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I agree, I just finished my masters online at Johns Hopkins University in bioinformatics. Holy shit was it a slog, I about had a break down halfway through. The

by dikdik 11y ago

I agree, I just finished my masters online at Johns Hopkins University in bioinformatics. Holy shit was it a slog, I about had a break down halfway through. The best way I study, with a small group of people focused on a similar topic, was largely unavailable to me. However, online classes or MOOCs are intended to be a solution to a problem. I don't think they will ever be better than an in-person education, if you can spend 4-10 years after high school not worrying about time or money and just focusing on your education. For a great number of people that is not a possibility. When looking at a partially social issue like education, we need to pay more attention to how it plays out for the lowest 10% not the highest 10%.

WalterBright 11y ago
Oh, I agree that MOOCs are a boon to people who could not otherwise attend college. But for those who can attend college, there is a lot of value that is hard to get from a MOOC, and I'm not talking about prestige or networking or credentialism. Heck, I watch online course material while I do my exercising.
- dikdik 11y ago
  This follow-up isn't meant as a disagreement, just thinking 'out-loud': So what do we solve this problem then? While our economy does demand increased knowledge for a good wage we also ALL know about the near pointless demand for increased credentials. We ALL know a certain chunk of top-echelon jobs are all but removed based on our university pedigree. This isn't even efficient for the economy, but that's a completely different post. We need to get more people more education, we need to quit demanding absurd amounts of credentials for everything from a barber to a glorified desk jockey, and we need to not cut off people from a prosperous life path because of their pedigree or poor decisions made in the first 22 years of their life. Online degrees were/are an attempt to solve this. So how do we fix them or what else do we do?
  - eru 11y ago
    Online degrees might still be good enough. Even though they might not be as good as an offline degree, they can be radically cheaper. (See innovator's dilemma and how they originally defined `disruption'.)

by dikdik 11y ago

WalterBright 11y ago

Oh, I agree that MOOCs are a boon to people who could not otherwise attend college. But for those who can attend college, there is a lot of value that is hard to get from a MOOC, and I'm not talking about prestige or networking or credentialism. Heck, I watch online course material while I do my exercising.

dikdik 11y ago
This follow-up isn't meant as a disagreement, just thinking 'out-loud': So what do we solve this problem then? While our economy does demand increased knowledge for a good wage we also ALL know about the near pointless demand for increased credentials. We ALL know a certain chunk of top-echelon jobs are all but removed based on our university pedigree. This isn't even efficient for the economy, but that's a completely different post. We need to get more people more education, we need to quit demanding absurd amounts of credentials for everything from a barber to a glorified desk jockey, and we need to not cut off people from a prosperous life path because of their pedigree or poor decisions made in the first 22 years of their life. Online degrees were/are an attempt to solve this. So how do we fix them or what else do we do?
- eru 11y ago
  Online degrees might still be good enough. Even though they might not be as good as an offline degree, they can be radically cheaper. (See innovator's dilemma and how they originally defined `disruption'.)