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    The End of College as We Know It (Not)

    By Doctor Cleveland on Thu, 05/17/2012 - 11:53pm | Politics, Social Justice

    So, I started blogging about Thomas Friedman's rah-rah piece about how Online. Education. Is about! To Change!!! EVERYTHING!1!!! But I've been slowed down by designing an actual online class, and by various things that tend not to slow Tom Friedman down, such as complexity, plausibility, and actual knowledge of the topic. I don't think online education is a glorious revolution in the making, as Friedman does, and I don't think it's a hopeless case either. I can't tell you the simple, clear story that Friedman can, because I know too much to actually believe one.

    But let me say this: when op-ed writers talk about college as we know it being totally transformed into something totally unlike universities as we've known them (and a surprising number of op-ed writers are fond of saying things like that), they don't actually mean what they're saying. They don't even want what they say they want. Traditional college education is not going away, and they don't want it to. What they mean is that they want college education to go away for some people.

    Whatever changes in American education, the rich and famous universities are going to adapt, survive, and continue doing basically what they've been doing all along: educating hand-picked crops of promising students in a traditional residential setting, a few thousand at a time. People talk about American education being "broken" or about an "education bubble" about to burst, but the places like Harvard and Stanford and MIT are doing fine. By a lot of standards they're doing better than ever. If this is what "broken" looks like, don't wait up nights for it to get fixed.

    And it should be noted that it tends to be these very places, like Stanford, Harvard, and MIT, who have recently made high-profile investments in free online education, such as the Massive Open On-Line Courses (MOOCs) that helped get Friedman so worked up about the Great Leap Forward. But you can be sure that Stanford, Harvard, and MIT don't see these big, tuition-free initiatives as any threat to their core enterprise of selective residential education in face-to-face classrooms. You can be sure of that because if they thought these new offerings would kill off their core business, they would not be offering them.  (Confidential to Thomas Friedman: Duh.)

    Any big changes in American higher education will leave the big institutions pretty much alone. Nobody's going to make Harvard do anything that's not to its own benefit. When excitable pundits talk about abolishing college as we know it, they mean getting rid of the other colleges. You know, the not-so-elite ones. The ones that almost every college student in America actually goes to.

    When people talk about radical changes to American education, they mean scrapping the public universities and some of the modestly-endowed private schools, "reforming" them by offering some less expensive alternative that's good enough for little people. You'll hear many of the same pundits saying that "college shouldn't be for everyone," and that they do mean. They don't want to abolish traditional colleges for themselves, or their children. They just want to abolish it for the rest of us.

    Topics: 
    Politics
    Social Justice

    Comments

    Hey Doc:

    This is really interesting stuff.  Ironically, one of my partners was just telling me about what is going on with a friend of his who is the president of small college in upstate New York that is part of the SUNY system. It ain't Harvard but it's one helluva school.  And the guy is killing himself because of funding cuts, trying to make Sophie's choices about cutting this or that department.  It's a tragedy and I wholeheartedly agree with you, and particularly from how you describe things, that college on the internet is not a bad thing per se, but is also not a substitute for an arts quad of the physical type.

    Really nice work Doc.

    Bruce

     


    by Bruce Levine on Fri, 05/18/2012 - 10:06am

    When I was writing op-eds for my college paper during my senior year (The Daily Lobo at the University of New Mexico) I wrote a piece along the lines of "college isn't for everyone."  I wish I hadn't, despite getting it being positively received.  Because, of course, when I said, "not for everyone," I still meant, "for me and my friends and people like us."

    Similarly, when I see full fledged adult op-ed writers say things about cheaper online courses, trade schools, vocational institutes and the like, I rarely see them saying, "I wish I'd had that option instead of four years at Oberlin."  Or, "This is what I'd like my kids to do."  And, until you're ready to say either, "I wish I'd done that," or "I'd like my kids to do that..." then stop it.

    Because what you really mean is that there are "other" people out there who need to get out of the way and not take that lecture course with the well published, semi-famous professor because, you know... study criminology online!

    None of which is to say that online courses aren't great.  I actually would, now that I have a job and a kid, consider that option over taking a physical course, both for the expense and the convenience.  So I'd like to see them become more widely accepted as continuing ed.  And, yes, some people would prefer a community college or trade school and we should have them.

    But we shouldn't use arguments like this to try to steer people away from the traditional 4 year university of college experience.  People can make up their own minds about that.


    by Michael Maiello on Fri, 05/18/2012 - 11:08am

    We shouldn't tout it over brick-and-mortar (or more importantly, immersion), but we should tout it (where it's worthy) over not going to school at all.


    by Verified Atheist on Fri, 05/18/2012 - 11:59am

    Doc, I very much appreciate your insight that discussions of online education tend to incorporate implicit distinctions between the top schools and "the rest," which are in fact the majority. But your analysis of the top schools' interest in MOOCs seems flippant.

    First, my sense is that the people pushing these programs are professors, whose goals are not necessarily congruous with the universities'. I imagine that they are driven by a combination of idealism and self-interest.

    Second, even if these programs have the universities' full support, that does not mean they don't feel threatened. As with any emergent business model, it's prudent for the dominant operators of the old model to invest in the new one so as not to be left behind. When MIT rolls out MOOCs, you can hardly expect Stanford to sit by idly--especially if it feels threatened by the new model.


    by Michael Wolraich on Fri, 05/18/2012 - 12:13pm

    First, my sense is that the people pushing these programs are professors, whose goals are not necessarily congruous with the universities'. I imagine that they are driven by a combination of idealism and self-interest.

    I had the same thought. I know many professors who are willing to "betray" their University in order to do what they (and usually I) consider to be the "right thing". However, these courses do require university support.


    by Verified Atheist on Fri, 05/18/2012 - 12:21pm

    Doc, I very much appreciate your insight that discussions of online education tend to incorporate implicit distinctions between the top schools and "the rest," which are in fact the majority. But your analysis of the top schools' interest in MOOCs seems flippant.

    Well, G, I only had time for flippant. As I said, the fuller post I was writing about this wasn't getting finished, so I spun off one point as a stand-alone

    My non-flippant comment on MOOCs is that they aren't actually a rival or alternative to traditional college courses, but something quite different. Stanford isn't worried about MOOCs replacing its BA and BS programs, because they know that MOOCs don't actually replace those things.

    MOOCs are better understood not as college classes (even if they replicate the lecture component of a college class), but as a new and more sophisticated entry in a long tradition of mass public education initiatives, like Great Books series, college lectures on tape, and PBS.  Like those earlier projects, they're good things. But they don't replace college education.

    (In fact, MOOCs are intended to raise a school's prestige and increase demand for its residential program, much as those earlier public-education initiatives were.)


    by Doctor Cleveland on Fri, 05/18/2012 - 1:21pm

    OK, I look forward to the fuller post then.

    I'm not sure if anyone is sure what's going to happen with the MOOCs, including the university administrators. Certainly, they're not an immediate threat. Maybe they'll amount to little more than glorified lectures on tape.

    But if the MOOCs eventually acquire recognition as an equivalent or superior teaching tool to the average university lecture, the Harvards and Stanfords may have to find new ways to differentiate themselves, such as more seminars.

    Arguably, the average lecture course at the top universities isn't much better than the average lecture course anywhere else, since the most brilliant professors are not necessarily the most brilliant teachers, and that hasn't hurt the top universities so far. But there's still a broad perception that you get something more from the luminaries--I dunno, by osmosis? If those luminaries become more widely accessible, it could reduce the exclusive prestige of the universities somewhat. Of course, it would only be a question of degree, no pun intended.


    by Michael Wolraich on Fri, 05/18/2012 - 5:09pm

    You get something more from the luminaries if you engage them outside the classroom. I sometimes felt like I learned more in one hour in a professor's office talking about an interesting problem than in a whole semester in the classroom.


    by Verified Atheist on Fri, 05/18/2012 - 5:26pm

    A comment about online courses that's tangential to your main point.

    I have a friend who teaches poetry at one of the North Carolina state schools.

    Per force or by choice, she's moved over to teaching only online courses from now until she retires.

    So she invited me to audit the course, which I tried to do.

    One of the things that impressed me was that it was MUCH more work for the teacher to teach this way because: 1) everything had to be written down, 2) the course almost had to be programmed like software, putting in every step for the student to follow, and 3) there were a lot of crossed wires in the cross-talk among students and teachers.

    Almost all of this stuff could have been dealt with in minutes verbally. And I'm not even talking about the substance of the give and take between student and teacher on the subject matter.

    Beyond that--call me a geezer--but it was HARD to figure out what I was supposed to do. Maybe she wrote the course badly or I just wasn't used to participating this way, but I thought all my online experience would make it easy, and it was not.

    I liked the IDEA of the course, because it meant I could participate on my schedule. But it was actually a lot more work just "being in" the class than if I'd gone to class.

    Maybe online streaming would take care of some of this. This was done entirely on Blackboard.

    As to college not being for some people, I take your point about the implicit elitism in much of this talk. Everyone should have the opportunity to go to college if they want to go. But it's also true that some people really have no interest in nor aptitude for it and probably would be better served by learning a trade or a skill they could use to make a decent living. Or doing something else.

    It just doesn't seem reasonable to assert that everyone must, or even should, get a liberal arts or science degree. Why?

     


    by Peter Schwartz on Sun, 05/20/2012 - 2:44pm

    But it's also true that some people really have no interest in nor aptitude for it and probably would be better served by learning a trade or a skill they could use to make a decent living. Or doing something else.

    It just doesn't seem reasonable to assert that everyone must, or even should, get a liberal arts or science degree. Why?

    Thanks for your comment, Peter. I agree with you on this. In fact, I think everybody agrees with you on this. I have never claimed that everyone should get a BA or BS, or that everyone should go to college. And what's more, I have never heard anybody say that. I have heard lots of people refute the idea, but no one propose it. So after a while, I've started to wonder what the people arguing against an argument that no one makes are really arguing for.

    Everybody agrees that many people are prefer and profit from getting vocational training or some other kind of occupational education rather than a liberal arts degree. And no one has ever tried to stop that. When Obama says things like "every American needs some education beyond high school," he means trade programs and secretarial school and all the rest. Nobody is insisting that everyone go to Oberlin and get a BA in French. And no one (with the exception of pre-professional athletes) is being forced into BA programs against their will.

    When people say, "Not everyone should go to college," when everyone does not, in fact, go to college, what those people are really saying is that too many people go to college. But since all the people going to college are volunteers, the way to have fewer of them is to limit access to college. Yes, it is true that not everyone needs a BA. But when people say "Not everyone needs a BA," they usually mean things like "let's zero out low-income college loans."

    I also agree with you about garden-variety e-learning, including Blackboard, having spent much of the last week mucking about with the newest release of Blackboard. Yes, lots of things are very cumbersome, and courses can become very controlling, and a lot of technology and effort goes into replicating things that face-to-face speech does much more easily. Many times the best argument for it is that it's better than not being able to take a class at all. But that's an argument to take seriously; e-learning does expand access to people who would otherwise be shut out.


    by Doctor Cleveland on Sun, 05/20/2012 - 11:54pm

    When people say, "Not everyone should go to college," when everyone does not, in fact, go to college, what those people are really saying is that too many people go to college. But since all the people going to college are volunteers, the way to have fewer of them is to limit access to college. Yes, it is true that not everyone needs a BA. But when people say "Not everyone needs a BA," they usually mean things like "let's zero out low-income college loans."

    Yes, this is your central point as I understand and it is VERY disturbing. I really appreciate the light your shedding on education in America.

    Doc, you know much better than I the current discourse on the "need for a college education." And perhaps my viewpoint stems from my own and my peers' privileged background where going to college after HS was assumed to be the next step.

    But...I do recall many, many folks in the media, in education, in industry saying that, "in today's world," you needed a college degree to get a decent job. This may not have been true, but it was oft-repeated.

    So I'm not sure what you mean when you say you never heard anyone say this. Perhaps we're talking at cross-purposes here, and I don't know what you mean by this...but I don't know what you mean by this-:)

    Now, I would agree, people talk about many more options beyond the BA and BS. But when I was growing up in the 1960s and later, the culture was pushing people toward college, not toward a trade or secretarial school and the like.

    I'm quibbling here a bit, but mostly I wanted to thank you for all your very informative posts.


    by Peter Schwartz on Wed, 05/23/2012 - 12:50pm

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