Education Needs A Reboot
For Many, The System Has Already Crashed
I loved college. The early morning classes, the rigorous exams, the study groups — who am I kidding? — the frat parties, the parties-without-affiliation, the raucous sporting events followed by more parties. Higher education, particularly when residing on one of the great campuses across the country, provides young adults with experiences you simply can’t get anywhere else.
Sure, you could go to some kind of extended sleepaway camp, but you’d almost certainly grow weary of the bugs and s’mores, and it’ll eventually get too cold for skinny dipping. You could opt for a life in the military, and while the constant threat of danger must do wonders to strengthen interpersonal bonds, they certainly put a damper on the fun. For youthful, exuberant comradery, and life-lessons masked as ill-advised tattoos and hangovers, there is nothing that beats college.
There was a time when one could say the same for the actual education. There was a time, not so long ago, in fact, that young adults striving for the greatest heights in their professional careers could not expect to achieve them without college. Perhaps just as important, having a college degree (even a bachelors) was like having members only card to the private club of employment. Just flash your card, and you’re in. Have a masters or PhD? Woohoo — that’s like a VIP card granting you immediate access to the champagne room, and that’s where all the magic happens — ummm, so I’ve heard.
Oh, how times have changed.
Today, a college education doesn’t guarantee the average student anything, other than debt. Not the overdue rental at Blockbuster kind of debt, not even the “oops, I went a little nuts at Neiman Marcus” debt. Oh no, we’re talking “I owe the bank two luxury cars, and high def tv” kind of debt.
Debt of this magnitude can be crippling, especially when you consider that some ~60% of recent college graduates are unemployed or underemployed. Tens of thousands of dollars in student loans, all so you can get a job as a waiter, unpaid intern, or worse.
The system is broken.
But this is the 21st century. Innovation is the new currency, and focused startups are eating disruption for breakfast. It wasn’t going to be long before some savvy entrepreneurs figured out that there was a technological answer to fixing, or at least mending, our outdated, underfunded, yet overcapitalized education system.
Enter MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses for those averse to acronyms. Oddly enough, it was forward thinking academics within higher education that are credited with originally creating the term, and the creating early permutations that eventually evolved into large, scalable operations like Coursera, Khan Academy, Udacity. For the most part, MOOCs are characterized by being free, but for the purposes of this discussion, I’ll include fee-based services like Skillshare, Mixergy, and Code School into the mix as well.
Whether they are for free, or for a nominal charge (most “classes” under 100 bucks), these services offer targeted education programs that meet students at a point of need. Professionals in transition, professionals needing new skills for advancement, or just the professionally curious, students of all kinds can learn the things they are interested in without the rigamarole, inflexibility, and cost of traditional classes.
I’m not saying MOOCs are the answer to the questions of modern education, or job preparation — I’m saying it’s a start. A recent article in Wired objectively highlights points on both side of the argument, and ultimately reaches a conclusion that I can agree with: that MOOCs provide a scalable technical foundation for hybrid learning that must also include some elements of traditional instructor engagement, discussion, and accountability. With all the attention and investment being thrown into MOOCs and other elearning solutions of various forms, and considering what’s at stake, I truly hope we can figure it out.
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Author’s Note:
This post originally appears on my personal blog: IamDRW.com
