8 ms·

The coming disruption of colleges and universities

85 points by jseliger 7y ago

jseliger 7y ago
It will be interesting to see what happens to the bread, circus, and crushing student loan elements: https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-elizabeth-armstrong-and-laura-hamilton/ https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-eliz...
- Melting_Harps 7y ago
  > Paying for the party... Interesting concept, I went ahead an ordered a copy on Amazon. Not sure when it will arrive as all my USPS stuff has seen a 5-7 day delay, but looks like it's worth exploring. I actually declined all the offers to be included in several 'rush week' inductions, I despised 'campus life' by the end of my incoming Summer Freshman year. And the notion of 'paying for my friends' was not just alien to me, but counter intuitive as I was already living and working alongside Pro-drivers, Industry leaders in Motorsports by the time I was 17 and going to Industry parties and gatherings by 19. Later in my upper division courses I found out how critical getting a passing grade was less about what you knew, then who you knew as the Frats were running exams. Funny enough, some of those Frats would also get caught in a Drug Sting by the Federal Government that year, too.
autokad 7y ago
I have been thinking about this lately. It started a while back when someone was asking me about which data science programs they were considering was best. I suggested NYU because of LeCun. Then recently I was discussing how having Google on your resume is a bit like having an ivy league university on your resume. That got me thinking, a huge part of the reason why some people fight/pay to get into the best universities is so they can get into the best companies. Isn't the university just a middle man at this point? Then my next thoughts are mostly along the lines in what is discussed in this article.
- pattusk 7y ago
  Isn't that exactly what universities (at least top universities) are and always have been? If you wanted to be a top cleric in the middle ages, you'd study in a university with the best manuscripts, the best scholars and the best clergy connections. Whether you want to get into tech, academia or government you will try to get into the best universities because they have the best alumni network, the best resources and the best name recognition. Now of course this only applies to extremely ambitious people (I don't think being ambitious is necessarily a good thing). Plenty of people are fine working at a regional bank. Plenty of people are fine living a simple, stable life in a local government administration. Those jobs can even be attractive to ambitious people, if you're a first generation immigrant from a dirt-poor background, a stable local government job with decent pay and benefits is certainly something worth striving for. For such people a local community college will provide just the same level of knowledge and skills they'd get at a big name university. I can't quite put my fingers on what's wrong with the article, but it rings to me as the perspective of someone who's only familiar with fancy colleges and has little knowledge (or care) for what actually goes on and who actually goes to smaller institutions.
  - pharke 7y ago
    There are two different pursuits tangled up in this. One is seeking money and prestige and the other is seeking knowledge. They are confused because in order to earn money you often need at least a modicum of specialised knowledge and prestige requires at least some proximity to or appearance of it. Conversely, pursuing knowledge requires you to acquire money to fund your endeavors and needs enough prestige to attract others to your cause. They are bound closely together but they are not the same thing.
- watwut 7y ago
  > Isn't the university just a middle man at this point? It is party credentialing, partly middle man, but I personally learned a lot and I think going to university gave me a lot. Then again, I live in a place where I did not had to go into lifelong debt for it. We dont know how to do good online education yet. The biggest problem seem to be that people get demotivated and drop up in much higher rates then when they go to same course in person. But even if we would, I dont think online education will solve problem of student debt. That did not happened because it would be impossible to provide affordable education or impossible to hire people from cheaper universities. The same pressures and systems that made in person education expensive, the same system that greatly favors students from few universities for prestigious positions will make online learning have the same problems.
tasogare 7y ago
> predicts hundreds, if not thousands, of brick-and-mortar universities will go out of business That’s only possible in places where universities are businesses. Elsewhere (most of Europe for instance), it would be super easy to counter this trend: don’t give the new comers the national habilitations that make the awarded degrees recognized and thus worth something.
- the-dude 7y ago
  Universities in NL have been in the proces of becoming businesses over the last 20 years, as they have been made partially responsible for their own budget. And it shows.
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    Similar in the UK. It really came home to me when I was visiting universities with one of my children. We happened to walk past a marketing department during one of our tours. I was surprised by the number of people working in that office.
alexmingoia 7y ago
Learning to pass the test has failed us. Moving tests online won’t change that. The future of education is not moving tests online. It’s no tests at all. The future of education is workshops. Teachers as mentors, not lecturers and truancy officers. Exercises instead of lectures. Peers instead of tests. Projects instead of grades. After completing a workshop, you have a project to show for it - not a score. After completing a workshop, you have an alumni network to draw on. Workshops are self-directed. There’s a schedule to the exercises, but enough room for people to go at different paces. Students work in the open, and learn from each other. Students are encouraged to collaborate, instead of punished as cheaters. Students compete by seeing what’s possible. Workshops are about learning to do great work, instead of learning to pass a test. Workshops are the future of education.
- charlieflowers 7y ago
  That was always a better idea. So what makes you think now is the time the world will move from its entrenched tradition and over to something more rational?
  - alexmingoia 7y ago
    Over time people will avoid spending their time and money on something that provides little value. It's already happening. The generation growing up now has learned (the hard way) that tests and grades have little value in the real world. That it's a game, one that they don't enjoy and they don't need to win. COVID-19 has just accelerated this by moving schools online and laying them bare. Online there's no having lunch together, flirting, or getting dressed up. Online there's none of the things that made school more than a test. As the schools move online people see the emperor has no clothes.
    - watwut 7y ago
      Honestly, my experience of school was not just listening obediently as much as people make it to be here. And talking with my kids, the school was not like that to them - they miss the interactive parts of class. Now that homework is send by mail, bulk of it is like you describe. But the zoom classes are not like that and based on what my kids claim, it was not as dry in person. Maybe there are completely dystopian schools where no communication is going on. Everything exists somewhere. But it is just not true that it is universal experience of school.
TrackerFF 7y ago
I think this crisis will make young people seek careers in safe fields, shielded from major booms and busts, pandemics, and with decent benefits. But who knows, people also have quite a short memory, so it might be forgotten 5 years down the road. So, with that, I think schools / majors that are aimed at "essential services" will see a rise in applicants.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
jimhefferon 7y ago
Interesting read. His observation that there are many, many people who want to go to MIT and Stanford and would do great but didn't get in because they only have many seats, is spot on. However, the flip side is that there exists lower-tier institutions because there are lots of people who would not do great. If you keep a Stanford education meaning what it means today then those folks would flunk. Look at the MOOC experiments where the percentage of people who pass is in the single digits. (There are all kinds of arguments that some people only sign up for part of the course anyway, that people can take it three times at much less cost than the traditional way once, etc., but single digits is a shock.) There are lots of people who have the skills and motivation to succeed, which is wonderful. But there are also lots of people who will fail to swim, but who are now being helped by these other places.
- chosenbreed37 7y ago
  > Look at the MOOC experiments where the percentage of people who pass is in the single digits. (There are all kinds of arguments that some people only sign up for part of the course anyway, that people can take it three times at much less cost than the traditional way once, etc., but single digits is a shock.) Could you elaborate on this? I've done a couple of MOOCs recently (Coursera in conjuction with Columbia, Princeton, etc). I could see that tens of thousands of others had enrolled. I'm curious about what the completion rate is. I personally got some value out of them. I'm wondering why they might be considered failures. In fact I'm seeing lots more courses come up.
- chriskanan 7y ago
  I think there may be considerable grade inflation once admitted to many top schools. After interviewing enough people from top schools, including Stanford, the assumption that they are inherently better and the content is more difficult has worn off.
- watwut 7y ago
  > Look at the MOOC experiments where the percentage of people who pass is in the single digits. (There are all kinds of arguments that some people only sign up for part of the course anyway, that people can take it three times at much less cost than the traditional way once, etc., but single digits is a shock.) There I personally signed up to many courses I did not even intended to finish. And even where I intended to finish, it turned out too much. I could do required 6-8 of work for first few weeks, but sooner or later there is deadline in work or personal problem that you have deal with and will stop the course. It was free and I learned something without finishing it anyway. In one case, I dropped out from final test while having all previous homework done and full credit up to that point. I just decided that learning for final test would be too much effort an stopped. Actually relevant study I have seen compared online and offline version of the same course, in the same year and students who all paid to study (e.g. normal students). The online people dropped out or failed much more often then offline, but it was not single digit. I cant find it now.
chosenbreed37 7y ago
Interesting article. This statement made me chuckle :-) "I think Jeff Bezos is going to offer the COVID-19 test as part of Prime membership. I think that’s where we’re headed." Slightly off-topic but hilarious nonetheless!
simonh 7y ago
It's fascinating to see this happening. Both of my parents got Open University degrees here in the UK when I was a teenager. They were both teachers themselves, my father started on a Chemistry degree but switched to Computer Science, while my mother got a degree in Child Psychology. This was in the 70s and early 80s, so remote learning is certainly viable even without the internet. They went to some seminars and tests in person, and there were summer camps and such held at university campuses during the holidays. The course is held on a schedule, you don't really work at your own pace and have to keep up, and you have an assigned tutor. Getting a degree this way could take a long time, twice as long as usual but there is also an option to do the degree full time in 3-4 years. It's not cheap though, a Computer Science course has 3 stages, corresponding to years at college, and cost about £6k per year. The Open University still exists and seems to be going strong, and having just taken a look it seems they make extensive use of the internet. Is there anything like that in the US already? It seems to me this is a very well established and proven approach.
- twic 7y ago
  Some US universities have "extension schools": https://www.extension.harvard.edu/academics/bachelor-liberal-arts-degree https://www.extension.harvard.edu/academics/bachelor-liberal... I think they are usually focused on practical knowledge. I think a lot of land grant state college type places have an extension school focused on training up farmers: https://extension.umn.edu/ https://extension.umn.edu/ https://extension.nmsu.edu/ https://extension.nmsu.edu/ It's not really the same as the OU.
spodek 7y ago
They couldn't prompt disruption more if they tried. I teach at NYU also. I teach very experiential, active, project-based courses. My students, for projects in my class, get written up in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Inc; they speak at Harvard, TEDx; they get funded by Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt; supported by the Dalai Lama; they get promoted at their jobs without asking. Again, this is for class projects, not just later in life. But what does the Dean I report to talk about when reviewing my syllabus? She asks "Where are the papers?" She says "It needs more academic rigor" and tells me to assign more papers to read and write. Even so, beyond their practical accomplishments, I would stake any of my students against their lecture-and-case-study-taught students in theory and impractical knowledge too. As an adjunct, I get nearly zero resources or support. My courses use a fraction their costs -- no office, administrative support, faculty lunches, coffee, etc. A student who told me he learned more marketing in my entrepreneurship class that was at NYU but not Stern (NYU's business school) than from his Stern marketing class said I could quote him but not by name since he didn't want to get in trouble with the school.
- bluntfang 7y ago
  I'm sure my opinion won't be popular here, but I think that makes sense that they want your class to be more academic. You're teaching at a university, not a vocational school. Academia shouldn't be about being published in the NYT or Wallstreet Journal. It shouldn't be about getting raises or getting more money. It should be about discovering and sharing knowledge and it sounds like you have leaders that want and understand that.
  - dunefox 7y ago
    I agree, a university needs to concentrate on academic classes. It's not a highschool with summer projects.
  - spodek 7y ago
    You drew a false dichotomy. As I noted, they learn the theory better too, just not by reading theory. I don't teach a vocational class, I teach project-based learning.
RickJWagner 7y ago
Wow. I guess this kind of reckoning is overdue, but it's scary to see it happening. I hope MOOCs play a strong role in the future of education. They're awesome and easily accessible to everyone. This could be the start of the democratization of education.
bradleyjg 7y ago
It couldn’t happen to a more deserving group of people. Universities have eagerly embraced their role as credentialist gatekeepers. Witness the rise of the cash cow master’s degree. Further, they’ve been overtly run as partnerships for the benefit of administrators rather than as the cause-oriented institutions their tax status requires. An entire generation has been saddled with enormous debt to line the pockets of non-instructional staff. You reap what you sow. The only shame is that it won’t hit the very top layer of exploitive institutions. But wiping out some is better than nothing.
Upvoter33 7y ago
The problem with the "handful of elites" suddenly taking over higher education is that everything about those elites is about exclusivity: you sell the fact that only the chosen few go to Harvard, Stanford, MIT, whatever. If anyone is going to take over, it'll be a public institution of some kind, where a much broader acceptance of large groups of people into the school is more a part of the DNA. Look at Georgia Tech's online masters, for example: $7k for a pretty reasonable and rigorous degree. But even then, there isn't an online replacement to the college experience, which is in person with large groups of friends learning how to live on your own a bit in a safe, educational environment. No one wants to stay at home and take online classes and live with their parents.
- _wldu 7y ago
  While GT isn't MIT, it is highly rated. Last I heard, GT had the 7th highest ranked CS program in the world. It's a fraction of the price too. https://www.gatech.edu/about/rankings https://www.gatech.edu/about/rankings
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
gumby 7y ago
My son decided to taking the next year off from school, in part to push his graduation (hopefully) out of the recession window, or the worst of it, and because it’s pretty clear that next autumn’s classes will also be online, despite the protestations of the administration. He found a job as a developer so he’ll use the year working and (implicitly) networking which should improve things at graduation time. Internships are being cancelled or virtualized so a real job at one of those companies is more valuable at the moment. In some ways an internship in a structured internship program can be better, but not in 2020. I like the education he’s been getting (and more importantly he does too) but the rest of the value add has been gone this semester. A big part for him has been the connection with the faculty (how did he find this job at $bigco?). No point in paying for that until things settle down.
gumby 7y ago
The intro to the article is slightly different from what Galloway says. MIT sells a product that is quite valuable to a certain audience and though how that product works has evolved and will continue too, ultimately it's a boutique offering that won’t move online (some of the classes may, but really there aren’t many “big lecture hall” classes there anyway). In fact there’s only one huge lecture hall. So I see a cohort of “high end” schools that offer low volume/high cost product (basically the Apple approach). A few mass market winners that are essentially online only. And some private sector “tutor” kind of places that provide a kind of third party recitation or handholding where needed. The mass market winners may not be obvious either. The obvious candidates are the existing large high-reputation institutions like UT and UC but they may struggle institutionally to adapt. It could be a U of IL (which has already been innovating in this area), or NYU whose administration appears right now to be whistling past the graveyard but which has shown an ability over the last couple of decades to adapt significantly. And I expect community colleges, at least where they are well run like California’s excellent system, to really adapt rapidly to “online plus a little in-person supplementation.”

85 points by jseliger 7y ago

It will be interesting to see what happens to the bread, circus, and crushing student loan elements: https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-elizabeth-armstrong-and-laura-hamilton/ https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-eliz...

Melting_Harps 7y ago
> Paying for the party... Interesting concept, I went ahead an ordered a copy on Amazon. Not sure when it will arrive as all my USPS stuff has seen a 5-7 day delay, but looks like it's worth exploring. I actually declined all the offers to be included in several 'rush week' inductions, I despised 'campus life' by the end of my incoming Summer Freshman year. And the notion of 'paying for my friends' was not just alien to me, but counter intuitive as I was already living and working alongside Pro-drivers, Industry leaders in Motorsports by the time I was 17 and going to Industry parties and gatherings by 19. Later in my upper division courses I found out how critical getting a passing grade was less about what you knew, then who you knew as the Frats were running exams. Funny enough, some of those Frats would also get caught in a Drug Sting by the Federal Government that year, too.

autokad 7y ago

I have been thinking about this lately. It started a while back when someone was asking me about which data science programs they were considering was best. I suggested NYU because of LeCun. Then recently I was discussing how having Google on your resume is a bit like having an ivy league university on your resume. That got me thinking, a huge part of the reason why some people fight/pay to get into the best universities is so they can get into the best companies. Isn't the university just a middle man at this point? Then my next thoughts are mostly along the lines in what is discussed in this article.

pattusk 7y ago
Isn't that exactly what universities (at least top universities) are and always have been? If you wanted to be a top cleric in the middle ages, you'd study in a university with the best manuscripts, the best scholars and the best clergy connections. Whether you want to get into tech, academia or government you will try to get into the best universities because they have the best alumni network, the best resources and the best name recognition. Now of course this only applies to extremely ambitious people (I don't think being ambitious is necessarily a good thing). Plenty of people are fine working at a regional bank. Plenty of people are fine living a simple, stable life in a local government administration. Those jobs can even be attractive to ambitious people, if you're a first generation immigrant from a dirt-poor background, a stable local government job with decent pay and benefits is certainly something worth striving for. For such people a local community college will provide just the same level of knowledge and skills they'd get at a big name university. I can't quite put my fingers on what's wrong with the article, but it rings to me as the perspective of someone who's only familiar with fancy colleges and has little knowledge (or care) for what actually goes on and who actually goes to smaller institutions.
- pharke 7y ago
  There are two different pursuits tangled up in this. One is seeking money and prestige and the other is seeking knowledge. They are confused because in order to earn money you often need at least a modicum of specialised knowledge and prestige requires at least some proximity to or appearance of it. Conversely, pursuing knowledge requires you to acquire money to fund your endeavors and needs enough prestige to attract others to your cause. They are bound closely together but they are not the same thing.
watwut 7y ago
> Isn't the university just a middle man at this point? It is party credentialing, partly middle man, but I personally learned a lot and I think going to university gave me a lot. Then again, I live in a place where I did not had to go into lifelong debt for it. We dont know how to do good online education yet. The biggest problem seem to be that people get demotivated and drop up in much higher rates then when they go to same course in person. But even if we would, I dont think online education will solve problem of student debt. That did not happened because it would be impossible to provide affordable education or impossible to hire people from cheaper universities. The same pressures and systems that made in person education expensive, the same system that greatly favors students from few universities for prestigious positions will make online learning have the same problems.

tasogare 7y ago

> predicts hundreds, if not thousands, of brick-and-mortar universities will go out of business That’s only possible in places where universities are businesses. Elsewhere (most of Europe for instance), it would be super easy to counter this trend: don’t give the new comers the national habilitations that make the awarded degrees recognized and thus worth something.

the-dude 7y ago
Universities in NL have been in the proces of becoming businesses over the last 20 years, as they have been made partially responsible for their own budget. And it shows.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  Similar in the UK. It really came home to me when I was visiting universities with one of my children. We happened to walk past a marketing department during one of our tours. I was surprised by the number of people working in that office.

alexmingoia 7y ago

Learning to pass the test has failed us. Moving tests online won’t change that. The future of education is not moving tests online. It’s no tests at all. The future of education is workshops. Teachers as mentors, not lecturers and truancy officers. Exercises instead of lectures. Peers instead of tests. Projects instead of grades. After completing a workshop, you have a project to show for it - not a score. After completing a workshop, you have an alumni network to draw on. Workshops are self-directed. There’s a schedule to the exercises, but enough room for people to go at different paces. Students work in the open, and learn from each other. Students are encouraged to collaborate, instead of punished as cheaters. Students compete by seeing what’s possible. Workshops are about learning to do great work, instead of learning to pass a test. Workshops are the future of education.

charlieflowers 7y ago
That was always a better idea. So what makes you think now is the time the world will move from its entrenched tradition and over to something more rational?
- alexmingoia 7y ago
  Over time people will avoid spending their time and money on something that provides little value. It's already happening. The generation growing up now has learned (the hard way) that tests and grades have little value in the real world. That it's a game, one that they don't enjoy and they don't need to win. COVID-19 has just accelerated this by moving schools online and laying them bare. Online there's no having lunch together, flirting, or getting dressed up. Online there's none of the things that made school more than a test. As the schools move online people see the emperor has no clothes.
  - watwut 7y ago
    Honestly, my experience of school was not just listening obediently as much as people make it to be here. And talking with my kids, the school was not like that to them - they miss the interactive parts of class. Now that homework is send by mail, bulk of it is like you describe. But the zoom classes are not like that and based on what my kids claim, it was not as dry in person. Maybe there are completely dystopian schools where no communication is going on. Everything exists somewhere. But it is just not true that it is universal experience of school.

TrackerFF 7y ago

I think this crisis will make young people seek careers in safe fields, shielded from major booms and busts, pandemics, and with decent benefits. But who knows, people also have quite a short memory, so it might be forgotten 5 years down the road. So, with that, I think schools / majors that are aimed at "essential services" will see a rise in applicants.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

jimhefferon 7y ago

Interesting read. His observation that there are many, many people who want to go to MIT and Stanford and would do great but didn't get in because they only have many seats, is spot on. However, the flip side is that there exists lower-tier institutions because there are lots of people who would not do great. If you keep a Stanford education meaning what it means today then those folks would flunk. Look at the MOOC experiments where the percentage of people who pass is in the single digits. (There are all kinds of arguments that some people only sign up for part of the course anyway, that people can take it three times at much less cost than the traditional way once, etc., but single digits is a shock.) There are lots of people who have the skills and motivation to succeed, which is wonderful. But there are also lots of people who will fail to swim, but who are now being helped by these other places.

chosenbreed37 7y ago
> Look at the MOOC experiments where the percentage of people who pass is in the single digits. (There are all kinds of arguments that some people only sign up for part of the course anyway, that people can take it three times at much less cost than the traditional way once, etc., but single digits is a shock.) Could you elaborate on this? I've done a couple of MOOCs recently (Coursera in conjuction with Columbia, Princeton, etc). I could see that tens of thousands of others had enrolled. I'm curious about what the completion rate is. I personally got some value out of them. I'm wondering why they might be considered failures. In fact I'm seeing lots more courses come up.
chriskanan 7y ago
I think there may be considerable grade inflation once admitted to many top schools. After interviewing enough people from top schools, including Stanford, the assumption that they are inherently better and the content is more difficult has worn off.
watwut 7y ago
> Look at the MOOC experiments where the percentage of people who pass is in the single digits. (There are all kinds of arguments that some people only sign up for part of the course anyway, that people can take it three times at much less cost than the traditional way once, etc., but single digits is a shock.) There I personally signed up to many courses I did not even intended to finish. And even where I intended to finish, it turned out too much. I could do required 6-8 of work for first few weeks, but sooner or later there is deadline in work or personal problem that you have deal with and will stop the course. It was free and I learned something without finishing it anyway. In one case, I dropped out from final test while having all previous homework done and full credit up to that point. I just decided that learning for final test would be too much effort an stopped. Actually relevant study I have seen compared online and offline version of the same course, in the same year and students who all paid to study (e.g. normal students). The online people dropped out or failed much more often then offline, but it was not single digit. I cant find it now.

chosenbreed37 7y ago

Interesting article. This statement made me chuckle :-) "I think Jeff Bezos is going to offer the COVID-19 test as part of Prime membership. I think that’s where we’re headed." Slightly off-topic but hilarious nonetheless!

simonh 7y ago

It's fascinating to see this happening. Both of my parents got Open University degrees here in the UK when I was a teenager. They were both teachers themselves, my father started on a Chemistry degree but switched to Computer Science, while my mother got a degree in Child Psychology. This was in the 70s and early 80s, so remote learning is certainly viable even without the internet. They went to some seminars and tests in person, and there were summer camps and such held at university campuses during the holidays. The course is held on a schedule, you don't really work at your own pace and have to keep up, and you have an assigned tutor. Getting a degree this way could take a long time, twice as long as usual but there is also an option to do the degree full time in 3-4 years. It's not cheap though, a Computer Science course has 3 stages, corresponding to years at college, and cost about £6k per year. The Open University still exists and seems to be going strong, and having just taken a look it seems they make extensive use of the internet. Is there anything like that in the US already? It seems to me this is a very well established and proven approach.

twic 7y ago
Some US universities have "extension schools": https://www.extension.harvard.edu/academics/bachelor-liberal-arts-degree https://www.extension.harvard.edu/academics/bachelor-liberal... I think they are usually focused on practical knowledge. I think a lot of land grant state college type places have an extension school focused on training up farmers: https://extension.umn.edu/ https://extension.umn.edu/ https://extension.nmsu.edu/ https://extension.nmsu.edu/ It's not really the same as the OU.

spodek 7y ago

They couldn't prompt disruption more if they tried. I teach at NYU also. I teach very experiential, active, project-based courses. My students, for projects in my class, get written up in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Inc; they speak at Harvard, TEDx; they get funded by Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt; supported by the Dalai Lama; they get promoted at their jobs without asking. Again, this is for class projects, not just later in life. But what does the Dean I report to talk about when reviewing my syllabus? She asks "Where are the papers?" She says "It needs more academic rigor" and tells me to assign more papers to read and write. Even so, beyond their practical accomplishments, I would stake any of my students against their lecture-and-case-study-taught students in theory and impractical knowledge too. As an adjunct, I get nearly zero resources or support. My courses use a fraction their costs -- no office, administrative support, faculty lunches, coffee, etc. A student who told me he learned more marketing in my entrepreneurship class that was at NYU but not Stern (NYU's business school) than from his Stern marketing class said I could quote him but not by name since he didn't want to get in trouble with the school.

bluntfang 7y ago
I'm sure my opinion won't be popular here, but I think that makes sense that they want your class to be more academic. You're teaching at a university, not a vocational school. Academia shouldn't be about being published in the NYT or Wallstreet Journal. It shouldn't be about getting raises or getting more money. It should be about discovering and sharing knowledge and it sounds like you have leaders that want and understand that.
- dunefox 7y ago
  I agree, a university needs to concentrate on academic classes. It's not a highschool with summer projects.
- spodek 7y ago
  You drew a false dichotomy. As I noted, they learn the theory better too, just not by reading theory. I don't teach a vocational class, I teach project-based learning.

RickJWagner 7y ago

Wow. I guess this kind of reckoning is overdue, but it's scary to see it happening. I hope MOOCs play a strong role in the future of education. They're awesome and easily accessible to everyone. This could be the start of the democratization of education.

bradleyjg 7y ago

It couldn’t happen to a more deserving group of people. Universities have eagerly embraced their role as credentialist gatekeepers. Witness the rise of the cash cow master’s degree. Further, they’ve been overtly run as partnerships for the benefit of administrators rather than as the cause-oriented institutions their tax status requires. An entire generation has been saddled with enormous debt to line the pockets of non-instructional staff. You reap what you sow. The only shame is that it won’t hit the very top layer of exploitive institutions. But wiping out some is better than nothing.

Upvoter33 7y ago

The problem with the "handful of elites" suddenly taking over higher education is that everything about those elites is about exclusivity: you sell the fact that only the chosen few go to Harvard, Stanford, MIT, whatever. If anyone is going to take over, it'll be a public institution of some kind, where a much broader acceptance of large groups of people into the school is more a part of the DNA. Look at Georgia Tech's online masters, for example: $7k for a pretty reasonable and rigorous degree. But even then, there isn't an online replacement to the college experience, which is in person with large groups of friends learning how to live on your own a bit in a safe, educational environment. No one wants to stay at home and take online classes and live with their parents.

_wldu 7y ago
While GT isn't MIT, it is highly rated. Last I heard, GT had the 7th highest ranked CS program in the world. It's a fraction of the price too. https://www.gatech.edu/about/rankings https://www.gatech.edu/about/rankings

deleted 7y ago

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gumby 7y ago

My son decided to taking the next year off from school, in part to push his graduation (hopefully) out of the recession window, or the worst of it, and because it’s pretty clear that next autumn’s classes will also be online, despite the protestations of the administration. He found a job as a developer so he’ll use the year working and (implicitly) networking which should improve things at graduation time. Internships are being cancelled or virtualized so a real job at one of those companies is more valuable at the moment. In some ways an internship in a structured internship program can be better, but not in 2020. I like the education he’s been getting (and more importantly he does too) but the rest of the value add has been gone this semester. A big part for him has been the connection with the faculty (how did he find this job at $bigco?). No point in paying for that until things settle down.

gumby 7y ago

The intro to the article is slightly different from what Galloway says. MIT sells a product that is quite valuable to a certain audience and though how that product works has evolved and will continue too, ultimately it's a boutique offering that won’t move online (some of the classes may, but really there aren’t many “big lecture hall” classes there anyway). In fact there’s only one huge lecture hall. So I see a cohort of “high end” schools that offer low volume/high cost product (basically the Apple approach). A few mass market winners that are essentially online only. And some private sector “tutor” kind of places that provide a kind of third party recitation or handholding where needed. The mass market winners may not be obvious either. The obvious candidates are the existing large high-reputation institutions like UT and UC but they may struggle institutionally to adapt. It could be a U of IL (which has already been innovating in this area), or NYU whose administration appears right now to be whistling past the graveyard but which has shown an ability over the last couple of decades to adapt significantly. And I expect community colleges, at least where they are well run like California’s excellent system, to really adapt rapidly to “online plus a little in-person supplementation.”