NY Times' Brooks and Collins on online education

Interesting back and forth going on.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/college-dot-com/?hp

This is the money quote for me, even though it was buried at the bottom of the blog entry.

 

Brooks is wild about the idea of online education. He sees it as, among other things, a potential U.S. export to the rest of the world. It will be interesting to see if he's proven right eventually.

 

Skeptical online education will be adopted. Education in this country isn't about learning. It's about signaling.

 

Free online course on the US Constitution: http://constitution.hillsdale.edu/

 

This is a great point. It's meant to be an obstacle course to separate the wheat from the chaff just as much as it's meant to actually educate.

 

It serves a coordination function, too. Often just getting in to a school provides the signal. Look at law schools. Employers don't hire from Yale Law because it provides the best education. They hire from Yale because it provides the best students. Diploma is a just a really expensive way of getting all the smart kids agree to spend three years in the same place.

 

Online also forfeits the best and worst of socialization, of disagreement and intimacy, and of rubbing up against people and ambitions like this:

gothamist.com/2012/05/09/janitor_who_earned_columbia_ba_says.php

 

So many classes (such as chemistry, engineering, physics) are particularly ill-suited for online ed.

 

Because they are hands on?

Seems to me like some humanities, particularly philosophy, would be tough, too, because at the heart of understanding it is getting viewpoints and arguments challenged ferociously.

 

Yes, DW. I would think a lit course might be best for online.

 

I've taken three online classes as part of my political science master's program. There is an online live lecture component where the professor has a video feed of him lecturing in his office, and we can either audibly ask questions or type them in. I have another class at the same time, so I have to stream the lecture afterwards.

No one asks questions or clarifies a point. It does make learning a bit more challenging, especially from other students who are just looking for a grade and do not want to learn the finer points of international relations theory or international security.

 

If the purpose of college is credentialing for future economic gain, and it pretty much is, then online higher education is doomed. No parent's paying $70K a year to get little Suzie a degree from online Harvard.