“Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.”
Education
Hey, Teach
“Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.”
—
Robert Conquest reminds of what can happen in institutions as conventions harden, mediocrity and rule-following abounds, and where incentives matter:
“Those teach who can’t do” runs the dictum,
But for some even that’s out of reach:
They can’t even teach—so they’ve picked ’em
To teach other people to teach.
Then alas for the next generation,
For the pots fairly crackle with thorn.
Where psychology meets education
A terrible bullshit is born.’
More here.
Friday Quotation-Mark Twain
“Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.”
Inga Saffron At The New Republic: ‘Granite Countertops, Flat-Screen TVs, Fire Pits: How College Dorms Got Luxe’
Keeping an eye on that upmarket trend in some college amenities. Meanwhile, the economy’s growing dismally at the moment between 1-2%, and enrollment numbers seem pretty flat:
‘How can student housing be going up-market at the exact moment when we are having a national freak-out over rising college costs and the staggering amounts of student debt?’
Wasn’t there that grad student living in his van a while back?
At least there’s this:
‘Administration officials once managed everything on campus, from the English faculty to the janitors, until they realized they could save money by outsourcing the non-academic stuff. It’s much easier to lease a piece of campus land to a developer than to undertake an arduous fund-raising campaign to pay for a new dorm. It’s also 20 percent cheaper: Private companies are able to shave $16,000 off the per-bed cost in their student residences’
Perhaps fewer administrators in the first-place might be part of the answer, administering fewer students who borrow heavily and incentivize rising tuition-costs with debt, as the government keeps pumping more money in?
A softer landing would be nice for that part of the problem.
From The American Conservative Blog: The false promise of MOOC’s (Massive Open Online Courses). Reihan Salam At Reuters: ‘Online Education Can Be Good Or Cheap, But Not Both’
Megan McArdle At Bloomberg: ‘Why Education And Healthcare Cost So Much’
Analagous to old media? What to change and what to keep: From The Arnoldian Project: ‘Architecture, Campus, And Learning To Become’
Should you get a college degree, probably, but you also probably shouldn’t lose sight of why you’re going and divorce yourself entirely from the cost: Gene Expression On Charles Murray: Does College Really Pay Off?…Charles Murray In The New Criterion: The Age Of Educational Romanticism…
From The NY Times, Via Via Media: ‘California Bill Seeks Campus Credit for Online Study’
What is the purpose of waiting around for a semester or two to get the one class you need, or sitting in a lecture hall with over a few hundred other students, or having to drive after work and sit in traffic to attend a night class…when you can get the same credit another way?
California is trying to address the problem:
‘The new legislation would use that panel to determine which 50 introductory courses were most oversubscribed and which online versions of those courses should be eligible for credit. Those decisions would be based on factors like whether the courses included proctored tests, used open-source texts — those available free online — and had been recommended by the American Council on Education. A student could get credit from a third-party course only if the course was full at the student’s home institution, and if that institution did not offer it online.
Despite the element of faculty control that would be built into the process, it is not likely to sit well with faculty.
“I think it’s going to be very controversial,” said Josh Jarrett, a higher education officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which finances research on online education. “The decision to award credit has been one of those solemn things that the faculty hold very dear. But it could be a catalyst for widespread change, driving community colleges where they turn away a lot of students to move quickly to put more of their own courses online, and charge tuition, to keep their students from taking the courses elsewhere.”
There is often a guild mentality amongst professors and teachers, who take the transmission of knowledge seriously as they ought to. There are standards to maintain, and a free spirit of inquiry and rigor to follow and impart. It’s one of the core missions of academia.
In this case, though, responding to market signals, the needs of students, and adapting to new technology will advance the core educational mission if done right.
California leading the way again? Because they have to?
uploaded by mattbucher
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Analagous to old media? What to change and what to keep: From The Arnoldian Project: ‘Architecture, Campus, And Learning To Become’
Should you get a college degree, probably, but you also probably shouldn’t lose sight of why you’re going and divorce yourself entirely from the cost: Gene Expression On Charles Murray: Does College Really Pay Off?…Charles Murray In The New Criterion: The Age Of Educational Romanticism…
Louis Menand At The New Yorker: ‘Live And Learn: Why We Have College’…Repost-Too Much “Quality Control” In Universities? Thomas Lindsay At The National Review: ‘How Universities Devalued Higher Education’
The libertarian angle, getting smart, ambitious people off of the degree treadmill: From The American Interest: Francis Fukuyama Interviews Peter Thiel-’A Conversation With Peter Thiel’ I think it’s going too far, trying to apply libertarian economics onto education, but Milton Friedman on Education is thought-provoking.
Walter Russell Mead takes a look at the blue model (the old progressive model) from the ground up in NYC to argue that it’s simply not working. Check out his series at The American Interest. He has a big vision with some holes in it, but it’s one that embraces change boldly.