Wot Happened? Who Knows the Thing?

Excellent talk.

If you'd like to do a discussion on post secondary education I'd be more interested in the reform models, and cost reduction models that technology could enable. I am thinking of websites like skillshare etc. and the concept of ACE "Adult Continuing Education" - for a time in the 90s the government was trying to get people into the concept of lifetime learning ... The current model of the massive university seems unsustainable with current technologies, let alone new applications that are coming,

OccupantCDN (View Comment):

Excellent talk.

If you’d like to do a discussion on post secondary education I’d be more interested in the reform models, and cost reduction models that technology could enable. I am thinking of websites like skillshare etc. and the concept of ACE “Adult Continuing Education” – for a time in the 90s the government was trying to get people into the concept of lifetime learning … The current model of the massive university seems unsustainable with current technologies, let alone new applications that are coming,

Amen.

I've thought a lot about this. The big problem is the phony accreditation system.

I think what they need to do is create three tracks. You have some colleges stay the same. Then you have two other tracks. One where you just passed certifications for jobs. So you are responsible for getting your own technical training and then whether or not anybody will hire you on that basis. You can skip all liberal arts classes. Seriously what are people afraid of? Accreditation is just a scam.

The other one would be certifications, plus you could set up your own liberal arts curriculum. I'd like to have all of my books picked out by Mark Levin, Dennis Prager, and the Mises Institute. Then you go get whatever technical training you want or not. I would think conservative and libertarian families would like this option and it would make a better society.

I love this article.

Once I entered college, I had to petition do-nothing bureaucrats to let me take 19, 20, and 21 credit semesters to make it all work. I knew I didn’t want to go to grad school, so I got Cs and Ds in a lot of my classes, intentionally; I wanted to exert the minimal amount of effort because I was singleminded in my goal—to graduate with no debt and get the heck out the dismal swamp of Williamsburg, Virginia. I still wish I’d dropped out, but I’m at least glad to not be saddled with massive payments several years out.

Decently wealthy, decently high-performing students can and should do this. Administrators won’t make it easy or tell you this is a doable plan, because they have no incentive to. They want to suckle more money from you, your parents, and taxpayers, pretending it’s in service of your bright, bright future.

College is a scam to fleece the students and taxpayers. It is not about human capital development.

RufusRJones (View Comment):

Amen.

I’ve thought a lot about this. The big problem is the phony accreditation system.

I think what they need to do is create three tracks. You have some colleges stay the same. Then you have two other tracks. One where you just passed certifications for jobs. So you are responsible for getting your own technical training and then whether or not anybody will hire you on that basis. You can skip all liberal arts classes. Seriously what are people afraid of? Accreditation is just a scam.

The other one would be certifications, plus you could set up your own liberal arts curriculum. I’d like to have all of my books picked out by Mark Levin, Dennis Prager, and the Mises Institute. Then you go get whatever technical training you want or not. I would think conservative and libertarian families would like this option and it would make a better society.

I dont think the existing Universities will be able to continue as they are. If you look at my home town university. The UofC (I know you've never heard of it) it occupies 4.13 sq KM (1020 acres) of urban landscape. (the value and cost of this infrastructure alone must be staggering) It has a $1.2 Billion (cdn) endowment. All of these resources for a school that has about 31 000 students, (across all programs) and is frankly fairly average. I dont think that kind of resource commitment will continue or should continue in a world where lectures could be transmitted by a video link website, homework passed back by email, and testing conducted by 3rd party testing organizations. (like Microsoft or Cisco testing centers) Existing technology could cut an order of magnitude (or 2) off the cost of an education. This is just using existing technology in existing paradigms - who knows what will be come in 20 years? Papers graded by AI?

I think its this malinvestment that has been undermining economic growth over the past 3 decades. If you look at the average cost of a college education or the average debt of a graduating student vs economic growth over the past 30 years, I strongly suspect there is a direct correlation. I know correlation is not causation, but it stands to reason that resources pulled into an under-performing education sector can't be used in other more productive sectors of the economy. Undermining overall economic growth.

@occpantCDN

I agree completely. Perfect.