Proper education requires that you go into the lab and wrestle the equipment yourself. So no big deal. But education-like leisure activities may be much changed.
Mind you, some academic crooks will pass off watching films from the laboratory as “education”. Perhaps they already do.
Richard
Given that, as you say, universities are still run on a pre-Gutenberg technology, after 570 years, why should the interweb catch on any quicker?
alan
An article about how the internet is changing education and no mention of the khan academy (http://www.khanacademy.org/)?
Andrew Montgomery
You’re ignoring the signalling value of education. A degree from Oxford doesn’t just prove that you spent three years learning stuff. It signals that you performed well both at school and at university (consistency), that you worked hard at uni for three years (tenacity), and that you have an address book full of useful connections.
There’s a big difference between learning on your own and learning alongside other people. If you don’t understand a topic presented by a lecturer, you can ask five classmates who can explain it in five different ways.
Furthermore, a university degree involves a significant amount of pre-commitment and fixed deadlines. This helps motivate students. If you have a drop-in online education system then it’s all too easy to procrastinate or drop out.
Finally, two words: Open University. They’ve eschewed lectures from day one. They were at the forefront of using new technology to deliver education in the 1970s – late-night BBC shows, video tapes, etc. Somehow in the great higher education boom of the Labour years, they didn’t play much part.
Do employers treat a degree from the OU in the same way as a degree from LSE? If not, why not?
Proper education requires that you go into the lab and wrestle the equipment yourself. So no big deal. But education-like leisure activities may be much changed.
Mind you, some academic crooks will pass off watching films from the laboratory as “education”. Perhaps they already do.
Given that, as you say, universities are still run on a pre-Gutenberg technology, after 570 years, why should the interweb catch on any quicker?
An article about how the internet is changing education and no mention of the khan academy (http://www.khanacademy.org/)?
You’re ignoring the signalling value of education. A degree from Oxford doesn’t just prove that you spent three years learning stuff. It signals that you performed well both at school and at university (consistency), that you worked hard at uni for three years (tenacity), and that you have an address book full of useful connections.
There’s a big difference between learning on your own and learning alongside other people. If you don’t understand a topic presented by a lecturer, you can ask five classmates who can explain it in five different ways.
Furthermore, a university degree involves a significant amount of pre-commitment and fixed deadlines. This helps motivate students. If you have a drop-in online education system then it’s all too easy to procrastinate or drop out.
Finally, two words: Open University. They’ve eschewed lectures from day one. They were at the forefront of using new technology to deliver education in the 1970s – late-night BBC shows, video tapes, etc. Somehow in the great higher education boom of the Labour years, they didn’t play much part.
Do employers treat a degree from the OU in the same way as a degree from LSE? If not, why not?