In most countries, higher education is just delaying the inevitable unemployment. Furthermore, Higher Education misses what the job market needs.I want to add to Rokkefeller's quote: "We need hardworking thinkers and innovators"
You can argue until the cows come home regarding other issues and still the tuition inflation shows that a critical problem exists. If the debt bubble wasn't going to bring us down faster, then medical care costs would bring us down a few years further down the road. The chart indicates that tuition inflation is even more out of control than health care costs.
Uncontrolled inflation in an industry is a sure sign of a critical disconnect. There are a variety of reasons this can happen, such as government involvement, industry size, competitive environment, to name a few.
it would be interesting to see the tuition inflation of medical schools and major universities separated from the rest.
The likely answer down the road is smaller, independent universities. From what I've read, the end of cheap energy will force downsizing across the board.
Les
How we are talking about technological ways of changing education when we haven't…
-changed the mindset behind the system that spawned this crappy educational paradigm.
-found a totally renewable, environmentally-friendly, cheap energy source to run the electronics we'd be basing this entire new educational framework upon. What good will online learning be when we run out of cheaper energy and can't power our devices?
-found renewable sources of the materials that go into building a lot of our fancy tech toys. Rare earths are called such for a reason.
Don't get me wrong, I love the ideas espoused in this podcast, and if implemented they would dramatically alter education. But when Chris says the next 20 years will be radically different from the last 20 years I don't think educational paradigm is what he was referring to. Maybe had we implemented such a radical idea as "critical thinking" into our schools thirty years ago we'd be in a much better place today, but I don't know about it now.
I'm going to take the liberty of sharing my recent presentation to the Inland Northwest Permaculture Convergence since it is germaine to this conversation:
Since discovering the Ecological Predicament over 20 years ago, I have read hundreds of books on the topic. Like almost all of those who take the time to study the predicament, I quickly moved from what to why to what to do....
-- M. Holbert, Amazon Review of Plato's Revenge
What
The short answer: The Ecological Predicament
Some of the most starkly presented data that I've seen lately came in the form of some handouts (Download Zovanyi) by Gabor Zovyani at a conference/summit this summer. The material -- used with the permission of Gabor -- is from his book The No-Growth Imperative: Creating Sustainable Communities under Ecological Limits to Growth.
As Chris Martenson elaborates coherently in his Crash Course, this exponential growth is not sustainable. The bottom line is that eventually your pension/retirement fund will be worthless as most investment values have exponential growth built into the valuation.
For another interesting perspective on collapse, see this blog article and graph by George Mobus.
Why
Why has society let this happen? Lots of reasons. Some of the best explanations, in my opinion, can be found by studying the work of Ken Wilber and others in the field of Integral Theory. It's easy to get hung up in the fascinating "why" material.
As pointed out by Joseph Tainter in this article: "The scenarios [for the success or failure of any problem solving system] are collapse; resiliency and recovery through simplification; and sustainable problem solving based on increasing complexity subsidized by new resources." Please note that the latter action has resulted in the collapse that is already well under way. Therefore, the middle way -- resiliency and recovery... -- would seem to be the prudent way forward. Tainter indicates in the article that this has rarely occurred throughout history. (Please note the Productivity graphs on page 95 of the article.)
Since time is of the essence, we'll not focus on the Why for now.
What-To-Do
When society requires to be rebuilt, there is no use in attempting to build it on the old plan. --John Stuart Mill as quoted in Plato's Revenge.
This book [Plato's Revenge] should encourage...attempts to rethink how present and future societies might be organized given the array of environmental and sustainability issues that we face. --Robert Paehlke, Professor Emeritus of Environmental and Resource Studies, Trent University
The "basic goods" conducive to a happy life include health, education, leisure, friendship and harmony with nature... -- CNBC Article on a book by Robert and Edward Skidelsky
I confess I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other's heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human kind.... -- John Stuart Mill,1848
I must say that it is difficult to move beyond the Why stage. Culture makes it difficult. For a comprehensive summary, please see this highly recommended article: Overcoming systemic roadblocks to sustainability: The evolutionary redesign of worldviews, institutions, and technologies.
A word about ethics. I am of the same mind as Alfred North Whitehead (as interpreted by Brian Henning in The Ethics of Creativity):
1. the obligation always to act in such a way as to bring about the greatest possible universe of beauty, value, and importance that in each situation is possible (beauty);
2. the obligation to maximize the intensity and harmony of one's own experience (self-respect);
3. the obligation to maximize the harmony and intensity of experience of everything within one's sphere of influence (love);
4. the obligation to avoid the destruction (or maiming) of any actual occasion, nexus, or society, unless not doing so threatens the achievement of the greatest harmony and intensity that in each situation is possible (peace);
5. the obligation to strive continually to expand the depth and breadth of one's aesthetic horizons (education). [p.145-146]
This is one reason why my wife and I have an ecological footprint that is 10%-15% of the national average. However, we could, under the right circumstances, improve our quality of life substantially without expanding our footprint. An integral campus is the answer for us.
What is an integral campus?
The nature of towns and cities with their property lines and bureaucracies makes it difficult to organize a comprehensive environment for maximizing quality of life, self-sufficiency, security, happiness, etc. The dominating influence of the automobile will make towns and cities difficult places for rapid change in the future. (I applaud all of those who are giving it their best shot.) Just getting rid of the cars will be a challenge, although I suppose that the tops can be cut off and the remainder used as large planter boxes. I have seen someone use their car as a large fruit/produce drying device.
Most ways of life -- even though based on Permaculture principles -- will not provide security. For example, isolated farms will be vulnerable to those roving the countryside for food once the supermarket supply chains grind to a halt in a post-peak oil world. In addition, self-sufficiency will be messy and inefficient in most communities and impossible on isolated properties due to lack of labor and equipment.
Universities and colleges, regardless of what slogans they put on banners and their homepage, are simply training individuals to participate in the consumption economy. If they were truly universities, they would be focusing most of their time and energy on the Ecological Predicament.
The goal would be to develop an infrastructure and organization that can be mostly self-sufficient as well as secure by design. It is interesting to note that Cambridge and Oxford quadrangles were designed for security when built in the Middle Ages.
An integral campus would operate as a spa and retreat. Initially, similar to the properties linked to in the following paragraph, guests would likely stay a week or a few days. Eventually, the length of stay could transition to full-time residential with the option to spend time at all integral campuses. The property would be operated by students who are committed to living lightly on the earth. In return for their work, they would receive the equivalent of a university education with the opportunity to master a hands-on livelihood such as gardening, cooking, and/or winemaking in a permaculture setting. Those interested in life-long learning/teaching and the ethics of sustainability could remain in the system rather than go work in the wacky world.
There are a handful of places that provide glimpses of what I am talking about when I say integral campus. Esalen, Tassajara, and Rancho La Puerta come to mind.
Investors would have the option of receiving a dividend or staying at the property as a guest. It may be that a significant portion of start-up capital would come from wealthy patrons who are interested in being involved with the creation of a sustainable institution.
Subject to spending at least three consecutive months in residence at one location, teachers/students would have the opportunity to move to other campuses if they get the nomadic urge.
Eventually, all the services necessary for a healthy life would be brought inside the institution. It might start with a dentist who enjoys gardening and wants to live sustainably. Over time, all services could be included -- including hospitals. Ambitious? Yes. Necessary? Yes.
Access is the key and the wealthy have provided examples with private golf clubs and vacation home clubs. While property rights are private, access is fluid and there is an incentive to preserve the asset.
Where
One place that comes to mind is the Mukogawa Fort Wright Institute (MFWI) on the outskirts of Spokane, Washington. The student body is Japanese and the economy in Japan has suffered for 20 plus years. It is a possibility that it will be difficult to keep the doors open in the future. MFWI is adjacent to Spokane Falls Community College which provides expansion possibilities once the education bubble pops.
A free world-class education for anyone anywhere.
Khan Academy is an organization on a mission. We're a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education for anyone anywhere.All of the site's resources are available to anyone. It doesn't matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. Khan Academy's materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge.
Thats the way education should be. Free and available to all.
I guess the question begs: Whats more important for kids to learn? The internet or a classroom and a teacher.
based on my experience, there was literally nothing i couldnt of gotten from the internet (had it been available)although i just never required or asked for help, not to say that everyone would be that way.
if we skip over the (now largely useless) memorization of facts component, i actually believe that educationally focused and designed games would probabaly make the best learning tools. Games by their very nature are oriented for stepwise advancement and problem solving. Focused on basic skills and critical thinking of course, not memory.
Im sure many would disagree but i see little need for classrooms and teachers in the conventional sense. Kids could still get help online and they have plenty of other activities to socialize with.
Wow! What an incredibile number of comments. I gave up reading them all so I hope I'm not repeating things others said. While I agree that we may be in a transition stage between high-priced universities and some sort of free or semi-free online and more focused educational system, I have questions about it.
- Testing as a way of verifying someone's skills. Not everyone does well on tests. In fact some very intelligent/creative people fail tests. What will happen to them in the new system?
- What about laboratores. You can't even do undergraduate biology without a wet lab experience. Same for chemistry and physics. How can a MOOC that has no physical campus deal with that?
- There's no free lunch. Someone, somewhere, somehow pays for those MOOCs, and even Khan Academy. You either pay them directly or you have to put up with ads or you have to put up with their point of view (i.e. propaganda) or something. If the high end universities that support the MOOCs fall on hard times the MOOCs will disappear.
- What about 'breadth' requirements? Many people wish they didn't have to take things like ethnic studies, or an art class, or learn a language. But to their credit (IMHO) universities have decided that those kinds of classes produce more well-reounded individuals who are hopefully more compassionate, more involved in the political process, and can see beyond the confines of their social class. Will MOOCs support that?
- Could you really become a doctor or lawyer or engineer entirely from online MOOC classes? I doubt it.
I agree that it's a cartel system and the government colludes with it because they make a buck. The student loans are as much about creating a new income source for out bankrupt country as they are about helping student go to college. What would you expect if you have the same amount of goods and you massively increase the supply of money available to pay for it? The price goes up of course.
For those with children close to going to college I highly recommend the book Debt-Free U by Zach Bissonette. Lots of straegies for avoiding student loans.
See youtube, there is an excellent documentary called The College Conspiracy that is well worth a look and answers so many things. While government interfere with natural learning then we will NOT see genius or freedom of independent thought appear.
How many times I've heard on this site there is no free lunch, and yet, now we all want or believe we can have free education? There is a huge difference between information and education. We have information like never before, but we are struggling to educate our students, at least according to our test scores. In my opinion, out of all the posts on this thread Arthur's post is the most relevant to this topic. The sum of the parts is lost, we only see the parts. The freeness of Khan, or any other institution proclaiming free education, is an illusion. Khan is an institution, and like all institutions, the shadow side of all institutions is self-interest.
We live in an age of ever increasing categorization and specialization, but have lost complete sight of the whole. We talk of the mind and energy as if they were things to take apart and put back together, as opposed to what they really are, potential transformation. We talk of of energy as if it is some "thing" to be acquired to maintain our life. The energy on which we should be focusing our attention is what Treebeard writes about, our ability to transform ourselves. Now that is energy! With that attention we may actually be able to save our lives.
The divisions of subjects/disciplines don't exist in the world, they are only divided and categorized by our consciousness. There is only one subject in the world, all the disciplines are just illusions we have created in our minds.
Peace!
Charles Hugh Smith said it all with his article title - the Nearly Free University. I'd be really, really worried about my job if I taught in a college nowadays: the model is unsustainable, and online courses are getting better and better.
There would have to bee a few teacher and administrator fees, but the overall cost the the school for running online classes is much cheaper. My daughter-in-law has $45K in student loans. If it were $4,500 I would call it "nearly free" in comparison.
Charles Hugh Smith said it all with his article title - the Nearly Free University. I'd be really, really worried about my job if I taught in a college nowadays: the model is unsustainable, and online courses are getting better and better. There would have to bee a few teacher and administrator fees, but the overall cost the the school for running online classes is much cheaper. My daughter-in-law has $45K in student loans. If it were $4,500 I would call it "nearly free" in comparison.I understand your line of thinking and CHS's, but I would like to respectfully point out a few things. I agree, those who teach college full-time should be worried, but 70 - 75% of higher ed teachers are part-time, most having no benefits, so there's not that many left that have to worry. Kind of makes you wonder where all that tuition is going? I also agree that the nearly free education is much cheaper, and therefore you receive a much "cheaper" education (especially when moving from three dimension to two/flattening context, and from synchronous to asynchronous/distorting time). I also agree with Ao that those in charge of education ARE getting exactly what they want... which is more and more students taking on-line courses. This is what they want. Kind of makes you wonder why? As Google continues to digitize all our books, we can continue to get rid of all our real books and go completely virtual (as some schools are doing), leaving the dissemination of those books in the hands of those who own the infrastructure/networks. Kind of makes you wonder why? As education becomes nearly free for all (like healthcare through Obamacare right?) then the credentials you just gained for your new line of work, not to mention most professions, will become superfluous, and you will need to look for a new line of work. I also agree that the model is unsustainable for many of the same reasons that our entire system is unsustainable, but what looks like the cheap answer, may be in fact just that, the cheap answer. I really respect CHS and his writing and I will take the time to read his book, but he has not said it "all" in respect to the subject of education. It is like all things, a very complex subject with pressures bearing down on all sides. He, like all of us, is but one person expressing his perspective. The idea of free, or nearly free, education for all is a noble one, as is free or nearly free healthcare for all. If we ask Ao if healthcare should be free or nearly free, what do you think his response will be? Our responses come from our respective experience and our place within society (his being in healthcare). Therefore, if you don't work in academia, it may seem very straight-forward looking at the system from the outside. That view is important, but just as important is the view from the inside.
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