleteUgh.
ReplyDeleteI can't recall the last time I saw a piece of writing that used less actual evidence to make its case (besides, of course, the latest round of papers from my 'flakes, ba dum tish).
Any figures or other data aggregations showing trends? Nope. Quotes from experts, or at least the enormous percentage of the populace who seem to know more than the author of this article? Nope. Cost comparisons, employment numbers, social surveys, or any other real facts? Nope. How about vague assertions that the Internetz is serious business, general rehashes of the idea that brick-and-mortar college is old-fashioned, and tired 80s pop cultural references? Oh, we've got lots of those.
I actually like the idea of lectures -- and connected series of lectures with some additional reflective/testing material -- from a variety of professors being available to students (and professors) at other colleges. But I still don't see how that is substantially different, except in delivery mode, from what has already been made available, for several centuries, via books (and textbooks in particular), and more, recently, via videos, films, etc. If most students could learn simply by interacting with such materials -- and all of these materials are, at least potentially, interactive, since one can write in the margins of a book, do exercises it suggests, discuss it with others near or far via letter, phone, etc. -- then colleges and universities would have disappeared long ago. Some students are able to learn that way (and some develop the self-discipline to learn that way because it's their only chance to learn at all; African Americans and recent immigrants were once among the most enthusiastic autodidacts in the U.S., and there's a reason the most persistent MOOC students today are often in places where higher education is either unavailable, period, or inaccessible for class/financial/political reasons). But most can't, and impatient consumerist bargain-hunting American students don't seem like good candidates for learning this way. If anything, as we've often noted here, they seem to need/want more and more hand-holding in order to accomplish anything. And as many of us who have taught online classes have noted, one of the main reasons students fail such classes is that they sign up hoping an online class will be easier than a "regular" class. Students (and, I think, parents) are becoming more self-aware/aware of this, and "shopping" for education accordingly. They still may not be able to get everything they'd like in the face to face classroom (thanks to the fact that all of us are human, and many of us are badly overworked/underpaid), but they're not coming closer online, and they know it.
ReplyDeleteA-men.
DeleteThank you so much! I really liked your video as well because it looks so professional. I also like how we have a similar style in editing. Thanks for sharing.
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