
The coming disruption of colleges and universities - jseliger
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/scott-galloway-future-of-college.html
======
alexmingoia
Learning to pass the test has failed us. Moving tests online won’t change
that.

The future of education is not moving tests online. It’s no tests at all. The
future of education is workshops.

Teachers as mentors, not lecturers and truancy officers. Exercises instead of
lectures. Peers instead of tests. Projects instead of grades.

After completing a workshop, you have a project to show for it - not a score.
After completing a workshop, you have an alumni network to draw on.

Workshops are self-directed. There’s a schedule to the exercises, but enough
room for people to go at different paces. Students work in the open, and learn
from each other. Students are encouraged to collaborate, instead of punished
as cheaters. Students compete by seeing what’s possible.

Workshops are about learning to do great work, instead of learning to pass a
test.

Workshops are the future of education.

~~~
marcusverus
The point of a college degree is that you have a document, form an accredited
university, that represents that you have completed a course of study in a
satisfactory way. As an employer hiring a new grad, you know, at a minimum
"This person showed up to class for four years. They are capable of following
instructions, of learning new material, and _doing so above a baseline level
of competency_."

What does an employer get in your scenario? Four years of 'projects' to sift
through? How do they know what a good deliverable looks like for a CS 61A
class at Southeastern Louisiana State University?

No grades works great at Yale Law, when you're dealing with a group of the
most talented and motivated young people on the planet. That will not work in
a mass education system, where the need to make the grade is the only thing
getting half of the kids out of bed in the morning.

~~~
echelon
> What does an employer get in your scenario? Four years of 'projects' to sift
> through? How do they know what a good deliverable looks like for a CS 61A
> class at Southeastern Louisiana State University?

As someone who participates in interviewing undergraduate candidates, I prefer
those that have projects to talk about over those who tout their GPA. Project
work correlates very well with aptitude and initiative.

Projects require deep understanding, research, trial and error, and fully
integrative thinking. There's no better way to learn and grow.

~~~
ericmay
Yes but that’s because the current education system is geared toward GPA. If
all of the students you interview have years worth or projects, how would you
differentiate? Better yet, if they go through a university or trade school and
they all complete the same projects, how do you know who is actually good?

I’ve run into this when interviewing or going through resumes of entry-level
engineers. A lot of them will have a similar senior capstone project, so now
I’m back to looking at GPA or some other signal.

“Yes yes you worked on CMU’s autonomous vehicles program. So did the other 10
candidates, but tell me what makes you truly unique? “ etc.

~~~
echelon
> Yes yes you worked on CMU’s autonomous vehicles program. So did the other 10
> candidates, but tell me what makes you truly unique?

We might be looking for different things.

I'm just looking to hire self-driven folks that know how to program, problem
solve, and communicate. I'm not looking for pedigree, elite status, or
anything of that sort. In fact, I don't even care if candidates went to
college. If they can demonstrate that they know what they're doing, then
that's fine by me.

I predict cookie cutter projects won't be an issue. If a candidate can talk in
depth about their project, the choices they made, the things they learned -
that's good signal. It doesn't matter if everyone performs the same exercise,
because not everyone will come away with the same experience.

~~~
ericmay
> I predict cookie cutter projects won't be an issue. If a candidate can talk
> in depth about their project, the choices they made, the things they learned
> - that's good signal.

I'd argue most capable people will come away with largely the same experience.

Like you, I have a bias toward projects and self-motivated individuals. What
I'm saying here is that right now you filter toward that, because everybody
has a good GPA, so it's not as strong of a signal. If you change the education
system so that everybody has great project experience, you're going to swing
back to some other metric to filter people out (like GPA/prestige of
university/training program/etc.).

I don't think you can ever really escape it.

In my example, everybody has great project experience and a great GPA. So how
do I decide? Well, I start looking at other things like maybe they're the
captain of the volleyball team.

(speaking for university hires here at least).

------
spodek
They couldn't prompt disruption more if they tried.

I teach at NYU also. I teach very experiential, active, project-based courses.
My students, for projects in my class, get written up in the Washington Post,
Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Inc; they speak at Harvard, TEDx; they get funded
by Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt; supported by the Dalai Lama; they get promoted at
their jobs without asking. Again, this is for class projects, not just later
in life.

But what does the Dean I report to talk about when reviewing my syllabus? She
asks "Where are the papers?" She says "It needs more academic rigor" and tells
me to assign more papers to read and write. Even so, beyond their practical
accomplishments, I would stake any of my students against their lecture-and-
case-study-taught students in theory and impractical knowledge too.

As an adjunct, I get nearly zero resources or support. My courses use a
fraction their costs -- no office, administrative support, faculty lunches,
coffee, etc.

A student who told me he learned more marketing in my entrepreneurship class
that was at NYU but not Stern (NYU's business school) than from his Stern
marketing class said I could quote him but not by name since he didn't want to
get in trouble with the school.

~~~
bluntfang
I'm sure my opinion won't be popular here, but I think that makes sense that
they want your class to be more academic. You're teaching at a university, not
a vocational school. Academia shouldn't be about being published in the NYT or
Wallstreet Journal. It shouldn't be about getting raises or getting more
money. It should be about discovering and sharing knowledge and it sounds like
you have leaders that want and understand that.

~~~
spodek
You drew a false dichotomy. As I noted, they learn the theory better too, just
not by reading theory. I don't teach a vocational class, I teach project-based
learning.

~~~
bluntfang
I'm not really sure if the things you list as positives are a positive for an
academic institution, but that's a question for you manager.

------
bradleyjg
It couldn’t happen to a more deserving group of people. Universities have
eagerly embraced their role as credentialist gatekeepers. Witness the rise of
the cash cow master’s degree. Further, they’ve been overtly run as
partnerships for the benefit of administrators rather than as the cause-
oriented institutions their tax status requires.

An entire generation has been saddled with enormous debt to line the pockets
of non-instructional staff. You reap what you sow.

The only shame is that it won’t hit the very top layer of exploitive
institutions. But wiping out some is better than nothing.

------
simonh
It's fascinating to see this happening. Both of my parents got Open University
degrees here in the UK when I was a teenager. They were both teachers
themselves, my father started on a Chemistry degree but switched to Computer
Science, while my mother got a degree in Child Psychology.

This was in the 70s and early 80s, so remote learning is certainly viable even
without the internet. They went to some seminars and tests in person, and
there were summer camps and such held at university campuses during the
holidays. The course is held on a schedule, you don't really work at your own
pace and have to keep up, and you have an assigned tutor. Getting a degree
this way could take a long time, twice as long as usual but there is also an
option to do the degree full time in 3-4 years. It's not cheap though, a
Computer Science course has 3 stages, corresponding to years at college, and
cost about £6k per year.

The Open University still exists and seems to be going strong, and having just
taken a look it seems they make extensive use of the internet. Is there
anything like that in the US already? It seems to me this is a very well
established and proven approach.

~~~
twic
Some US universities have "extension schools":

[https://www.extension.harvard.edu/academics/bachelor-
liberal...](https://www.extension.harvard.edu/academics/bachelor-liberal-arts-
degree)

I think they are usually focused on practical knowledge. I think a lot of land
grant state college type places have an extension school focused on training
up farmers:

[https://extension.umn.edu/](https://extension.umn.edu/)

[https://extension.nmsu.edu/](https://extension.nmsu.edu/)

It's not really the same as the OU.

------
Upvoter33
The problem with the "handful of elites" suddenly taking over higher education
is that everything about those elites is about exclusivity: you sell the fact
that only the chosen few go to Harvard, Stanford, MIT, whatever. If anyone is
going to take over, it'll be a public institution of some kind, where a much
broader acceptance of large groups of people into the school is more a part of
the DNA. Look at Georgia Tech's online masters, for example: $7k for a pretty
reasonable and rigorous degree.

But even then, there isn't an online replacement to the college experience,
which is in person with large groups of friends learning how to live on your
own a bit in a safe, educational environment. No one wants to stay at home and
take online classes and live with their parents.

~~~
_wldu
While GT isn't MIT, it is highly rated. Last I heard, GT had the 7th highest
ranked CS program in the world. It's a fraction of the price too.

[https://www.gatech.edu/about/rankings](https://www.gatech.edu/about/rankings)

------
autokad
I have been thinking about this lately. It started a while back when someone
was asking me about which data science programs they were considering was
best. I suggested NYU because of LeCun. Then recently I was discussing how
having Google on your resume is a bit like having an ivy league university on
your resume.

That got me thinking, a huge part of the reason why some people fight/pay to
get into the best universities is so they can get into the best companies.
Isn't the university just a middle man at this point?

Then my next thoughts are mostly along the lines in what is discussed in this
article.

~~~
keiferski
If the only purpose of becoming educated is to get a high-paying job, then
sure.

If the purpose of education is to learn something about the world, become an
informed citizen, and contribute to (or at the very least, become aware of)
human intellectual, scientific and artistic achievements, then no, a tech
company isn’t much of a substitute.

Unfortunately these two things have been conflated, lowering the value of
both. Personally I would like to see the university split into two: one half
technical education based on economic needs, the other half focused on
_educating_ people. St. John’s in Annapolis / Santa Fe seems like a good model
for the latter.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John's_College_(Annapoli...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John's_College_\(Annapolis/Santa_Fe\))

~~~
WalterBright
> the other half focused on educating people

I don't buy the idea that being educated to be a productive person is not an
education, or is somehow inferior.

I've seen too many non-STEM educated people who could really use a couple
courses in statistics, what the scientific method is, how to discern gold from
pyrite, what percentages mean, using data to find answers, distinguishing
wealth from income, understanding exponential behavior, understanding what a
chaotic system is, etc.

Besides, knowing what general relativity is just mind-bending (pun intended!).

~~~
keiferski
I didn't say anything about STEM or non-STEM. Most of the things you listed
would fall under _scientific_ education (which I mentioned), not _practical_
education. Knowing what general relativity is or how to discern gold from
pyrite has nothing to do with the economics of getting a good job, which is
what I am referring to.

~~~
kortilla
You conflated it by mentioning a “technical” degree being the “non-education”
path.

~~~
keiferski
No, that is a false misleading quotation. Here is what I said:

> one half technical education based on economic needs,

------
TrackerFF
I think this crisis will make young people seek careers in safe fields,
shielded from major booms and busts, pandemics, and with decent benefits.

But who knows, people also have quite a short memory, so it might be forgotten
5 years down the road.

So, with that, I think schools / majors that are aimed at "essential services"
will see a rise in applicants.

------
gumby
The intro to the article is slightly different from what Galloway says. MIT
sells a product that is quite valuable to a certain audience and though how
that product works has evolved and will continue too, ultimately it's a
boutique offering that won’t move online (some of the classes may, but really
there aren’t many “big lecture hall” classes there anyway). In fact there’s
only one huge lecture hall.

So I see a cohort of “high end” schools that offer low volume/high cost
product (basically the Apple approach).

A few mass market winners that are essentially online only.

And some private sector “tutor” kind of places that provide a kind of third
party recitation or handholding where needed.

The mass market winners may not be obvious either. The obvious candidates are
the existing large high-reputation institutions like UT and UC but they may
struggle institutionally to adapt. It could be a U of IL (which has already
been innovating in this area), or NYU whose administration appears right now
to be whistling past the graveyard but which has shown an ability over the
last couple of decades to adapt significantly.

And I expect community colleges, at least where they are well run like
California’s excellent system, to _really_ adapt rapidly to “online plus a
little in-person supplementation.”

------
tasogare
> predicts hundreds, if not thousands, of brick-and-mortar universities will
> go out of business

That’s only possible in places where universities are businesses. Elsewhere
(most of Europe for instance), it would be super easy to counter this trend:
don’t give the new comers the national habilitations that make the awarded
degrees recognized and thus worth something.

~~~
the-dude
Universities in NL have been in the proces of becoming businesses over the
last 20 years, as they have been made partially responsible for their own
budget. And it shows.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Similar in the UK. It really came home to me when I was visiting universities
with one of my children. We happened to walk past a marketing department
during one of our tours. I was surprised by the number of people working in
that office.

------
gumby
My son decided to taking the next year off from school, in part to push his
graduation (hopefully) out of the recession window, or the worst of it, and
because it’s pretty clear that next autumn’s classes will also be online,
despite the protestations of the administration.

He found a job as a developer so he’ll use the year working and (implicitly)
networking which should improve things at graduation time. Internships are
being cancelled or virtualized so a real job at one of those companies is more
valuable at the moment. In some ways an internship in a structured internship
program can be better, but not in 2020.

I like the education he’s been getting (and more importantly he does too) but
the rest of the value add has been gone this semester. A big part for him has
been the connection with the faculty (how did he find this job at $bigco?). No
point in paying for that until things settle down.

------
chosenbreed37
Interesting article. This statement made me chuckle :-)

"I think Jeff Bezos is going to offer the COVID-19 test as part of Prime
membership. I think that’s where we’re headed."

Slightly off-topic but hilarious nonetheless!

------
jseliger
It will be interesting to see what happens to the bread, circus, and crushing
student loan elements: [https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-
party-eliz...](https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-
elizabeth-armstrong-and-laura-hamilton/)

~~~
Melting_Harps
> Paying for the party...

Interesting concept, I went ahead an ordered a copy on Amazon. Not sure when
it will arrive as all my USPS stuff has seen a 5-7 day delay, but looks like
it's worth exploring.

I actually declined all the offers to be included in several 'rush week'
inductions, I despised 'campus life' by the end of my incoming Summer Freshman
year. And the notion of 'paying for my friends' was not just alien to me, but
counter intuitive as I was already living and working alongside Pro-drivers,
Industry leaders in Motorsports by the time I was 17 and going to Industry
parties and gatherings by 19.

Later in my upper division courses I found out how critical getting a passing
grade was less about what you knew, then who you knew as the Frats were
running exams. Funny enough, some of those Frats would also get caught in a
Drug Sting by the Federal Government that year, too.

------
RickJWagner
Wow. I guess this kind of reckoning is overdue, but it's scary to see it
happening.

I hope MOOCs play a strong role in the future of education. They're awesome
and easily accessible to everyone. This could be the start of the
democratization of education.

------
jimhefferon
Interesting read. His observation that there are many, many people who want to
go to MIT and Stanford and would do great but didn't get in because they only
have many seats, is spot on.

However, the flip side is that there exists lower-tier institutions because
there are lots of people who would not do great. If you keep a Stanford
education meaning what it means today then those folks would flunk.

Look at the MOOC experiments where the percentage of people who pass is in the
single digits. (There are all kinds of arguments that some people only sign up
for part of the course anyway, that people can take it three times at much
less cost than the traditional way once, etc., but single digits is a shock.)
There are lots of people who have the skills and motivation to succeed, which
is wonderful. But there are also lots of people who will fail to swim, but who
are now being helped by these other places.

~~~
chosenbreed37
> Look at the MOOC experiments where the percentage of people who pass is in
> the single digits. (There are all kinds of arguments that some people only
> sign up for part of the course anyway, that people can take it three times
> at much less cost than the traditional way once, etc., but single digits is
> a shock.)

Could you elaborate on this? I've done a couple of MOOCs recently (Coursera in
conjuction with Columbia, Princeton, etc). I could see that tens of thousands
of others had enrolled. I'm curious about what the completion rate is. I
personally got some value out of them. I'm wondering why they might be
considered failures. In fact I'm seeing lots more courses come up.

