Diverting Topic #3: Elite Education for All
College tuition is soaring, thanks in large part to subsidized student loans, which artificially inflate the price. And what really happens at college, anyway? How much is learning and how much is an opulent rite of adolescent passage for a coddled and decadent generation?
(Hmmm. Wonder what side I'm on....)
But stripped to its essence, it's a place to learn stuff from people who know stuff. And if that's the case, why exactly do you have to be there?
You don't. From WaPo:
“Massive open online courses,” or MOOCs, have caught fire in academia. They offer, at no charge to anyone with Internet access, what was until now exclusive to those who earn college admission and pay tuition. Thirty-three prominent schools, including the universities of Virginia and Maryland, have enlisted to provide classes via Coursera.
For his seven-week course — which covers advanced math and statistics in the context of public health and biomedical sciences — [Johns Hopkins University professor Brian] Caffo posts video lectures, gives quizzes and homework, and monitors a student discussion forum. On the first day, the forum lit up with greetings from around the world. Heady stuff for a 39-year-old associate professor who is accomplished in his field but hardly a global academic celebrity.
“I can’t use another word than unbelievable,” Caffo said. Then he found some more: “Crazy . . . surreal . . . heartwarming.”
And a lot cheaper. Look, it's probably not for everyone, but I've always thought that if I could go back to school, I'd do it in a heartbeat. And this time, I'd learn something.
No, that's probably going too far. But there is something nice about the democratization of technology. As a conservative who isn't thrilled with the birthright vibe that our elite institutions convey -- there's something wrong, after all, when 4 of our past 5 presidents went to either Harvard or Yale -- these kinds of developments can only be a good thing.
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May '12
Re: Diverting Topic #3: Elite Education for All
Great topic. Online instruction is a fantastic idea that has real potential to counterbalance the excesses of higher education. For online education, that means cutting out the beneficiaries of these ridiculous tuition rates-university administrators. Malcom Harris at N+1 wrote a fantastic article last year which relates directly to this subject;
I'm not sure if online education will prevent the student loan bubble from causing another financial crisis but it has potential.
Aug '10
Re: Diverting Topic #3: Elite Education for All
Technology merely scales up the delivery of existing courses. If you want a quick fix to skyrocketing costs, streamlining the curriculum should be the first step.
Try junking the "renaissance man" approach to education: stop requiring classes far outside one's chosen specialty. Business majors don't need to pay for art history courses; art majors don't need to pay for Biology 101 courses; biology majors don't need to pay for microeconomics courses.
The result may be "less educated" college graduates in the broad sense... although, given our current education system, the difference may not be detectable. It would drop 1.5-2 years off the (nominally) unproductive pit stop we call college. If you redefine the normal track to be shorter, the loans required to cover it become lower; and the majors, departments, and classes with low demand, which are subsidized by the students forced to choose them, would quickly become apparent.
Once the fat has been trimmed, then online courses will start to scale up and save money. Right now they are just allowing one professor to teach to a bigger room, which lets them spread the cost across more students, not reduce the base cost.
May '10
Re: Diverting Topic #3: Elite Education for All
Yes online education is the future, but not MOOCs. These are vanity projects for fancy professors at fancy schools and far from "free" but rather cross-subsidized by the poor, foolish undergrads paying full price -- or rather their foolish parents.
Credentialing works well in computer programming but not so much anywhere else. Online education is best suited for those that are seeking specific (pre-professional) employable skills. And that's not what the MOOC mavens like UVA and Stanford like to teach.
It is what the University of Phoenix knows how to teach. But where's the sizzle in that?
Oct '10
Re: Diverting Topic #3: Elite Education for All
Rob Long-" As a conservative who isn't thrilled with the birthright vibe that our elite institutions convey -- there's something wrong, after all, when 4 of our past 5 presidents went to either Harvard or Yale -- these kinds of developments can only be a good thing."
Your post reminded me of a great book on management by Robert Townsend. In the book 'Up the Organization-How to Stop the Corporation from Stifling People and Strangling Profits,' Townsend wrote of the sense of entitlement inculcated by Harvard Business School. He notes that when hired, HBS grads are given a position with the understanding that they'll be CEO someday and advises-"Don’t hire Harvard Business School graduates. This elite, in my opinion, is missing some pretty fundamental requirements for success: humility; respect for people on the firing line; deep understanding of the nature of the business and the kind of people who can enjoy themselves making it prosper; respect from way down the line; a demonstrated record of guts, industry, loyalty down, judgment, fairness, and honesty under pressure."
Edited on November 13, 2012 at 12:44pmJun '10
Re: Diverting Topic #3: Elite Education for All
I don't know BlueAnt. I was fairly put out when I learned that, as an art major, I had to take not one but two economics courses. As it turns out economics principles are the bedrock and daily currency of the profession I ended up in (real estate appraisal). I'm with P. J. O'Rourke in the opinion that an adult human that doesn't know economics is like a fish that doesn't know water.
University education is not a trade school (but, if parents won't be sensible, perhaps curricula which don't have productive professional paths should carry a warning label). The curriculum is not responsible for the tuition inflation. It is the constant building, the above mentioned bloating of administration, and the status seeking of numbskull consumers, both students and parents, which have driven costs out the roof.
May '12
Re: Diverting Topic #3: Elite Education for All
Very true and all of which has changed the mission of universities. I'm not sure if universities have any other mission now than supporting the bloat in their institutions. That and fundraising for their multi-billion dollar endowments. Now, at most institutions of higher education it appears that the requisite job skill for any university president, provost, or dean is the ability to work donors for hefty donations.
Jul '11
Re: Diverting Topic #3: Elite Education for All
The sad part is that you had to go to college to get your economics courses. Economics and finance are such a basic part of life that it should be required before graduating high school. Much of our college problem is that we are expecting them to pick up the slack from our terrible K-12 systems.
May '10
Re: Diverting Topic #3: Elite Education for All
To quote Judge Smails:
Not everyone needs to, or should go to college.
This is especially relevant, not because we need skilled laborers (we do), but because many college degrees have become irrelevant to to world beyond campus....
Dec '10
Re: Diverting Topic #3: Elite Education for All
I don't know, Rob. These diverting topics aren't diverting enough for me. Do you have anything with moving parts and flashing lights? Maybe some more "worst movie dialog of all time" banter?
Mar '11
Re: Diverting Topic #3: Elite Education for All
Rob Long:
Great! Now all those bureaucrats that will be required to populate the Obamacare mandate and rationing regime can learn all they need to know by sending in a matchbook cover and two bucks.
Oct '12
Re: Diverting Topic #3: Elite Education for All
"As a conservative who isn't thrilled with the birthright vibe that our elite institutions convey..."
Yes. This.
Even if we concede, arguendo, that Stanford and the Ivies gobble up nearly all of the best and brightest available in America, and very few of the unworthy; and concede that they offer the very finest education available...even granted those two premises, it has long struck me as insane that our society would go so far towards locking people into their gains and losses in life circa age 19.
One of the reasons I was so disappointed in the Harriet Miers pick is that it poisoned the well for future appointments from law schools outside the top 14. I'm only slightly exaggerating when I say that I could write five legal treatises so essential that they were taught in every law school in the land, rack up a 42-0 record in arguing cases before the Supreme Court, win three Nobel Prizes, climb Mount Everest on a pogo stick, and invent cold fusion, and I'd still never ever make anyone's short list for a high judicial appointment, because I went to a lower-tier law school.
Dec '10
Re: Diverting Topic #3: Elite Education for All
Yesterday, my Election Law teacher, a federal judge, brought in his law school tuition bill from thirty years ago. It was for $400. He passed it around the class and we all felt ill. That is less than what the average law student spends on books each semester.
Aug '10
Re: Diverting Topic #3: Elite Education for All
Exactly true, but as Fake John Galt mentions above, economics is one of those classes everyone should get in high school. I had econ in high school, then a full minor's worth of micro-, macro-, theory, and political economy classes in college; and rarely did they cover the same basic ground my high school classes covered.
I'd be willing to say all college students needed economics classes in the same way they might need remedial math, writing, civics, etc classes. But then we go down the road of picking and choosing what "everyone should know". And once the minority studies departments have their say in the matter...
Mar '11
Re: Diverting Topic #3: Elite Education for All
Most of our organs of higher education have lost any sense of what makes their education higher--even those premised on explicitly religious foundations.
Even more of them, through the proliferation of specialization and "underwater-basket-weaving" type courses have eviscerated the very idea of a university, whose etymology betrays its prejudice and its truth.
It is not that it is impossible to get a great education at these institutions--it is: but it requires far more ambition and self-direction from the young student than ever before, and it is wasted on almost all who attend them.
We must reform this system. Many go through this education only in the hopes of finding a decent job, and they graduate with mountains of debt. Credentialing and professional education must be diffused more greatly through other institutions than the university. And we must return a more stringent liberal arts curriculum--specifically civics, economics, and history--back to the high school level and demand higher standards there (in the maths and sciences as well).
Edited on November 6, 2012 at 10:29pm