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Can I just say this is super exciting. In Australia, where I live, there was a very brief period where university education was free. It was before my time, but
by sgentle 14y ago
Can I just say this is super exciting. In Australia, where I live, there was a very brief period where university education was free. It was before my time, but I remember the feeling I had as a child when I first heard about it - not amazement or disbelief, something closer to "oh yeah, that makes sense". I figured that education would have to be free because otherwise poor people would stay poor forever. Not the most airtight reasoning, but I think my heart was in the right place. I hadn't really considered the resources that would need to go into it, and who would inevitably have to foot the bill.
But this is the best kind of regression. Maybe the childish dream of "hey, let's just teach everyone" isn't so ridiculous now that we have the right technology. I find it easy to get frustrated sometimes thinking of how much power we have at our disposal, and how much of it goes into more efficient cat sharing and other electronic distractions (some of which, in fairness, I like quite a bit). This is a pretty cool example of how much what we do can mean to people: not just entertaining them but radically improving their lives.
The best part, though, is that this isn't even news. This has all already happened. Between the Khan Academy, OCW, Coursera, Udacity and edX it's actually a crowded field now. Great! Large universities move slowly, and I'm sure there are a lot of people who've been pushing for years just to get things to this point. Now things look like they're starting to snowball. It's easy to ignore one university or a crazy startup, but when someone says "hey, uh, half of the Ivy League's on this thing" it gets attention. I'm really looking forward to whatever comes out of edX, but even more to the inevitable answers to edX. It's a great time to need an education.
- subbu 14y ago..poor people would stay poor forever.. This is even more true in corrupt countries. The corrupts have an incentive to keep people away from knowing their rights. A large part of knowing your rights comes from education.
- personlurking 14y agoI tend to think that, in any given country, what you have is a mixture of three ideas being constantly employed. - Bread & Circuses - Plato's Cave - Hegelian Dialectic
- belial 14y agoFantastic idea... Can you elaborate more on the Hegelian Dialectic part, please? I mean, how Hegel's logic is being employed and where?
- marcoamorales 14y agoWe still face a problem, which is inevitable when you can teach the masses. Some people, especially the poor, don't understand the importance of education. In poor countries, teenagers don't have time to study, because they have to make a living. But I'm happy we are advancing, I believe education is the foundation of everything, so we sure are making some big steps.
- LyleK 14y agoThere's nothing in the article that says the classes will be free.
- pepr 14y agoWell, let's be honest with ourselves. If they won't be free from the original source, they will eventually be free from other sources. The important thing is that the material will exist and it will be available for anyone to learn from. That said, I really doubt that these classes will remain free. (Especially with likes of Hardvard and MIT.)
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- quink 14y agoYou may not believe this, but Family First's Steve Fielding proposed some time close to the last election that a free university be established that would provide its services over the NBN. As kind of a justification of it. http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/355358/family_first_looks_nbn_free_online_uni/ http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/355358/family_first_...
- GFischer 14y agoUniversity-level education is still free here in Uruguay. However, it has several big downsides, which result on artificial barriers like absurdly difficult exams (a calculus exam I took had only 2 people out of 1200 passing), quotas on classes or specializations (sometimes decided by scolarship and other times just by random drawings), and some really bad teachers and overcrowded classes (there are good teachers too, and things pick up after 2nd or 3rd year when most people have dropped). I ended up getting a degree from a private university. Having all of these online courses and virtual university education does sound really great :)