Are Traditional Universities Facing Extinction?
Is it possible that at some point in the future traditional universities will begin to disappear? Have the tools for their demise been put in place – the Internet, personal computers, iPads and other tablet PCs, videoconferencing apps, online publishing and online libraries of very affordable and in many cases, free content. What else needs to happen? Visionary entrepreneurs perhaps backed by VC money enticing some of the best professorial talent to leave their current institutions for more lucrative income and profit participation in new online university ventures?
What are parents and students (and in some cases taxpayers) paying for today beyond the acquisition of a diploma? Administrative overhead? Athletic programs? Housing? Maintenance of buildings? Gardeners? Security? Contraception? Liability insurance? Legal counsel? Bail?
What of accreditation? If an online university boasted a more impressive faculty and curricula than say Stanford, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, Berkeley, Harvard, then how important would traditional accreditation be? Is it possible that at some point a diploma from an online institution may even have more clout than an ivy-covered brick and mortar one?
Yes, all of the important socializing aspects of university life may disappear. Many students, of course, make lifelong friends on campus or find their spouses who may or may not be lifelong mates. University towns have thrived around the traditional university, to serve the needs of faculty, students and staff. So, if the traditional university disappears then by extension, university towns might disappear as well. On a positive note, the more radical hybrid of social/anti-social activities – like protests and riots either motivated by winning or losing a sports title or vandalizing school property because capitalism is of course, evil and unfair would also disappear…at least if the university campus is no longer used as an academic institution.
The extinction of the traditional university, if it occurs, may be a sad chapter in the long history of civilization since most would argue that the university shares a substantial portion of the credit for making us civilized in the first place.
But consider also that the easy availability of college coursework taught by the best professors in the world to those living in less affluent parts of the world who might never haven been able to afford to attend or be qualified for a traditional university may eventually result in another renaissance, enlightenment or technological revolution giving them the opportunity to learn and then create or do amazing things.
So, the question is, will technology, new developments on the horizon and the opportunity to be taught by the best professors in the world make the demise of the traditional university inevitable?
- Comment (84)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (11)
Comments:
Aug '10
Re: Are Traditional Universities Facing Extinction?
Brian Watt: Misthiocracy, et. al.,
With the proliferation of digital video cameras and digital editing software and a growing number of animators well versed in CGI when effects or backgrounds are required, it would seem to me that a lot of production and post-production could still be handled offline and in a student's home or even someone's garage without a studio facility.
There's a school of thought to which I'm very sympathetic that argues that basing a film production education on digital technology produces creators of lesser quality.
In my film classes, the equipment was 16mm. The cameras were old Canon Scoopics, designed for news gathering (sturdy but with few whistles and bells)
The cost for film stock alone ran about $100 per minute. Most editing was done on manual hand-cranked editing benches.
The low-tech forced the student to plan meticulously and think about what they were shooting in order to keep costs down.
With digital video, students can shoot hours of footage for a 2 minute film. "Just fix it in post" is sloppy.
Digital can allow you to skip film school, but film schools should skip digital until the later years.
Aug '10
Re: Are Traditional Universities Facing Extinction?
The Great Adventure!
My degree as well - except I'd beg to differ on it being the kind of degree one could do online. Communication at its bedrock is 2 or more people conversing. As in face to face. Nonverbals included.
Oh, there are plenty of lousy Comm Studies programs that could be replicated online. You know, the ones where you spend four years writing essays about Chomsky and hegemony in pop cultural dialectical forms of indigenous South American dance.
Aug '10
Re: Are Traditional Universities Facing Extinction?
Misthiocracy
The Great Adventure!
essays about Chomsky and hegemony in pop cultural dialectical forms of indigenous South American dance. · 1 minute ago
I will never forget the day ,in the Univ bookstore with my daughter entering a very good midwest liberal arts school, that I spied Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn being taught as history to people .
Whoa, that was a sobering moment. But then being a heteronormative colonialist ex-slaver oppressor type, maybe I'm over-reacting.
Now how do you pronounce Foucault again ? Am I deridding dat right ?
Aug '10
Re: Are Traditional Universities Facing Extinction?
flownover
Misthiocracy
The Great Adventure!
essays about Chomsky and hegemony in pop cultural dialectical forms of indigenous South American dance. · 1 minute ago
I will never forget the day ,in the Univ bookstore with my daughter entering a very good midwest liberal arts school, that I spied Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn being taught as history to people .
Hey, I quite enjoyed reading A People's History of the United States of America. The factual information is really very interesting, and it's easy enough to ignore Zinn's editorial comments.
The problem is that too many academics would make Zinn's stuff the core curriculum for American history, rather than an "interesting" branch line.
Sep '10
Re: Are Traditional Universities Facing Extinction?
One factor that hasn't been mentioned much yet: the effect of federal research grants. The traditional university will survive as long as grants from the NSF and NIH continue to fund research. University administrators view their science departments--especially biology and chemistry--mainly as grant money producers. (At most research universities it is very, very difficult for new science faculty to get tenure if they haven't received a grant.) You can't do research in biology or chemistry without physical space for labs, so that's not going away soon.
Speaking of administrators: the bloat in college/university administration is one of the biggest factors in the rise of the cost of post-secondary education. There are now administrative positions such as the "assistant dean for promoting diversity" which never existed before, and once established, they're very hard to eliminate. Administrative salaries also rise faster than faculty salaries. I believe there are many schools now where the payroll for administration exceeds the faculty payroll.
Edited on May 7, 2012 at 9:11pmAug '10
Re: Are Traditional Universities Facing Extinction?
Here is some good evidence to the theory of the worth of degrees:
3 times as many PHDs are on food stamps. And that is from 2007 thru 2011. As dogsbody helpfully points out, the administrators are getting the dough. When I was deciding parochial vs. public for high school, one telling fact helped me. The portion of budget in public going to teachers had slipped below 50%, while the Catholic school was using 90% of it's considerably smaller budget for teachers.
It's not about the teaching anymore, the NEA exists to pad their protected turf and build political clout. As they do that, increasingly they risk losing all credibility as educators.
$500,000 for Elizabeth Warren for how many classes taught a year ?
Jun '10
Re: Are Traditional Universities Facing Extinction?
Dogsbody
...because a consortium of companies can't sponsor and equip labs and entertain grant work or the funding of special projects on their own without the federal government being involved? There's a lot of empty commercial real estate available around the country that's been sitting idle for 10+ years that could be snapped up for a song and converted into labs, and mini-online university lab sites for those courses that require hands-on work and where students don't need tenured professors to watch over them. Maybe it's time for corporations to sharpen their pencils and determine whether they're getting the best return on their investment from the present academic system or whether more direct involvement and partnering with companies in their own or related fields in a new educational business model might yield better results for future employees and innovations. Perhaps a private earned credential / certificate for specific kind of work learned would be better for private enterprise rather than using the federal government as a crutch.
Perhaps it's time to think how things could get done differently rather than how they couldn't because it's all Gordian Knotted.
Aug '10
Re: Are Traditional Universities Facing Extinction?
Brian Watt: Dogsbody
...because a consortium of companies can't sponsor and equip labs and entertain grant work or the funding of special projects on their own without the federal government being involved?
Jim Balsillie tried doing something like that at York University. His $60 million offer was rejected on "academic freedom" grounds.
Of course, we have zero truly private universities in Ontario. It could work in other jurisdictions.
Sep '10
Re: Are Traditional Universities Facing Extinction?
Oh, they do that already. Pharmaceutical firms sponsor research at university labs, as well as having their own labs and research scientists. In fact, recently one of Amgen's former top cancer researchers co-authored a paper in Nature that made headlines. In this study, Amgen scientists tried to reproduce the reported results of 53 "landmark" papers in peer-reviewed journals; only 6 of the 53 were reproducible.
There's a good deal of research outside the universities. I'm just saying that as long as NSF and NIH continue funding university research, the traditional university isn't going away soon.
Edited on May 7, 2012 at 9:29pmJun '10
Re: Are Traditional Universities Facing Extinction?
dogsbody
Oh, they do that already. Pharmaceutical firms sponsor research at university labs, as well as having their own labs and research scientists. In fact, recently one of Amgen's former top cancer researchers co-authored a paper in Naturethat made headlines. In this study, Amgen scientists tried to reproduce the reported results of 53 "landmark" papers in peer-reviewed journals; only 6 of the 53 were reproducible.
There's a good deal of research outside the universities. I'm just saying that as long as NSF and NIH continue funding university research, the traditional university isn't going away soon. · 59 minutes ago
Edited 58 minutes ago
Perhaps. Or they may evolve into smaller scientific-dominated institutions because other non-lab-centric programs of the university are taken care of by unaffiliated online alternatives - and aren't so dependent on government largesse.
Jul '10
Re: Are Traditional Universities Facing Extinction?
I don't see how the university can continue to exist in its current form. The artificial life support that keeps them alive is the guild-like "accreditation" swindle in which you need some sort of government approved stamp for things like teaching, music, etc. (things that did not require degrees in the past)
Additionally, enough Americans remain completely fooled by this swindle to keep it afloat for another generation or so. But with the explosion of mass media, and ease of access, what advantages does exorbitantly priced education serve? I just completed a Bachelor's in History degree. Two big take-aways from it: 1) No one in their right mind should pay that much money for something so useless. 2) Everything I learned was available either on the internet or from the local library and bookstore. The knowledge acquired in a degree that costs 70k could be attained for a few hundred dollars at a bookstore and some accompanied lectures from VDH on Youtube.
Thankfully, I went straight into the military out of school, and won't have to join the great mass of those majoring in unemployment.
Aug '10
Re: Are Traditional Universities Facing Extinction?
I think this is the key. As several commenters upthread mentioned, pithily, the credential is the stranglehold on higher ed reform.
I've worked for many years as an instructional designer for an 'open' university modeled on the Open U in the UK. We combine printed or online materials with face-to-face tutorials and lab sessions, and the model works. Students can be well-educated this way, possibly better than in traditional universities in some instances.
But this approach is still highly constricted by the need to produce graduates with a traditional degree as a credential.
The great and building flow of educational reform is currently dammed up by governments' control over accreditation and credentials. There are pioneers trying to divert the flow around this barrier, but the dam is still holding, at least for now.
I think this dam will break, in some country or state, somehow, and when it does, great will be the flood of real change. Until then, though, it's frustrating.
May '10
Re: Are Traditional Universities Facing Extinction?
I've taught university classes both in person and online. I absolutely love doing the former and very much despised doing the latter. I understand the organizational benefits for students doing classes online, but in terms of quality of education, they get a short shrift. There's no accounting for what's lost in losing direct human communication when substituted by digital formats. Not to mention that the online format encourages students to produce writing akin to something you'd see in the ESPN comments section.
Our colleges and universities need ample reform, but the basic lecture/seminar structure is not one of them. Why would anyone calling themselves a conservative want to eliminate a format that's proven effective for several millennia?
Edited on May 8, 2012 at 4:26pmJun '10
Re: Are Traditional Universities Facing Extinction?
Kofola: I've taught university classes both in person and online. I absolutely love doing the former and very much despised doing the latter. ...There's no accounting for what's lost in losing direct human communication when substituted by digital formats. Not to mention that the online format encourages students to produce writing akin to something you'd see in the ESPN comments section.
Our colleges and universities need ample reform, but the basic lecture/seminar structure is not one of them. Why would anyone calling themselves a conservative want to eliminate a format that's proven effective for several millennia?
No denying that direct human interaction is preferable. But online instruction, I would contend, is still in its infancy and combined with other tools like videoconferencing and more robust production values and techniques can vastly improve. The same human interaction is also responsible for the graduation of non-critical-thinking happy Marxists since the late 60's. I'm not advocating for the elimination of the face-to-faces lecture format. I am proposing that it may happen whether one likes it or not and that it's not a sustainable model for instruction on a large scale.
May '10
Re: Are Traditional Universities Facing Extinction?
Brian Watt
The same human interaction is also responsible for the graduation of non-critical-thinking happy Marxists since the late 60's. · 1 hour ago
Not really. The left, particularly since the 1960s, has long tried to usurp and overthrow the traditional university classroom structure. It's just one of the things that survived their efforts, although not wholly intact.
We can adopt new techonology, sure, but let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Going completely digital won't solve the litany of problems with higher education in this country, and will in fact exacerbate many of them (trust me, as lazy and ignorant as many students can be in the traditional university setting these days, it gets even worse when they feel like their 'classroom' is nothing more than an internet message board).
What's needed are for the consumers (students and their paying parents) to recognize the problems and demand repair from within. This unwillingness of most to recognize that anything is wrong is the major problem. Until that happens, don't expect anything to change.
Edited on May 8, 2012 at 7:32pmJun '10
Re: Are Traditional Universities Facing Extinction?
Kofola,
Let me repeat what I've said earlier in this discussion and clarify several points:
1. I'm not advocating an all-or-nothing proposition. I am suggesting that a fundamental paradigm shift may be in the offing at some point in the future because of several factors - the massive debt incurred and carried to get an college education. Like the mortgage/real estate market it's a bubble that could burst when millions of unemployed graduates cannot pay the loans back. This makes it that much more difficult to fund new students without higher interest rates unless a second Obama administration is able to amass even higher debt levels to fund student loan programs. What's another trillion or more, after all? Unlike the mortgage/real estate market there isn't property to foreclose on and auction off and place back into the market. This is simply money down an enormous rat hole. If the student loan market collapses then only the very well-off will be able to afford to send their offspring to college. Millions of middle and lower income families will never be able to send their children to college. - more -
Edited on January 2, 2013 at 2:43amJun '10
Re: Are Traditional Universities Facing Extinction?
- cont. -
As beneficial as a face-to-face lecture is, it can still only reach a finite number of students and given the exorbitant costs of a four year program may never reach those who may be more deserving to hear and experience it.
2. Unless I've been living in a different country, lo these many years, Marxists, socialists, Leftists of every stripe have made significant inroads in defining the curricula and the policies of hundreds of universities in America. David Horrowitz, a former Marxist himself, has written several books on the subject (One Party Classroom, Indoctrination U., Reforming Our Universities, The Professors - The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America) and has methodically documented radicalized courses taught by Marxist and Marxist-inspired professors on how to take down the various American institutions. We live in a country where professors like Frances Fox Piven and Bill Ayers are elevated and awarded in the academy and attain prestige, tenure and, in the former unrepentant domestic terrorist's case, almost Emeritus status.
Jun '10
Re: Are Traditional Universities Facing Extinction?
Kofola,
I understand that your own personal online instruction experience may have been a poor one. I am a bit confused on why mediocre or poor writing on assignments was deemed acceptable. I'm not sure that has much to do with a course being taught online rather than just poor standards being applied. Again, online instruction is in its infancy and the process, the techniques and the standards will only improve. They will improve because some smart entrepreneur or group of entrepreneurs will see the tremendous opportunity that a robust online program can offer to a greater population of students at much more affordable prices. Tie ins with sponsored companies will also enable arrangements where graduates are at least assured of a starting/probationary position with an affiliate company based on their performance.
3. Rigorous yet affordable online programs - even those supplemented by on-site lab work or field trips - that establish their own credential/certificate system, will not care what a student's ethnicity or sexual preference is even how old the student is. Affirmative action would not be a factor. The coursework is laid out. If you can do it, great. If not, you don't advance.
Jun '10
Re: Are Traditional Universities Facing Extinction?
4. The most evident factor is that the tools - even if rudimentary - are in place to make the paradigm shift possible. That combined with the expense of a campus-bound education, administrative costs that now outpace faculty salaries, the heavy weight of union pensions that must be paid, the concerns of many parents not to have their children indoctrinated or come out of an institution without learning key critical thinking skills or even basic competency in their selected field of study seem to me at any rate that the paradigm shift will happen. It's just a question of when. My guess is that it will happen within the next 10 to 20 years. Will campus-based universities still exist? Of course. Will they be continue to be the predominant form of college-level education in the near future? I don't think they will. I could be wrong, of course. If I am, I'll go back to school. :-)
May '10
Re: Are Traditional Universities Facing Extinction?
Brian Watt:
1. I'm not advocating an all-or-nothing proposition. I am suggesting that a fundamental paradigm shift may be in the offing at some point in the future because of several factors
I understand this, and I'm not disagreeing that the higher education system in the US needs quite a bit of reform. However, trying to suggest a total overhaul of the higher education system, possible epic explosion or not, is going to be difficult so long as you have millions of people in this country who seem perfectly content to keep enabling it as is.
Yes, but I don't quite get your point here. Because leftists have infiltrated universities, we should deem everything about the structure of higher education as faulty and try to completely remake the system? Wouldn't it make more sense to put an emphasis on encouraging more conservatives to work their way into academia to reform it from within? That's what the left did...