The Siege of Academe: Silicon Valley's fight to disrupt higher education

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2012/features/_its_three_oclock_in039373.php?page=all

by joshuahedlund • 14 years ago

63 46 14 years ago

pg3• 14 years ago

It's still hard to predict how well these efforts will work, but I've rarely seen a domain more ripe for reform than undergraduate education.

If there's a riper one, it would be K-12 education. That's the really big prize, measured both by how much room there is for improvement and the forces arrayed against you. But if you're feeling heroic here's the place to go: http://imaginek12.com.

yequalsx6• 14 years ago

In some sense Gutenberg ought to have obviated the need for the lecture format in college but it didn't. Radio didn't, television didn't and I suspect the internet won't either. At least not for the majority of students.

I've been teaching online math classes for 7 years now and those classes almost always perform much worse than face-to-face classes. I suspect that the reform that will come will be more in the form of enhancing face-to-face classes and not replacing them. Maybe more flipped classroom style reform. For all of it's perceived badness the lecture format is remarkably resilient in that it's better for the average student than any of the current proposals that I've seen or experimented with.

Disclaimer: I'm an average teacher (below average?) and much of my opinion comes from personal, anecdotal experience.

dave_sullivan2• 14 years ago

Do you have any opinions on the "student's desire to learn" factor of online vs offline classes you've taught? I suspect that many online colleges might attract students looking for something "easy" and potentially more likely not to try as hard. I wonder how your experience would compare with one of coursersas math classes, eg stats or probabilistic graphical models, particularly counting only students who attempted to actually finish the class.

alberich2• 14 years ago

Maybe that is because face-to-face classes offer a richer experience for the students. Also, it doesn't feel so boring when someone is talking to you (e.g. watching a video on the computer screen is not the same as a person talking to you). Although you can record live lectures and replay it afterwards for online classes, I feel it requires a higher level of motivation for the students to watch it and actually pay attention to it.

Of course highly motivated students can fill the gaps alone and don't need this extra motivation from a dedicated instructor in the room. For the rest, I guess face-to-face classes will be the best for a long time.

FrojoS3• 14 years ago

> In some sense Gutenberg ought to have obviated the need for the lecture format in college but it didn't. Radio didn't, television didn't and I suspect the internet won't either. At least not for the majority of students.

Interesting perspective! I'm not sure I want to agree, but thanks for sharing.

One of my friends, a particular smart one, always said: "Not only is a book a better teacher, it also has more character."

And I generally agree. Very few classes, even at top universities can compete with a well written book.

Its hard for me to tell, how effective a "book only" education would be when I spend most of my life getting degrees, accompanied with lectures. The few home schooled people I know are very knowledgable and smart but I'm not sure if that proofs anything.

cube132• 14 years ago

Ultimately, I think you hit the nail on the head.

This isn't a problem that can be solved with technology alone. It's a social issue, and one that technology can certainly assist in solving.

pg3• 14 years ago

I wasn't talking about the format so much as e.g. the rate at which college tuition has risen relative to inflation, and the consequent bloat at universities.

jseliger• 14 years ago

I'm a grad student in English at the University of Arizona, and one thing I've observed is that many if not most of my students probably could learn much of what they learn in my class if they were extremely motivated. But most of us aren't, and class provides a pre-binding incentive structure to actually do something, where the default would probably be to do nothing, or hang out on FB or HN, which is close to nothing.

I've written about this issue in more detail here: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/from-the-department... and elsewhere.

People have said that college in its conventional structure will remain essential right up to the point where middle-class families can't afford it any longer, and I have a feeling we're reaching that point. If you'd like to know more about why, check out Why Does College Cost So Much? Tl;dnr: Baumol's Cost Disease combined with student loans (http://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-College-Cost-Much/dp/01997445...).

saraid2162• 14 years ago

Keep in mind where universities and lectures come from: they are ex cathedra, literally. Gutenberg and Martin Luther are the ones who obviated the need for the "lecture format" and yet Catholicism still stands, only incrementally changed from those many centuries ago.

The lecture format is necessary for reasons that have only indirectly to do with education: it's about power structure and power flow. The more deeply I've looked into education reform, the more strongly I feel that the necessary reform can't be isolated to education. It simply can't be "fixed" without dealing with the weight of centuries attached to it.

When you look at education, you're looking at a societal concept of what a child is. Our concept is that a child is something to be lectured. How could we then not have lectures? (And yes, I am a fan of Montessori.)

GFischer• 14 years ago

I heard basically the same thing yesterday from the former head of Uruguay's Chamber of Commerce (who happens to be from the IT industry)(1).

And that, even though my country is already thought of as progressive (first 100% OLPC deployment, etc...)

I guess the thought is gathering momentum, I hope that startups finally get those barriers to crumble. Education still has a 19th century mindset in several points.

(1) Mr. Arnaldo G. Castro ( http://www.cncs.com.uy/softis/A/cl/2 )

xiaoma• 14 years ago

Even if the efforts of Coursera, Kahn Academy, etc "fail" and the incumbent universities are unscathed and continue raising prices, I would still consider them a huge success for as long as they are able to continue operations. School credentials aside, the education itself is very valuable. While education may not be the thing people most want out of school, it's definitely true that these companies are building something that people want... something I want, at least.

stephengillie• 14 years ago

A week after I graduated, I was walking across campus. I watched as my tuition dollars (and others) paid for a team of workers to hoist an entire 60-year-old house, drop it onto a large frame, drive it about 200 feet, and plop the house onto an empty lawn. Just so another building could be built at the old location.

In the 3 years since I graduated, I've watched my university move 2 buildings, demolish and replace 5 dorm buildings (half of the university's dorm capacity), and massively expand their stadium.

I watched as the school's president approved all of these expenditures, then watched him leave to head the NCAA as students rallied about the cost of tuition, which has doubled in the past 3 years.

tymekpavel• 14 years ago

To be fair, capital improvement projects usually don't come from student tuition. But I get where you're coming from.

adestefan3• 14 years ago

This is one of those times I wouldn't hesitate to use the word "never." These projects are done either by dedicated funds that wealthy donors direct the money to, via government grants that can only be used for that purpose, or out of their endowment that comes from the combination of the above.

naner• 14 years ago

I'll offer an opposing anecdote. While I was at Georgia Tech (2002-2007) I noticed continuous improvements/investments into the campus and student resources. It was great.

snewe• 14 years ago

Many of these actions are a consequence of the tax code: non-profit institutions such as universities can borrow for capital projects at the municipal rate and invest at the market rate (the latter is usually higher than the former). Most university have ample endowment for these capital "improvements," but this quirk of the tax code effectively subsidized a bit too much of it.

fscof• 14 years ago

"While the [Minerva] courses will be conducted primarily online, students will live together in shared housing units in cities around the world. They’ll start in their home country and then rotate to different cities in later years, finishing with a capstone project in their chosen major."

I'm a huge fan of this approach. A clear advantage of university education is the network of awesome people you meet while attending. I've learned way more from working and conversing with smart people than I ever did in classes.

Excited to see how their experiment turns out.

brudgers2• 14 years ago

University of Phoenix already disrupted higher education. Half a billion in net income last year, the ability to raise money on Wall Street, and full accreditation give it significant clout. 300,000 students doesn't hurt, either.

It's not the technology that's the barrier to entry. UoP primarily uses NNTP for it's classes. Pull technology allows for 24 hour delivery and flexible schedules for adjunct its largely faculty.

In my opinion, the big competition in online higher education could come from institutions able to outsource faculty positions to the same parts of the world to which call centers are often outsourced.

jff• 14 years ago

A University of Phoenix degree isn't worth much, though.

brudgers2• 14 years ago

It has significantly than CodeAcademy in general and within the typical workplace it is adequate for HR purposes.

patmcguire• 14 years ago

Right. I get annoyed by articles like this because they get so excited by the technology and the product itself that they ignore the basic issue with Higher Ed - it's not in the business of education, it's in the business of signaling.

I did undergrad at Columbia, a supposedly "elite" institution, and it was a joke. Classes weren't what I would describe as educational - a better image would be some big corporate bureaucratic job where the solution to every problem is obvious but you have to spend a lot of time time figuring out just how, precisely, to flatter your superiors. Maybe if you're being cynical you could say that's the best education you can get, but I wasn't impressed.

What Columbia does give, and what apparently holds a lot of water, is an semi-official grant of being Better Than Everyone Else. It's ridiculous that kids who learned nothing are rented out by consulting firms for a quarter million a year to come into a company they have no familiarity with and have all the answers to everything, but they get away with it because they're Better Than Everyone Else. Of course a piece of paper doesn't make you competent, and the compiler doesn't care where you went to school, but there are so many times you rely on someone else's positive appraisal of you (hiring, funding) that brand name has a massive impact. It's turtles all the way down, too. The University of Illinois is more prestigious than Illinois State, but who actually knows which is better at teaching?

The current problem with higher ed is that for most purposes in the current economy it just functions as a class system. You're the kind of person who went to an Ivy League schol, you get this kind of job. You're the kind of person who went to flagship state school? You can't get that job, but you can get another that's no so bad. You went to University of Phoenix? Let me tell you about this one weird trick housewives are using to make money from home.

Education is a secondary concern right now.

The Siege of Academe: Silicon Valley's fight to disrupt higher education

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