Last fall, David Wiley stood in front of a room full of professors and university administrators and delivered a prediction that made them squirm: “Your institutions will be irrelevant by 2020.”
Wiley is one part Nostradamus and nine parts revolutionary, an educational evangelist who preaches about a world where students listen to lectures on iPods, and those lectures are also available online to everyone anywhere for free. Course materials are shared between universities, science labs are virtual, and digital textbooks are free.
Institutions that don’t adapt, he says, risk losing students to institutions that do. The warning applies to community colleges and ivy-covered universities, says Wiley, who is a professor of psychology and instructional technology at Brigham Young University.
America’s colleges and universities, says Wiley, have been acting as if what they offer — access to educational materials, a venue for socializing, the awarding of a credential — can’t be obtained anywhere else. By and large, campus-based universities haven’t been innovative, he says, because they’ve been a monopoly.
But Google, Facebook, free online access to university lectures, after-hours institutions such as the University of Phoenix, and virtual institutions such as Western Governors University have changed that. Many of today’s students, he says, aren’t satisfied with the old model that expects them to go to a lecture hall at a prescribed time and sit still while a professor talks for an hour.
Um… way to have relevant pictures for your blog entry. Pig.
So can we dump student aid from the budget, or are they to be subsidized forever?
Stephanie said: “Um… way to have relevant pictures for your blog entry. Pig.”
The pictures are completely relevant. They show actual students on their way to class and attending class. What could be more relevant than that?
No we just going start new subsidies for Computers, on-line colleges , virtual high schools and heavily promote majors like “webcam performer”
#1 Stephanie
You are correct, the pictures are irrelevant. The bottom one is wearing underwear.
To get back on topic…
I don’t think higher education classrooms will ever go away. Sure some professions may turn into hobbies and some professionals might just be self taught. Shit I see it all too often in the design industry. Honestly those “self taught” graphic artists are some of the worst I have ever seen. I have seen some good ones, but for the most part you can tell from a mile away.
Another field of study would be medicine. You want to go under the knife of a surgeon who got his degree on one screen and checked his e-mail on the other? Are there some professions and professionals out there who are self made? Sure. as I have said before there are some great self taught designers, programmers, repairmen, scholars, etc. But without institutional education and learning, there will be no benchmark. Expectations would lessen, and industry would suffer.
As for the pictures, please note that SOME people read this blog during their lunch hour. at least leave the NSFW pics until after 5.
6. “Honestly those “self taught” graphic artists are some of the worst I have ever seen.”
I have to agree with this. I’ve lived with plenty of people who could draw, tattoo artists, etc. types. Anyway, I thought this one guy was great. I mean fantastic. Until he finally got his degree. Now he’s fricken fantastic and all of his old stuff looks like amateurish crap.
Just consider how much has changed in the past 10 years. Remember dial-up, 3.5″ diskettes, ASCII based text email, Kodak film.
The change in the next 10 years will be even greater.
The ivy-covered universities won’t be shuttered, but they will face some serious threats to their financial well being. $150,000 for 4 years of a liberal-arts degree is ludicrous.
With the impending Obama hyper-inflation disaster, many of the universities are going to be going the way of the New York Times and the Dodo bird.
Many of today’s students, he says, aren’t satisfied with the old model that expects them to go to a lecture hall at a prescribed time and sit still while a professor talks for an hour.
Many of today’s students would rather not work hard too. That doesn’t mean we should dumb down the class material.
There is no substitute for the classroom experience, teacher and students interacting and discussing. The teacher can see who’s getting it and who isn’t. Students learn more listening to other people’s perspectives.
Though I have to agree that the pricing of college educations has gotten out of control. People seem to think that price=quality. Or maybe that it doesn’t matter what you learn, as long as you go to a BigName ™ university.
Obviously I’ll get attacked for agreeing with Stephanie, but come on guys every day there are T&A shots on this site, why? The shots above are terrible, the first is a Lolita fetish shot and the second is total porn. This is an interesting article and I work in education and would like to tweet it, I would love to be able to point everyone to the dvorak.org/blog page to give him some new traffic, but how can I without coming off as a sexist pig? Why aren’t there more women in tech… gee I wonder.
>Though I have to agree that the pricing of college educations has gotten out of control.
That’s what happens when someone else is paying the bills. Even worse when the government response to higher prices is to increase funding for student aid.
The only thing getting close to irrelevant at the moment is the pseudo-porn this blog is becoming. Geez. I guess it’s just TOO much of a stretch for some writers of this blog to realize that something more than horny adolescent-style geeks might be reading it.
Yes, by 2020 college in general with be irrelevant. Why? The public school system is producing total illiterates. What’s the point of college for these kids?
More stories and related pictures on schools.
The classroom is not going anywhere. It’s usefulness as the perfect setting to exercise influence, shape and retain control of all those young minds is unmatched.
It’s common knowledge that today’s universities are nothing more than political and social indoctrination centers. Don’t believe me – try delivering a non-PC thought and see how quick the ever growing tolerance-mongers attack.
All those good little socialist minds will required constant direction and filling with the correct state approved material which will be used for the good of the state.
Pathetic really – Never have I seen a group of people long for slavery more than this generation of the clueless.
SN,
Clearly there are other readers out there who agree with me. Your poll screams douche bag since you have both choices favoring you, but I bet you thought it was rather clever… and maybe it is based off your IQ.
Once again, I love how this site aims for alienating the female readers.
16. “Clearly there are other readers out there who agree with me.”
Great, start a blog. Apparently, you already have a solid support base.
“Your poll screams douche bag since you have both choices favoring you”
It’s my poll, so of course if favors me. And because it’s apparant you don’t get it, I’ll explain it to you. My poll was nothing more than a joke. So it doesn’t really matter which side is favored.
“Once again, I love how this site aims for alienating the female readers.”
Take this up with john, it’s his site, But he’s one of the worst offenders. Check out the picture he used for this posting! Even I wouldn’t have used that one considering the seriousness of the story.
@Stephanie
Try eBay … you should buy a sense of humor.
I could certainly see a time where the traditional “lecture hall” could be replaced by a virtual one, but not in what we see today.
I could see a single instructor/professor/lecturer presenting on a modified whiteboard in front of multiple classrooms using that Cisco Telepresence product. That would allow students to see their instructor in “full-size” at the podium while sitting at their desk, if they chose. Or even from their home computer with web-cam so the teacher could see a wall of students from his/her perspective to call upon them, and see them interacting with the teacher, which is the most important part of learning: interaction. That modified whiteboard could instantly be put into students computer notes, so they aren’t just copying, unless they want.
Now the hook is that there would be a lower need of teachers, and the number of students per class could/should still be limited because of the interaction need cited above.
One of my professors actually used a “feedback” device at each station to see how well each student was understanding the material. It could do simple responses like answering A-F for spontaneous questions throughout the lecture. Why couldn’t this same idea be incorporated with things like on several online webinars I’ve been to where you could see a set of squares representing each attendee and those squares were color coded based on their comfort level and/or question to be answered.
Technologies like these would easily allow for the “traditional” classroom to still be felt and experienced. You’d still be stuck with being in class on time, but that may just be your living room computer and not the lecture hall across campus today.
“Just because you can do something does not mean you should do it.”
Online courses may work for some situations (single parents, home-bound students, etc) but it’s still a compromise. Just think of all the cool equipment that one comes in contact with in any college science course. Now kiss it goodbye as you virtually manipulate your test tubes to learn about things like chemical equilibrium. Who is going to become passionate about natural science by looking at a computer screen?
Where will these online college students live, with their parents? Boring! Even if the online student moves out of the nest, attending class online would severely limit social and cultural opportunities that define the college experience. Such things include having fun, making friends, drinking with friends, getting in trouble, getting laid, and sometimes finding the love of one’s life (on the down side: fights, alcohol poisoning, getting arrested, heartbreak, pregnancy, and STDs).
Life is a risk, and if the physical campus disappeared, it would be one more way that the world is made more sterile. We need people who are doers, and if you can’t be bothered to get out of your pajamas to go and live your life when you are college age, you never will.