6 ms·

I believe universities will be back to being a haven for those who pursue knowledge for its own sake, and most professional-related credentials will no longer i

by dhimes 18y ago

I believe universities will be back to being a haven for those who pursue knowledge for its own sake, and most professional-related credentials will no longer include a "degree." One of the harbingers of this is the fact that a lot of employers started giving exams to the folks they hire. The 4.0 gpa start not being enough to prove to them that someone was educated enough to do the job (whoa!). I can envision the day when passing some sort of qualifier will be accepted in lieu of a degree for most professions. How you come by the knowledge to pass that qualifier will be up to you.

cchooper 18y ago
The use of universities as a general source of credentials is probably nothing more than inertia from the days when only a select few could attend. There really is no good reason why everyone should get their education from a research institution, especially when they have no intention of going into research. I suspect that the system is self-destructing right now. The more degrees that universities award, the less it will matter that it came from a university. This will bring about the end of most university education, and hence most universities (because they can't all be doing worthwhile research).
- tjmc 18y ago
  What about qualifications that require specialised equipment or infrastructure? If you need to learn about say chip fabrication or radiology it's not enough to just read about it. I suppose you could just pay for access to facilities and equipment on demand, but in the case of something like a chemistry lab or x-ray machine the institution granting access has to know your level of competance before they give you access and the easiest way of doing that without checking each time is a structured program.
  - cchooper 18y ago
    I think other institutions will arise to fill those gaps. They will be pure teaching institutions rather than universisites.
    - dhimes 18y ago
      It could even happen at the universities, if people start attending for classes and programs but not degrees. Some college departments serve multiple masters: a national accreditation organization, which gives the college as a whole accreditation, and some field-specific professional associations which bless the behavior of departments. The professors care primarily about their field-specific status, while the deans worry about the overall stuff. That's part of the reason why you occasionally see a headline that such-and-such univerisity failed to retain accreditation. Often, you can't find a professor willing to take time away from students and research in order to write a report. After all, they think, if I satisfy the peers in my field, why do I care if I have an acceptable org chart? I could easily see an employer caring more about getting through a program blessed by a professional organization than about getting an accredited "degree." I actually think this would be a "purification" process for universities.
azanar 18y ago
I think we'd be better off if the qualifier were mandated, regardless of holding a degree and at what GPA. The metaphor of a degree being a pointer to a body of knowledge fits well here -- I think it was pg who I originally got that metaphor from. I can imagine extending the metaphor to where the degree points to a graph of knowledge, and the GPA is a walk length. No knowledge of which nodes are touched, just how many. Hopefully this metaphor isn't too much of a stretch. :-) The problem is that the GPA to walk relationship isn't well defined at all, and it still doesn't say what they know, or more importantly how well they think and learn. The only thing I can really glean from a degree-holder and their GPA is that they were able to learn some body of material at the pace of a college-level course, and were able to retain and work with that information well enough to get the GPA they have. Maybe, depending on how grading is done, and what their grade was based on. It is a very weak indicator even then, but better than using it for determining stored knowledge. I think it might be better to include as part of the qualifier (in fact, maybe even most of it) a problem they need to learn and apply new things to solve.
mlLK 18y ago
I don't. I don't believe that this older group of people known as a faculty whom make up a department really give two shits whether or not their words and methods are really teaching me something or not. This is a harsh generalization, but unfortunately as much as I don't want to believe it, I've found truer more often than not. Human communication is hard, it's even harder when your terms of agreement is in the form of a syllabus. I don't mean to undermine some of the finest minds I've ever encountered in real-life, I'm just saying that more often than not, the people who do take it upon themselves to know is hardly worth the modern student's money or time. This is simply proven given what the web has become; I've made more meaningful connections by actively participating in what other people are working than I'll ever make in any formal arrangement for the rest of my life. The problem is in how we reassure ourselves, since we often rely on these tried-and-true techniques that aren't really measuring anything of value other than who originally did it and why. Self-directed learners don't fit into the modern University's model. In short, I don't believe in universities because I think we don't have a real way to hold these institutions accountable given all the money we give them. I put most of my faith in the people who don't believe in these monolithic institutions and instead believe that there must be a better way.
gaius 18y ago
How you come by the knowledge to pass that qualifier will be up to you. To a certain extent that's already true of degrees; you can choose not to show up to lectures at all so long as you show up for exams (if there's no coursework obv).

by dhimes 18y ago

cchooper 18y ago

The use of universities as a general source of credentials is probably nothing more than inertia from the days when only a select few could attend. There really is no good reason why everyone should get their education from a research institution, especially when they have no intention of going into research. I suspect that the system is self-destructing right now. The more degrees that universities award, the less it will matter that it came from a university. This will bring about the end of most university education, and hence most universities (because they can't all be doing worthwhile research).

tjmc 18y ago
What about qualifications that require specialised equipment or infrastructure? If you need to learn about say chip fabrication or radiology it's not enough to just read about it. I suppose you could just pay for access to facilities and equipment on demand, but in the case of something like a chemistry lab or x-ray machine the institution granting access has to know your level of competance before they give you access and the easiest way of doing that without checking each time is a structured program.
- cchooper 18y ago
  I think other institutions will arise to fill those gaps. They will be pure teaching institutions rather than universisites.
  - dhimes 18y ago
    It could even happen at the universities, if people start attending for classes and programs but not degrees. Some college departments serve multiple masters: a national accreditation organization, which gives the college as a whole accreditation, and some field-specific professional associations which bless the behavior of departments. The professors care primarily about their field-specific status, while the deans worry about the overall stuff. That's part of the reason why you occasionally see a headline that such-and-such univerisity failed to retain accreditation. Often, you can't find a professor willing to take time away from students and research in order to write a report. After all, they think, if I satisfy the peers in my field, why do I care if I have an acceptable org chart? I could easily see an employer caring more about getting through a program blessed by a professional organization than about getting an accredited "degree." I actually think this would be a "purification" process for universities.

azanar 18y ago

I think we'd be better off if the qualifier were mandated, regardless of holding a degree and at what GPA. The metaphor of a degree being a pointer to a body of knowledge fits well here -- I think it was pg who I originally got that metaphor from. I can imagine extending the metaphor to where the degree points to a graph of knowledge, and the GPA is a walk length. No knowledge of which nodes are touched, just how many. Hopefully this metaphor isn't too much of a stretch. :-) The problem is that the GPA to walk relationship isn't well defined at all, and it still doesn't say what they know, or more importantly how well they think and learn. The only thing I can really glean from a degree-holder and their GPA is that they were able to learn some body of material at the pace of a college-level course, and were able to retain and work with that information well enough to get the GPA they have. Maybe, depending on how grading is done, and what their grade was based on. It is a very weak indicator even then, but better than using it for determining stored knowledge. I think it might be better to include as part of the qualifier (in fact, maybe even most of it) a problem they need to learn and apply new things to solve.

mlLK 18y ago

I don't. I don't believe that this older group of people known as a faculty whom make up a department really give two shits whether or not their words and methods are really teaching me something or not. This is a harsh generalization, but unfortunately as much as I don't want to believe it, I've found truer more often than not. Human communication is hard, it's even harder when your terms of agreement is in the form of a syllabus. I don't mean to undermine some of the finest minds I've ever encountered in real-life, I'm just saying that more often than not, the people who do take it upon themselves to know is hardly worth the modern student's money or time. This is simply proven given what the web has become; I've made more meaningful connections by actively participating in what other people are working than I'll ever make in any formal arrangement for the rest of my life. The problem is in how we reassure ourselves, since we often rely on these tried-and-true techniques that aren't really measuring anything of value other than who originally did it and why. Self-directed learners don't fit into the modern University's model. In short, I don't believe in universities because I think we don't have a real way to hold these institutions accountable given all the money we give them. I put most of my faith in the people who don't believe in these monolithic institutions and instead believe that there must be a better way.

gaius 18y ago

How you come by the knowledge to pass that qualifier will be up to you. To a certain extent that's already true of degrees; you can choose not to show up to lectures at all so long as you show up for exams (if there's no coursework obv).