The author is right about some things, wrong about others. He's right that student debt is a timebomb. Anyone who knows a student struggling with it realizes this. The amount of debt students are saddled with is astronomical, and has turned this generation into a one of indentured servitude to their financiers. Something is going to have to give.
He's wrong, at least somewhat, on what the future holds. There are multiple roles to a university, and multiple motives to developing a higher education. I think some of these roles are ripe for disruption, others not so much.
It's hard to imagine graduate-level research happening in any other environment than an academic university. It's easy to imagine an undergraduate education in engineering or mathematics being delivered and certified completely through the internet.
Harder to imagine, but possible, are "micro-universities" which pop up organically that criss-cross with meatspace, which re-use existing course materials for information transfer but also incorporate the less tangible things such as "learning to learn" and in-person collaboration. I can imagine seeing job candidates walk in the door that have a completely custom education, self-driven by their own particular desires and nurtured and accredited as focused, disciplined study by these micro-universities.
It's truly an exciting time in education. I imagine the initiatives we're seeing now from Khan Academy, Coursera, and Udacity will be looked back upon as groundbreaking but charmingly rudimentary 10 years from now. I expect big things as more and more smart people begin to tip-toe away from traditional educational models and take bigger risks, both as students and as teachers, by inventing new models for education.
>It's easy to imagine an undergraduate education in engineering or mathematics being delivered and certified completely through the internet.
Mathematics, yes. Engineering, no. Am I one of the outliers that feels labs are essential to solidify what you've learned that week in class? Sure you can learn EE basics such as mesh analysis, but when you start to venture into logic design courses where software alone won't cut it things get tricky. For the majority of people, debugging a robot in even the most introductory courses would be a nightmare without an experienced person or even someone to look over it with.. How about chemistry students. Good luck setting up a lab at home. How ME classes dealing with material properties and testing?
There are plenty of courses that do work out well online, but some cannot simply stand alone.
He's wrong, at least somewhat, on what the future holds. There are multiple roles to a university, and multiple motives to developing a higher education. I think some of these roles are ripe for disruption, others not so much.
It's hard to imagine graduate-level research happening in any other environment than an academic university. It's easy to imagine an undergraduate education in engineering or mathematics being delivered and certified completely through the internet.
Harder to imagine, but possible, are "micro-universities" which pop up organically that criss-cross with meatspace, which re-use existing course materials for information transfer but also incorporate the less tangible things such as "learning to learn" and in-person collaboration. I can imagine seeing job candidates walk in the door that have a completely custom education, self-driven by their own particular desires and nurtured and accredited as focused, disciplined study by these micro-universities.
It's truly an exciting time in education. I imagine the initiatives we're seeing now from Khan Academy, Coursera, and Udacity will be looked back upon as groundbreaking but charmingly rudimentary 10 years from now. I expect big things as more and more smart people begin to tip-toe away from traditional educational models and take bigger risks, both as students and as teachers, by inventing new models for education.