Universal University
Does university education need a revamp? Isaac Asimov’s short story, The Fun They Had, is iconic in many ways. For the uninformed, it talks about a future (2155) where all students undergo schooling at home. Two young children find a book talking about schooling in the past, where everyone used to go to a common school and learnt the same thing, and the children rue what they’re missing. Funnily, with the advent of MOOCs and other online resources for learning, we’re edging closer to Asimov’s vision, a century ahead of time.
Teachers, parents and basically everyone who didn’t witness the internet boom in their 20s fervently talk about how learning used to be different ‘back in the day’. There were very few books, no online reference, and the teacher’s word used to be holy and wise. Now, with the advent of the internet, the process has morphed completely — there’s always more to learn, and an ever-growing community of people to teach it to you.
‘Modern’ Universities?
Somehow, universities haven’t kept pace with this change. Yes, across the world they are more tech-friendly, distributing material to even conducting quizzes online. But have they really leveraged the power of the internet revolution? I’d like to disagree, at least in the case of technical institutions. This is because there is (relative) standardisation in a technical curriculum like engineering, as opposed to arts. This means that anyone who graduates with a mechanical engineering degree is expected to know the same laws of thermodynamics, the same mechanisms of gears, and so on.
Let’s step back and see what the internet offers us. There is an opportunity to circulate material at zero marginal cost (except the cost of the internet itself), which means that it can be replicated a million times at no cost to the one who produced it. The internet also puts learners in contact, whether they’re in India or in Africa. This offers an enormous opportunity for peer-to-peer learning. Communities like Stack Overflow, which helps Computer Science enthusiasts learn from each other, are extremely active and play an important role in the learning process one goes through.
Technical institutions today still do not fully leverage this advantage of the internet. Every year, they still attempt to teach the same topic, with varying results. We must accept that there are clear leaders and laggards in education — some colleges have extremely high quality of research and teaching, while plenty of others struggle in attracting faculty, thereby affecting quality of teaching. The point is, the same material is taught in engineering colleges across India every year, but students in poor-quality colleges suffer as the teaching isn’t up to scratch. While they have the option of using the internet to make up for this deficit, they lose out on a significant amount of time sitting in class. Why not just video-tape lectures of the best colleges, and make those the designated lectures for a number of colleges?
While this may seem like a simplistic solution which causes a multitude of other problems, I believe it reaches the ultimate outcome — improvement in the standard of education. Some universities are slowly moving towards such a system internally. BITS Pilani is trying to ensure even learning outcomes across its 4 campuses in Pilani, Dubai, Goa and Hyderabad. Certain courses have video-taped lecture content, which is put on edX’s Edge platform for universities. Along with this, there is also reference material, a platform to discuss doubts, and a schedule to follow for the lecture content. In each campus, there are also doubt-solving and problem-solving sessions, along with synchronised labs and quizzes. For those who argue that learning is a 2-way process, the system solves it through sessions in each campus. The online platform enables peer-to-peer learning, and the video lectures are comprehensive and used by over a 1000 students each year.
Scaling up the System
For obvious reasons, BITS Pilani and other universities who have such content view it as their own intellectual property. Pricing it correctly is a different argument altogether, but there is a rationale for government policy to push technical colleges to use standardised content. Interestingly, private players too are trying to get involved. Bridge International Academies is a for-profit company that is attempting to do this for schools in Africa, through their ‘Academy-in-a-Box’ model. They have funding from investors like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, and have enrolled over 100,000 pupils. The basic premise of their model is to give teachers standardised content with a clear daily plan, and scale it to several schools to reduce costs.
For universities that have several colleges under them like VTU (Visvesvaraya Technological University), it is the smartest way of ensuring even learning outcomes. Both colleges and students win. Colleges can free up professors to pursue research, or alternatively even focus on teaching more specialized topics. It will also reduce the need for so many teachers, which is critical as it adds to the cost of education. More importantly, it solves the heart of the issue — poor quality teaching. It is estimated that only a tenth of Indian engineers are employable, which points to serious issues in our education system.
In theory, this seems similar to promoting distance education. Universities have been providing distance education for over a century now. However, the digital revolution means that distance education as a concept has been altered, quietly merging with online education. There are obvious parallels, one being using a college’s material without actually being a part of it.
Will it work?
Does that mean smaller colleges will become irrelevant, and bigger universities will just hand out online education? Unlikely. Colleges provide much more than lectures — they have labs, provide support for projects, and are a place of immense learning by interaction with teachers and other students. Will students still be attracted to such colleges, knowing that they can access the content without being in college? In today’s world, a degree still holds much more value than an online course, due to information asymmetry. As long as there is a premium of having a degree, people will prefer gaining a formal education at a university.
It is time we call into question how education can be transformed at the university-level to ensure a basic standard of learning. The present system has persisted for too long, squandering potential benefits of replication in education. While Asimov may reminisce about the joint learning (or lack thereof) by sitting together in lectures, the need for change is ripe, well before 2155.
Originally published at www.freelunch.co.in.
