
Bill Gates: In Five Years The Best Education Will Come From The Web - BvS
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/06/bill-gates-education/
======
ja27
Why shouldn't it be?

For most of my college career, I was taught in a non-interactive lecture (from
15 to 300 students at a time). Sometimes the lectures were even being recorded
or simulcast to remote locations. The lecturer often had no idea who I was. In
graduate school, I got a good look at the "sausage factory" of how many core
computer science class lectures are really developed. Unless it's an area of
research and publication for the professor, they do a minimal amount of work
on their lecture notes and exams. In some cases, the same professor taught the
same subject year after year. Sometimes this resulted in progressively better
notes, but sometimes not. In other cases, the class rotated among professors.
They often took each other's lecture notes and used them with varying degrees
of revision. Only when a course was a true passion of the professor was the
lecture anything much more than what could be gleaned from a couple of
textbooks on the topic.

Beyond the lectures, most of the labs and assignments were handled by grad
student teaching assistants. I also got to see many of my friends go through
the TA machine in grad school. The rare lucky ones got to TA a course related
to their research, but most TAs were assigned to courses where they only knew
as much as they'd learned in their own undergrad experience in that course. A
few TAs would scramble to get up to speed. The smart ones would do the bare
minimum for the course and focus on their research.

Then there are the textbooks. I look at the dead tree debris that on my
bookshelves from my nearly dozen years of higher education and very few books
contain anything beyond what's on Wikipedia today.

I can look back at a topic like "operating systems" and cringe. This was a
undergraduate course that rotated amongst professors. At the time I took it,
I'd already been on a dozen operating systems including VMS, NeXTStep and
Dynix, played with Minix code, read Bach and Tanenbaum, etc. The PhD student
assigned to _teach_ my class had an undergrad in linguistics. I believe he'd
never even logged into any unix system, much less had an operating systems
course himself. He even dropped out late in the semester and disappeared. I
damn near asked for a refund, but I took my grade and moved on.

There's no reason that a few passionate people on the web couldn't top that.

~~~
ScotterC
I feel the complete opposite for my courses in mechanical engineering. The
teachers really worked at it and I still use the text books to this day. It
wasn't all about the lectures themselves but how they taught us to think which
has become invaluable. For me college wasn't about the courses, but the
curriculum which was really the value added experience. Something like
computer science may be learned strictly from reading but this isn't
universal. Gates argument is course specific.

~~~
mitjak
I like to daydream about a scenario like yours, but by and large it's an
exception to the rule, and one that is even most frustrating in light of high
education costs.

~~~
jseliger
It really depends on where you go and what you do. At most big public schools,
I suspect the "TAs do everything / uninterested faculty" is the norm, chiefly
because the faculty are rewarded for research, not teaching. If you go to
liberal arts colleges (I went to Clark University: <http://www.clarku.edu>)
and engineering schools like Harvey Mudd, Worcester Polytechnic Institute,
etc., then undergrads are the focus, professors are rewarded for teaching, and
you're more likely to have a better and in-depth experience.

~~~
ja27
Yes, I should have made that clear. Almost all of my academic career was at
large research schools. A number of my fellow grad students instead went on to
smaller schools where they are fairly happy teaching more and researching /
publishing less. Without very many (or any) grad students to be TAs, they end
up covering all the bases on their classes. In smaller departments, they tend
to own all their classes year after year rather than rotating.

The classes are also smaller, which helps tremendously. At one point, I
actually took a differential equations class at a junior college. We had 5
students. It was a great setting in an unexpected place.

------
zyb09
Well this is true if you want to be a software developer. You can get very
skilled and competent just learning online. For everything else I don't
know... I sure would get a little uncomfortable if my surgeon told me he
skipped college and learned everything from tutorials before he gave me my
anesthesia.

~~~
tkahn6
_I sure would get a little uncomfortable if my $x told me he skipped college
and learned everything from tutorials before $y_

$x = "software developer" $y = "we made him head of this huge project without
even evaluating his skills"

I don't think it's so unreasonable for a surgeon to learn the traditional body
of knowledge online, learn his way around an operating table IRL, take a test,
and then go do his residency like every other doctor.

~~~
zyb09
I think there just isn't enough good information out there for a surgeon. It's
already hard to find good information on some obscurer topics of software
development, like for example windows driver programming, where you won't go
far without books and/or learning inside a company with knowledge about it.
Now jump into a complete different profession and suddenly the web isn't all
that big. How many useful & high-quality surgeon sites do you think are out
there? Maybe 2-3?

On the other hand learning iPhone programming, which may be all you need to
get a job as a developer, is significant easier than any learning any other
profession online, just given by how much information is available on the
topic and how well it's presented.

~~~
mcgraw
Right. But you're talking about 'as-is.' Someone could easily come along and
change all of that with an amazing way to instruct people online. All of a
sudden we have people that know a lot about medical topics or windows drivers
instructing classes online.

------
okmjuhb
A few loosely related thoughts as to why I'm fond of the University system (in
response to the negative tone of some of the comments here and at techcrunch):

\- It's the only socially acceptable way to spend years simply learning as a
full time job.

\- The argument that "lectures will soon be online" only makes sense if you
believe that physically being present in lectures is the way that people gain
knowledge in school.

\- University admissions maintain a level of intelligence in incoming classes
that I don't think an online community ever could - so that the students who
interact at a university are interacting in a productive way.

\- Physical colocation is just a better way of interacting with people than
communicating online is.

~~~
andreyf
Responding in reverse order:

\- "Communicating online" is in its infancy. The way people communicate online
now (facebook, twitter) is wholly different than 10 years ago, and will be
wholly different 10 years from now.

\- I agree that University admissions provide a useful filter, but one may
emerge online, as well. Already, the people you meet on HN are not the people
you'll meet on 4chan. I wonder what an HN clone would be like if membership
were applied for and kept only as long as you maintained a certain comment
point average.

\- Agreed. A great deal of what Universities provide is a cultural submersion
into a social class. This is hard, if not impossible, to replicate online.
That said, it has nothing to do with learning. People can still learn online
and go about indoctrinating in one social class or another in other ways.

\- Social norms follow progress, not vice versa. Whatever Universities will be
like in 1000 years won't be socially acceptable when it first appears.

~~~
philwelch
_The way people communicate online now (facebook, twitter) is wholly different
than 10 years ago, and will be wholly different 10 years from now._

Different, yes. Better? Ten years ago, the conversations I had on mailing
lists had a lot more potential than you can fit in 140 characters. The trend
isn't very promising.

~~~
dagw
I was about to say the same thing. The step from usenet and mailing lists to
facebook and twitter has been a huge step backwards in terms of quality
discussion and meaningful communication.

------
franksalim
Saw this by chance on twitter:

<http://twitter.com/BillGates/status/19764971764> "I’ve been spending time
watching some of the courses on www.khanacademy.org – many of which are quite
good. More coming on GatesNotes..."

For what it's worth, I think he is right. You can learn a tremendous amount by
reading and watching talks on the Web.

~~~
robryan
Those are excellent, I love how approaches everything in terms of the normal
person who might find some concepts tricky and need a closer explanation. I've
gone to lectures then watched one of these on the same content and he really
explains it so much better.

The thing lecturers tend to do is assume everyone in the class has been
through the same set of classes before the current one and assume many things
should be completely obvious and not need explanation, when often they do.

------
joegaudet
I have never found the fidelity of online learning to be _anywhere_ in the
ball park of in-institution learning.

Especially in the areas of humanities and so forth, but also in Engineering (I
hold a BSCEng, and am currently a Masters student) labs, conversation,
community learning are all essential.

I also can't help but think of the Socratic method, and how at least I
personally tend to learn in that manner. Simply being presented with
information as fact doesn't really do it for me. Being guided, and assisted at
coming to the truth on my own always leaves me with a much deeper connection
to the knowledge I've acquired. And I feel that requires as certain measure of
realtime interaction with someone who is an expert in the field. Simply
watching their lectures while informative, does not seem to be enough.

While this may change in the future, given that online learning is in its
infancy, I think 5 years is a bit short term. Especially considering the pace
at which the established institution of education moves.

------
stralep
I was learning Scheme from old SICP lectures online.

Best lecture EVER.

Why would professors need to make same lectures every year? It make more sense
to make new lectures only when they have something new or better to say.

~~~
dagw
You can't ask questions and start discussions during pre-recorded lectures.
The important part of a lecture isn't just the words being spoken by the
lecturer, but also the impromptu discussions they lead to.

~~~
muuh-gnu
Then you also need to tape the questions and answers and assemble a video FAQ
accompanying the lectures. Or let other people support the lectures and answer
upcomming questions.

I think that its a collosal waste of time and ressources to make great
lecturers repeat the same lecture over and over and over again to a small,
limited number of students, instead of letting them record a larger number of
one-time lectures. My favourite example is Salman Khan. If he had to repeat a
few chosen topics over and over, he would never had the chance of creating a
body of work as large and comprehensive as his academy.

He said about that: "With so little effort on my own part, I can empower an
unlimited amount of people for all time. I can't imagine a better use of my
time."

By the way, in the recorded SICP lectures, there arent actually _that_ many
interesting questions asked. If Abelson and Sussman thought your way and
prefered live interaction just in order to be able to answer more questions,
thousands of people during the last 25 years would have not been able to
experience them _at all_. It is not fair to reduce great lecturers to mere
question answerers, IMO the accompanying Q&A sessions always account for a
very small part of the value of a lecture, i.e. just to fill a occasional gap.

~~~
dagw
Don't get me wrong, recorded lectures are great. I love the SICP lectures and
I'm really happy the web as given me the opportunity to see them. However if I
was given the choice I'd far prefer to have had the chance to be there live
and discuss the material with the lecturers, and if the lecturers at my
university had said "I'm not going to given any lectures, since I recorded
them a few years ago" I'd feel very ripped off. At the end of the, as good as
recorded lectures are, they'll never replace "the best" teaching experiences.

------
nchls-wu
I think it's pretty easy to miss Gates' point.

He said that you'll be able to find the best *lectures in the world which will
be better than any single University. With initiatives like MIT OpenCourseWare
and iTunes U, this isn't that hard to imagine.

I think most HN readers wouldn't doubt the power of a motivated, passionate
individual when it comes to learning.

To me, the takeaway point that is most interesting is Gates' desire to break
down the barriers to higher education and the transfer of knowledge. He also
recognizes the declining value of a Bachelor's Degree.

Educational Institutions will always be vital to the education of "tomorrow's
leaders," but the current paradigm is flawed and I like where Gates seems to
be going with this.

------
shadowsun7
I'm curious as to how Gates compares America to Asia and says that Asia is
currently beating the West (example he gives is that Asia has smaller, shorter
textbooks and yet scores higher on global acadeimic tests).

Whereas in Asia people are scrambling to emulate the Western education system.
They see the American education system as better at fostering originality and
creativity. And there's a bias towards rote in Eastern education systems (at
the moment).

Could it be that this is a grass-is-greener on the other side phenomenon?

~~~
Ardit20
Nope. Its a find something to support your point and bend it a little bit.

I was thinking on the point he made though that maybe textbooks in America are
thicker because America has more scientific knowledge than Asia and maybe the
books get updated more often and maybe they are more in depth. Basically, I do
not think you can just take one variable and compare it to another and
proclaim that's the reason.

~~~
speleding
I have a masters degree from both a US university and one in Europe. It always
struck me how the American books were consistently thicker then the the ones I
got in Europe. The contents was the same basically, just much more condensed
writing. The American books I could read almost like a novel, whereas before I
had to carefully study each page, sometimes read it two times to understand
what it meant.

Just a matter of style really, I wouldn't read too much into it. Perhaps the
fact that in the US you have to pay for your own text books is a driver too.

------
sorbus
"He believes that no matter how you came about your knowledge, you should get
credit for it. Whether it’s an MIT degree or if you got everything you know
from lectures on the web, there needs to be a way to highlight that."

So, is he planning to try to develop an organization to provide that
certification (because that's one of the major functions of colleges, though
how important it is varies by field) or is he just saying that someone should?
I'm pretty sure that he could manage it if he wanted to, even though it could
be a pretty huge challenge [I can think of a few ways to get the core of the
process (knowledge verification) to work, but none of them are quite perfect,
so I'm sure that the main problem would be pretty easy to solve].

------
ams6110
The established brick and mortar higher ed industry is not going to have their
livelihood taken away without a fight. More fundamentally, very few
individuals aged 18 - 25 have the self-discipline to complete the equivalent
of an undergraduate education on-line, with no class schedules, no set exam
times, nothing to enforce any routine of learning. Some do no doubt, but not
anything near the number that are able to do it now within the structure of a
traditional university or college.

~~~
vorg
You mentioned "the equivalent of an undergrad education". This "equivalent"
can have different levels (associate, bachelors, with honors), number of
majors, average grade, testing criteria, testing jurisdiction, duration, how
recent, etc. When the brick and mortar higher ed industry dies, perhaps the
concept of achieving some recognized education "equivalency" will die with it.
Everything will be ongoing learning, never attaining.

~~~
nkassis
While it's not perfect, a college degree is usually a decent indicator that a
person has at least heard of the stuff you want. A new way to quantify level
or progression of a person would have to replace it.

There is no reason why the current Universities can't provide this for online
courses. Online courses do not mean that there won't be any Profs and TAs. But
you just won't be going to their office on preset hours and sit in a classroom
on specific hours.

Undergrad education in certain subject really doesn't change from year to
year. You could build a course and do small adjustments year to year. What you
would provide as a service in my view is the human help.

What I hope won't happen is that Universities will turn into for profit course
giving institutions. We need the R&D work done at Universities. I'd be
suprised if the government would want to continue funding Universities as they
do now if for profit website could do it cheaper. Do the current for profit
school like the University of Phoenix do any research?

------
BvS
I agree with most of what he says except for US books beeing to long. I
recognized it when I spend a year in the US as an exchange student. The books
really are longer than in Germany but I actually consider it to be a good
thing. Sometimes explaining something in 3 sentences makes it easier and
therefor faster to understand than saying it in 1 sentence which you have to
read over and over agin to get it.

~~~
sliverstorm
I haven't experienced college-level textbooks to be particularly full of
clutter, but K-12 textbooks were _full_ of useless cruft.

(not that children in kindergarten have textbooks)

------
DaniFong
Much of the best education already does come from the web, Bill. It's just
that most of society doesn't recognize it.

------
Mz
Education and accreditation are two different things. I think for some things,
just knowing it is valuable and accreditation is not so important. I have
thought a lot about how to effectively convey information. I think the web is
a good means to do some of that. I don't know that the university function of
accreditation will so readily go away. I think that's probably unrealistic.

~~~
lsc
the thing is, accreditation, in and of itself, is pretty goddamn difficult.
Schools do a horrible job of accrediting software engineers. Generally
speaking, accreditation doesn't really start working well until job roles stop
changing so fast.

~~~
Mz
I homeschooled my sons. My sons are "twice exceptional" -- gifted with
learning (and other) disabilities. I have always told them that their best
hope of making their lives work will be to found their own company. They can
very effectively get things done but I don't think they can work for other
people. When you found your own company, you don't need accreditation. Either
the product sells or it doesn't.

Similarly, I spent a lot of time very sick. I made a lot of dietary and
lifestyle changes and I am healthier now than I have ever been in my life. I
am not a doctor but I am also not impressed with the current healthcare model
followed in the US. I think I have a cheaper and more effective alternative to
offer. Study after study after study shows that diet and lifestyle are huge
factors in all the major (deadly) illnesses, like heart disease, diabetes,
cancer. But doctors mostly don't push for dietary and lifestyle changes. They
are mostly in the business of selling pills and surgeries. A big part of why
they don't is that people aren't very receptive. Many people just want an easy
answer. And it's quite hard to make money off of promoting lifestyle changes.

So to me, the big challenges are how to more effectively convey information
and how to monetize it. I am still trying to decide if I should largely
abandon my current websites and start over in a new space. I don't yet know
the answer to that. But I do know that I have narrowed it down to "education
is the answer" and I do know that I am very good at some things that other
people seem to not be good at. I know this from years spent on homeschooling
forums where for some particularly difficult things, I often was the only
person who had much to say.

So I find this article very relevant at the moment and encouraging. I don't
know if I have much to really contribute to the conversation that will be of
interest to others or that they will value. Perhaps I just need to talk about
it. For my own goals, accreditation is unimportant. The piece that matters is
whether or not the information is conveyed adequately, which my current
websites are not doing. I think I will be doing something educational on the
web in the future. So I am kind of excited to see this piece.

~~~
lsc
speaking as someone who has experience working for other people /and/ starting
companies, I would argue that a lack of social skills is limiting in both.

In both cases, if you are primarily a technical person, yea, lacking social
skills is a problem that will hold you back, but it's not the end of the
world, or your career. It's certainly not as bad as, say, being of average
intelligence, or lacking curiosity, or being lazy.

Running your own company gives you a lot more flexibility; if you know
yourself well, you can use that flexibility to build a situation where your
strengths help and your weaknesses don't matter so much...

But really, the computer industry was designed for mildly-autistic nerds who
don't play well with others. by the standards of such things, I'm almost a
friendly extrovert.

~~~
silvestrov
The social skills you need as a one-person company is much narrower set than
what's needed when employed at a big political-minded company.

When you are a consultant you have only one boss: they guy that is able to
sign the check. When you are employed, there can be multiple official and non-
official bosses that you have to satisfy, plus all of the personal/social
drama.

~~~
lsc
eh, the social drama is different, and it depends on the industry. For
instance, I can hold down a SysAdmin job just fine, as a contractor or not,
but I lack the social skills to rent out people who work for me as sysadmins,
even when they are obviously good people and I'm charging below market rates.
in some cases, I've given up and suggested the people for direct hire... and
they got hired, at rates higher than I would have charged, even including my
cut.

I think either way, there is a tradeoff. If you get shit done, people will put
up with a lot of social problems, in both situations. Like the guy who wrote a
hn story about how I didn't answer his support email. He refused a refund and
wanted to remain a customer... the thing was, he wanted better support, but
when the rubber hit the road and it was time to cut a cheque, he chose cheap
over good support.

You can set up your company so that social skills don't matter as much, but
that limits what markets you can go after. You can also choose your career
while working for others, and get similar tolerance for social oddity.

(of course, the OP's problem was not so much social skills as flexibility, and
being self-employed almost always is more flexible than working for other
people.)

------
mcgraw
I can't remember if it was Stanford or Berkeley, but one of them was going to
open up the ability to earn a full degree online. I'm not sure when, but I
heard that transition has a lot of students at the university in an uproar.

One step at a time and the elite education will be everywhere, though it'll
still cost an arm-and-a-leg.

I am huge on web-based education. I can't imagine what my skill-set would look
like if I had access to today's web when I was growing up. I would love to
build a website that brings educators together, from anywhere, to instruct
groups of 10-15 people on specific topics-of-choice -- for free.

Edit: Looked it up, apparently it was UC in general -- <http://bit.ly/aCmsNF>

"The idea is that UC could become the first top-tier American university to
offer a bachelor's degree over the Internet."

~~~
sliverstorm
In reality I should look this up, but I'm guessing Berkeley. They are a public
Uni, and if you look on iTunes U they have an impressive collection.

~~~
nkassis
I've been checking out some of their EECS classes and they are very well made.

------
jsz0
Why hasn't online learning trickled down to the lower levels? Public schools
could really benefit from having a big catalog of online course material to
offer students. I realize there's a need and benefit to instructor led courses
but our entire education policy in the US seems to focus on the lowest common
denominator. Why not let the best and brightest push forward with self paced
learning? Give them more choices. Let them start focusing on their unique
interests. This would possibly give teachers more time to help the kids who
are falling behind. I would have done much better in school with self paced
learning.

~~~
mkr-hn
It wasn't until we had something like Youtube and widespread broadband that it
became viable for even the poorest schools. That was only 2005. Look at how
quickly stuff like Khan Academy and other things sprung up after Youtube
launched.

That's only 5 years. Schools have to be conservative in things like this
because the things they teach kids will serve as the foundation of their
lives. Give it another 5 or 10, and I think we'll see an online component as a
standard part of public schooling.

------
robryan
There are a couple of things I can get from attending uni that I can't get
from learning online.

\- Focus - Sitting at the computer it is very easily to be distracted trying
to pick up a challenging new concept. I find this even more true about things
I don't derive any immediate benefit from, as in it is easier to concentrate
on learning a library I'm going to use in a freelance project than say an
obscure statistical model for a class. Sitting in the lecture give me that
chance to clear my head from most distractions and focus on the content.

\- Mindset - I head into uni, it usually gets me in the right mindset for
learning and completing tasks. I don't get that sitting at home.

I would also add the guidance of some lecturers/ supervisors but this point
really depends where you are. I can't say in my own experience this couldn't
have been replaced online although their are moments when having such
experienced teachers can help.

Edit- I would also add that these issues could be solved by getting together
at a co-working space with some like minded others. I guess a hybrid model
like that could have some merit, the educational institute acts as a network
to connect like minded people for online study. Maybe they could also have a
staff member that has a hands off role and just answers questions over email
for a much reduced fee over the traditional system.

------
rbanffy
Because internet education should be enough for anyone...

Now, seriously, Gates has a very weak track record on predicting the future of
technology. That's why Microsoft was never known to be a first mover into any
new market. It's really hard to predict the future - I was watching 2001 with
my 14 year-old son last week and couldn't help but laugh that in an enormous
space station an what seemed high orbit you would have AT&T phone booths.

"Mobile devices will be able to send and receive messages, but it will be
expensive and unusual to use them to receive an individual video stream"

On ordering flowers online: "You'll be able to watch the florist arrange the
bouquet, change your mind if you want, and replace wilting roses with fresh
anemones."

"I believe that we’ll not only be using the keyboard and the mouse to
interact, but during that time we will have perfected speech recognition and
speech output well enough that those will become a standard part of the
interface." (this is from mid 90's, IIRC)

"I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and
possibly program, of all time," which is right in a sense that NT was once
OS/2 3.0

"Spam will be a thing of the past in two years' time,"

"We will never make a 32-bit operating system," (that was when he introduced
the MSX in Japan)

The low-end of the education will sure improve with the internet. Kids with
mobile phones and computers can quickly google stuff up and browse the
wikipedia to get some deeper information beyond their textbooks offer. It will
augment, but it won't replace physical schools anytime soon.

~~~
contextfree
It's not that hard to predict the future of technology if you follow the
relevant fields of science/engineering. There are usually a set of core
problems that everyone in the field is aware of and has been working on for
decades. What is difficult, is predicting the timing of mass market viability
of those technologies. (So in this respect it's like how many people had
identified a housing bubble in 2004, but anyone who'd bet heavily on its
imminent collapse then would've lost out.)

Microsoft in particular actually have a track record of entering a market
prematurely with an unpolished entry (often because the hardware
resources/architecture/maturity of the underlying academic field aren't yet
there to support a polished entry), failing, shelving the idea, and then being
caught flatfooted N years later when someone else enters with something more
polished.

------
kloncks
I wouldn't have believed this earlier. But, today we're getting ever closer to
it.

Best example: <http://www.academicearth.org>

------
Prisen
There seems to be a consensus on HN that it's very important for startup
founders to live in the same location. Face-to-face time is considered so
important that VCs say they will not even consider investing in distributed
startups. The same theme is strong when describing the hassles with
outsourcing.

Yet a lot of people completely ignore this for education. Suddenly there is no
value in spending time with classmates/teachers. It's all very strange to me.

------
motters
I think Gates is right, and this is something which I've also ranted about in
the past. The cost of university education has been increasing, there are an
increasing number of people wanting university education and that level of
education is increasingly expected in the workforce. There is also a
significant fraction of the population who cannot afford university education
(don't have wealthy parents) or do not want to take out gigantic loans which
may take them decades to repay. University education is no longer a ticket to
a high paying job, and that has been the case for quite some time, so large
education loans can't necessarily be justified on a financial basis. Also this
year many applicants have been turned away by universities due to budget cuts
which means that they have fewer places, and that trend could go on for a few
more years at least.

The solution isn't new. The Open University has been around for a long time,
and something like OU, augmented with all the media content that the internet
can deliver, would seem to be the logical way to deliver higher education at
lower cost.

~~~
Ardit20
And lower quality.

I do not see anyone replacing an Oxford place with OU or any university place
with OU. I think, though I might be very much wrong, it caters to niches,
rather than the core of university market which is 18 to 21 year old.

The difficulty with OU is that it is not too easy to motivate yourself. In uni
you know you are there to study - kind of - with OU or any other virtual
replacement its a bit like a project which easily can drift because really
nothing has changed with your life. You'll just get a bunch of stuff in the
post and some online logging.

Also, there seems to be many generalisations on your comment and almost
wishful thinking. Sort of saying, things are bad, so this replacement is the
alternative so lets do it, rather than judging the replacement on its merits.

~~~
motters
The core university market seems to be voting with its feet.

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-10903088>

~~~
Ardit20
Yeh, that might be because there have been record numbers of applications to
university this year and some 100,000 students are not going to get a place at
any university so many probably rightly thought getting a distance degree
while working might be a good alternative.

But we would need much more than an increase in percentage to make any
judgement. What are they studying, how many get to graduate by age group, how
many enrol by each age group...

------
astrofinch
"Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best
lectures in the world"

This is _already true_ \--for just one example, see academicearth.org. I
suppose Bill has to make it a prediction for the future for the press to be
able to digest it.

I often tell people how absurd modern education is given the existence of
video lectures (and the printing press, for that matter). They usually tell me
that video lectures aren't a replacement for live lectures. When I ask if
they've actually watched any video lectures, they usually haven't.

Best advantage of video lectures: I can download them with the netvideohunter
firefox extension and watch them 1.5x speed in VLC, which actually improves my
comprehension because I'm less bored.

Free textbooks are probably even better. I'm too busy with my side project to
study, but here are two that look AWESOME:

<http://www.math.wisc.edu/~keisler/calc.html>

<http://www.introecon.com/>

I'll be playing my fiddle when the educational establishment burns.

------
kingkawn
Best class I ever took was last year, the professor had been doing chalk and
board since 1962, he was amazing, and it was because I was there. Maybe after
his generation is gone we won't lose anything from communicating entirely via
web, but to get the full breadth of knowledge from the lingering analogites
among us, you gotta roll out of bed.

------
makecheck
I think the real value of the web is to give students free access to the
nitty-gritty details of potential careers. These details would not serve as a
replacement for education (I feel that's impossible, since hands-on lab
experience and access to expensive equipment, etc. are so important to
competency). Rather, they would help to ensure that students are embarking on
a path that they're sure they want.

Some people spend a couple of years and thousands of dollars before
discovering that their major isn't really what they thought it would be. And
by then, they're just unhappy; they have invested too much to turn back, and
don't really have passion anymore. I strongly suspect that a lot of people who
do crappy work simply got into this kind of trap; if they'd had the chance to
find out more about other jobs in detail, they may have made a different
choice of major, and been much happier and more productive somewhere else.

------
notahacker
Most students today realise that reading lecture notes n the course website is
often an entirely adequate substitute for actually attending the lecture.

But that misses the point. None of the knowledge or experiences I gained at
university that have value to me today were obtained in a lecture theatre; nor
could they be readily substituted for by a website.

------
barry-cotter
That's great. Now please set up an organisation, whether profit or non-profit
that will examine the content of the most common degree courses that teach
something where there is a "core" to the field regardless of prior
qualifications and certify that knowledge.

~~~
lsc
Personally, I think it would be best to, as much as possible, disconnect the
teaching and the certification. both are hard problems by themselves; when you
put them together, you end up with what we have now.

~~~
JesseAldridge
That's a really good point. The teacher is the certifier. Heh, no conflict of
interest there... This is how we end up with grade inflation.

------
uio
I would give a robot doctor to those that considered education as a simple
fact. You should have time to consider that your "doctor" is not so nice as a
real one.

So when your "robot doctor" is acceptable to you, then I should consider your
consideration for education.

------
Ghostis
Amen. I'm taking a class in Abstract Algrebra in the fall. I already have a
general overview of the topic and have been working some practice problems
from online resources. It's amazing what's available these days if you want to
teach yourself.

------
tectonic
On the other hand, I just finished taking a couple of courses online and I
have to say that I really missed the hands-on and interpersonal (study groups,
discussions, etc.) aspects of a real classroom environment.

------
ljegou
As a complement, here is an article about China university admission
development program:

<http://www.espacestemps.net/document8305.html>

The context is clearly different, but the contrast seemed interesting.

An excerpt:

"The reasoning behind this decision was economic. The government reckoned that
every million new graduates would raise China’s gdp by 2%. Not only did
university graduates make skilled employees and attract higher incomes, but
education itself was an engine of economic growth."

------
andreyf
I agree with the title, but this seems short-sighted:

 _Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best
lectures in the world_

Lectures might be the optimal way of learning given the technology of the last
millenium, but I don't think they'll survive even a century in this one.
Computers are interactive interfaces, and "The Web" is an interactive medium.
I have a feeling that whatever replaces lectures is going to take advantage of
that.

~~~
glhaynes
There are non-interactive digital media too such as podcasts... it seems like
nearly every scholarly lecture I try to listen to, though, has the first 20-30
minutes taken up by (multiple!) fawning introductions or a reading of the
class syllabus. I'm getting annoyed just thinking about it.

~~~
andreyf
But podcasts aren't that different of a medium from radio, or mailing out
tapes, for that matter. The web is different.

------
watmough
Gates is years behind the curve as always.

As a concrete example, the Apple-provided WWDC 2010 sessions on iOS 4.0 and OS
X are some of the best educational materials I've ever seen.

Well recorded, tested material, and, this is key, absolutely knowledgable
presenters. The people that built those systems. I doubt any university, at
any price, could provide lecture materials as broad as these. Add in the fact
that I can watch these at my own pace on an iPad, literally anywhere, and
scrub back and forwards, and there's no excuse for missing anything.

I think back to my sausage-factory university classes, and pretty-much it was
mostly second-rate stuff, with a few notable exceptions (Guest lecture from
SPJ on graph-reduction, in 87 was probably the high-point). It's sad to think
I spent four years of my life doing a bachelors, when I could probably cover
the material about 50% faster now, and retain it significantly better.

In short, Gates is late. It'll be way faster than 5 years. Hell, the new SICP
lectures are already available I believe, and I'm sure geology, physics,
maths, stats will all follow.

~~~
Hari_Seldon
Bill Gates is not exactly known for his prophetic powers :-)

------
uio
University and high school is a way to employ people who study and obey rules.
If you dry this fountain and this job get outsourced, less people will get
incentives to study. A society without universities would be a very disrupted
society. Power is university supported.

------
praeclarum
Dearest Bill Gates,

You are a very clever man. You see trends that most people ignore.

You're probably right in this assertion.

But you suck at time scales. It's like your fracking achilles heel. The world
just doesn't change that fast. Dude, it just doesn't.

Peace out,

-Frank

------
jacoblyles
According to Mr. Gates the best University level education will come from the
web in five years. But K-12 still has to suck.

------
stretchwithme
Will it be fine lectures that make education so effective? Or just-in-time
learning customized precisely to the user?

------
scotty79
I hope that he's not gonna jinx it like few of his earlier predictions.

------
tkahn6
It would be nice if there was more substance to the article. It would be
fascinating to know the reasons Gates has formed this opinion - the specific
trends he's seeing and some actionable road-map to make this happen.

------
itiztv
<http://www.extension.harvard.edu/>

<http://scpd.stanford.edu/becomeAStudent/deliveryOptions.jsp>

<http://ischool.syr.edu/academics/distance/index.aspx>

do we see a trend here

------
Charuru
Bill Gates probably wants you to do labs with the Kinect and get automatically
graded.

------
drylight
I wouldn't count on any predictions made by Gates. He said that the spam
problem would be solved. And that was meant to happen some 5 years ago.

~~~
0ffworlder
What about gmail? I haven't got any spam for years...

------
varjag
Wasn't Gates a dropout? Of course, a successful man, but I would not put that
much weight in his opinion on education.

~~~
lsc
Eh, it seems to me that if he knows how to do well /without/ a formal
education, he may be in a position where he knows more than most people about
what parts of 'education' are important, and which parts are not.

~~~
sliverstorm
Well, at least in his field of expertise. Different fields depend on education
in different ways.

Really, what he was best at as I gather is summed up by this:

After reading the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics that demonstrated
the Altair 8800, Gates contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems
(MITS), the creators of the new microcomputer, to inform them that he and
others were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform. _In reality,
Gates and Allen did not have an Altair and had not written code for it; they
merely wanted to gauge MITS's interest_. MITS president Ed Roberts agreed to
meet them for a demo, and over the course of a few weeks they developed an
Altair emulator that ran on a minicomputer, and then the BASIC interpreter.
The demonstration, held at MITS's offices in Albuquerque, was a success and
resulted in a deal with MITS to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC

~~~
lsc
right. my point was that gates is clearly /very good/ at something. I mean,
from what I read, he's no slouch as a computer guy, either, I mean, how often
are projects like that delivered on time? Sure, he made a dishonest claim
about what he had, but when called on it, he delivered.

~~~
Ardit20
While his point is that he was in some degree lucky and gained success by
writing one code. Sure that might have not been easy back then, it might have
required some intelligence, but it hardly makes him qualified to know much
about education.

~~~
lsc
if becoming successful doesn't qualify you to design processes to make other
people successful, what does?

~~~
Ardit20
Adopting the scientific methods to how people become successful.

Just because I might be intelligent I can't quite tell someone how to be
intelligent. A scientist might be able to however if he does a lot of studies
and is able to derive rules etc.

Besides, he is not serially successful, as in build one company and move on to
the next, or successful in business, politics, history, medicine, physics. He
just wrote one code. As I say sure it took some wits from him to make the deal
and intelligence to write the code, but that in no way makes him qualified to
know much about education, which is such an extensive topic.

And yes he was a drop out hence his genius idea of accrediting any knowledge
however it was gained. If someone has some knowledge there are other ways to
prove it to others than through accreditation. We have I think enough pieces
of paper which misleads people as to our ability.

~~~
lsc
if one needs formal education to have an opinion on education, why are you
talking to me? I didn't go to school either.

My point is just that school can't be the only qualifier for knowing about
education- unless the point of education is to make people good at school.

>And yes he was a drop out hence his genius idea of accrediting any knowledge
however it was gained. If someone has some knowledge there are other ways to
prove it to others than through accreditation. We have I think enough pieces
of paper which misleads people as to our ability.

I think most people agree that most certifications are garbage. However, most
degrees aren't any better, when it comes to accrediting that a person has a
particular skill. It's a hard problem that isn't being solved well by anyone
right now.

the thing is, a college degree doesn't say anything about the ability of a
person to do a particular job, and people in industry recognize this.

But the idea that you could have a certifying agency say that joe is a level 5
unix Engineer is very attractive to companies... a good certification system
would make hiring people way easier.

The problem is that certification is one of those things that's easy to do
badly and extremely difficult to do well.

