From http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2012/05/skip-college-go-to-wor...
The much vaunted American higher education system coasts on the reputation of the top three dozen schools which themselves gain much of their stature simply by excluding 85% of applicants. Most post secondary institutions just don’t add much value and can no longer justify outrageous tuition.
This is a great example of an effective sales pitch. It's dramatic, it's urgent, and it frames the problem while implying a solution: can you believe that they "just don’t add much value"? And they "can no longer justify outrageous tuition."
So, our solution is [seemingly non-traditional option X].
And this will totally work, especially if non-traditional option X involves technology, and has nothing that bears a superficial resemblance to a classroom.
Education has been disrupted! Huzzah! Let the VC funds roll in!
Except, of course, alternative education has as much, if not more, to do with the expectations on the learner than it does with the medium through which learning is accomplished. That's why the online offering of organizations like K12, Pearson, Khan, etc, aren't particularly innovative from a pedagogical place. Their expectations on the learner are relatively unchanged from what people have been doing for centuries.
Their business models, and how they access taxpayer funds set aside for public education, are arguably innovative. But, that shouldn't be confused with anything that changes or shifts the learning.
Learner paced is not the same as learner driven. And choosing a path through a closed system is not learner driven.
A truly alternative model allows the learner to set their own agenda, and their path to achieve it, and to fail along the way, and to document how and why they failed, and what they learned in the process, and then to keep going. There are many ways to achieve this alternative, including in some traditional settings, some business settings, some community-based settings - and in all of these settings, access to people with experience (and just for kicks, let's call these smart, experienced people "teachers") is only helpful.
When we get to a place when an internship service is being marketed as an innovation, we need to reboot our imaginations.
And, to be clear, some of the goals of E[nstitute] are interesting, and worthwhile. A fully accredited program based on life/work experience is a nice foray into creating more emphasis on informal learning. But a company can be good, and interesting, without the hyperbole. I'd love to a business environment where an educational startup could just be excellent.
Comments
It's not about the tech
FunnyMonkey,
You make some strong points here and I agree with you to a certain extent regarding your views on traditional and alternative education. I, however, don't see this the same way. I actually see this as going back to tradition when everyone didn't need a college degree and people learned via apprenticeship.
I believe our obsession with a college degree is detrimental to our society and we're seeing the effects of this as college grads struggle to find the type of career they were looking for.
Not everyone is destined to follow the herd and be in a cube. My parents were such people. My father was an extremely successful director of photography in Hollywood, my mother an accountant, and my other father a top sound engineer. All entered their fields through apprenticing.
This approach brings us closer to what I believe would be best for students today. That being college for some, sure, but for all? Unnecessary.
Why not both, and then some?
RE:
The *cost* of a college degree, and the corresponding increase in student debt, is certainly detrimental to our society. Having a population with more schooling is arguably a very good thing. No one is arguing that the current higher ed system is perfect; the never-ending reliance on lower-paid adjuncts in lieu of tenure-track positions speaks volumes about the choices and priorities of many institutions. But it's hard to make the case that people don't benefit from more learning. While unemployment rates are a crude indicator, college graduates have lower rates of unemployment than their peers.
RE:
The notion that you leave college and immediately find the dream job - has that ever really been accurate, or is that more a nostalgia for a past that never existed?
RE:
I completely agree. But the notion that going to college = following the herd = getting consigned to a cube just doesn't hold up.
In many situations (both inside and outside formal educational settings), what we call "learning" is actually a complex personal/social relationship that matures over time. We see this in mentorships within academic or professional settings, we see this in some classrooms where teachers and students connect with and learn from one another, and we see this in internships. All of these paths are good, and admitting that different options have benefits doesn't diminish the value of the other options.
Getting back to your original point about the obsession of the college degree, I'd argue that we are more obsessed with credentials as a whole, and that college degrees are just one of the more visible symbols we encounter. One of the responses we see in the "why is a college degree necessary" conversation is that a college degree helps demonstrate a core set of traits: to earn a degree a person has to persist in an endeavor over multiple years; a person has to successfully navigate a social system, etc. Leaving aside the relative value of these traits/accomplishments, our reliance on the college degree as a proxy for learning has left us blind to other forms of learning that are more difficult to "verify" but are equally valuable.
But, getting back to my original point: we can build systems to make it easier to access and benefit from informal learning. We *should* do that. But can we do it without the hyperbole and the overblown claims, and without demonizing other systems that are also effective for some learners? We don't need to get Manichaean about our learning.
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