

University of California teachers’ union aims to block online classes - cwan
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/10/11/university_of_california_lecturers_union_says_it_can_block_online_programs

======
tokenadult
Who matters in education, the learners or the people who get paychecks from
schools? As one of the most eminent economists of education has written, "The
education system is a formalised, bureaucratic organisational structure and,
like any bureaucratic organisational structure, it strives for maximum
autonomy from external pressures as its cardinal principle of survival. While
ostensibly devoted to the education of children, teachers, school
administrators and local education officers must nevertheless regard parents
acting on behalf of children as a force to be kept at bay because parental
pressures in effect threaten the autonomy of the educational system. . . . I
would hold that the stupefying conservatism of the educational system and its
utter disdain of non-professional opinion is such that nothing less than a
radical shake-up of the financing mechanism will do much to promote parental
power." -- Mark Blaug, "Education Vouchers--It All Depends on What You Mean,"
in Economics of Privatization, J. Le Grand & R. Robinson, ed. (1985).

If learners have power to shop, because funding flows to learners rather than
to institutions, all the change we need to provide better education will
happen through the usual process of learners shopping for what works. Until
learners have power to shop, there is little prospect for meaningful
improvement in education. Public choice theory

<http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PublicChoice.html>

<http://perspicuity.net/sd/pub-choice.html>

<http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/publicchoice.htm>

[http://www.gmu.edu/centers/publicchoice/pdf%20links/Booklet....](http://www.gmu.edu/centers/publicchoice/pdf%20links/Booklet.pdf)

in political science predicts that interest groups who gain a paycheck from
the current system will fight harder to protect the current system from change
than will voters in general who might benefit from changes in policy. So it
takes a rare degree of political leadership by elected officials, or rather
unusual coalitions of voters, to change a system that provides employment to
as many employed people as the current education system does.

~~~
nickik
Econtalk is part of econlib. Its a nice podcast that talks about this problem
alot. Here are some nice ones that are relevant. There are many more that talk
about public choice.

Public Choice:

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/03/don_boudreaux_o_3.h...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/03/don_boudreaux_o_3.html)

Teachers:

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/08/hanushek_on_tea.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/08/hanushek_on_tea.html)

~~~
nickik
P.S. Here a old TV show by Milton Friedman on Schools (RIP).
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLVIrmG6Ysk> (There is always a documentery
first and then the last third of it is disscution between friedman and others,
thats probebly the most intressting part)

------
TomOfTTB
I actually see this as a good thing. The people who revolutionize education
probably aren't going to be people from the old system. Because people from
the old school tend to think of it as "using technology to emulate the current
classroom experience"

The real innovators are going to be the people who come to the system from the
outside and find a new way of teaching. And it will be much easier for those
innovators to gain people's attention if the existing system isn't muddying
the water with weak online offerings.

~~~
anigbrowl
I don't think it's going to change that fast. While unemployment remains high,
a degree from Khan academy (so to speak) is not likely to get anyone out of
the resume pile and into a job. There's a shortage of STEM talent in the US so
the tech world is a bit more open-minded about what constitutes a viable
education, but in many fields you simply can't work without a qualification
from an accredited institution.

Take law, for example. In CA, NY, and a few other states, would-be lawyers can
study via apprenticeship, distance learning, or some combination of the two;
although this can be a career handicap compared to attending a decent brick-
and-mortar school, it doesn't impede one's ability to sit the bar exam and
receive a law license. But in Texas (a large and growing legal market), it
does - you can be admitted as an attorney to some other state bar and to
federal bar, but if you got your law degree by correspondence then you won't
be given a TX law license. Of course this won't last; eventually some attorney
with a non-traditional legal education will win some landmark case in a
federal appeals court, and barriers like this will be scrapped because nothing
succeeds like success, and no state bar wants prevent a big client from hiring
the star lawyer of the moment due to some ancient admittance rule. But right
now there's much more supply than demand, so employers have little or no
incentive to take a risk.

Of course, many jobs do not require same sort of rigorous standards that exist
in the professions; you could make an economic argument that all credentialism
is a kind of rent-seeking. But it's not going away until there's some
alternative measure of skill that adequately predicts performance. Again, it's
a bit easier in tech; you can sample the results of someone's work on their
web page, and often it either works or it doesn't. It's less obvious how to do
that in other fields.

~~~
byoung2
_While unemployment remains high, a degree from Khan academy (so to speak) is
not likely to get anyone out of the resume pile and into a job._

Consider all of the people who go to community college and transfer in to the
prestigious school for the last two years, and get the same degree. You don't
need to get a degree from Khan academy, you just need to get the knowledge.
Then you can transfer to a prestigious school and get the degree that gets
your resume noticed.

~~~
anigbrowl
That depends on the credit-granting policies of the institutions you attend
and the field that you want to work in. I'm not saying it isn't possible, just
that it is not as simple as people suggest. As long as there is an excess of
supply in the labor market, hiring is going to favor the status quo.

------
jeffreymcmanus
The headline is deceptive here since the "teacher's union" doesn't actually
represent professors, and professors don't actually prioritize teaching in the
first place. This concerns lecturers, who have always had a very tenuous
position in the UC hierarchy (since lecturers don't get tenure). It's quite
unlikely that lecturers would go on strike over online learning; if they did,
it's likely that UC would simply replace them with graduate TAs.

~~~
djcapelis
For whatever its worth, there is a position class called "Lecturer with
Security of Employment" that allows essentially a tenure system for select
lecturers. Typically, a lecturer must have at least a PhD to be considered for
something like this, it's for people who want to focus on teaching but don't
want any research duties.

~~~
jeffreymcmanus
That position is used very rarely by UC. In the dozen or so departments I
worked in during my time working in UCSB's administration, I can remember one
or two lecturers with SOE -- it would generally be used to attract or retain a
superstar lecturer, but it's not the default. (Tenured positions in general
are much harder to come by than they once were, particularly in the
humanities.)

~~~
hyperbovine
It's a shame too. Two of the best professors I ever had were SOE:

<http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~ddgarcia/> <http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/>

The system makes total sense. Everybody wins.

------
eskt
Just another example of teachers and schools finding ways to screw over the
people they are supposedly trying to help. The schools are cutting classes
making it harder for students to graduate on time, and then teachers are
looking to shoot down a potential solution.

The unions in the University of California system are just ridiculous. For
example, during 2008 the worker unions who tend to the schools thought it
would be a good idea to protest at my graduation. Are you kidding me? Stop
hurting the students. End of story.

~~~
chairface
I understand the sentiment of your first paragraph, but the thing about your
graduation is a complete non sequitur. The quality of your graduation ceremony
has nothing to do with the quality of your education, and protesting there
doesn't hurt anything but your feelings.

------
sixtofour
From Stanford's online, open to all database course announcement page (login
required) from yesterday:

<http://www.db-class.org/course/class/index>

"As of this morning we have 68,000 students enrolled in Introduction to
Databases, and the number is growing daily. Wow!! The reception has been way
beyond expectations -- we're pedaling like mad to keep up, and having a great
time. Please visit the Q&A Forum if you have questions, or if you have
answers! With a class this size we're certainly relying on students-helping-
students. Welcome aboard."

It seems there's demand.

~~~
smackfu
And next year, they can just show the same videos again, and lay off the
teachers. Everyone wins! (Except the teachers, so maybe that's why the union
should fight for it, eh?)

~~~
CamperBob
In other news, the Buggy Whip Assembler's Union has some concerns they would
like to raise regarding the adoption of the new "Horseless Carriage"
technology.

------
zzzeek
If all hands-on education can be replaced with distance learning, the unions
would not be a problem. We don't need teachers anymore, we don't need the
union, they're gone - doesn't matter what they want.

But clearly that's not the case. The teacher's union still has something their
employers want. Hence it's reasonable that they'd get collective bargaining
power over a decision that will probably cost them lots of jobs in the long
and not-so-long runs.

~~~
jeffreymcmanus
> We don't need teachers anymore

This is a common fantasy among technologists (and a common fear of teachers)
when confronted with educational technology. But it won't happen in our
lifetimes. It will not be possible to replace teachers with technology until
we discover true artificial intelligence.

Educational technology, correctly applied, can be a force multiplier for
teachers. So it may mean we can teach more students with fewer teachers. But
it also means that access to education will increase (which may cause demand
for education to increase).

One way or another, someone will always need to be available to answer
students' questions. Books, videos, and clever programs running in web
browsers simply can't do that.

~~~
ThePawnBreak
> One way or another, someone will always need to be available to answer
> students' questions. Books, videos, and clever programs running in web
> browsers simply can't do that.

Can't we use a model similar to Stack Overflow for answering students'
questions? Most questions are bound to repeat, so I don't think there would be
so many questions for the experts to answer after a while.

~~~
jeffreymcmanus
I've been teaching people to code for 20 years. In virtually every course I've
ever taught, at least one person comes up with a question that I've never
heard before. If that person were limited to learning from a web site or a
video, that's the point at which that person would get stuck. But because I
can answer their question, they can continue quickly.

------
electrichead
I wonder how long it will be before we come to recognize that virtual things
are not the same as physical things and so should not be treated the same. I
see luddites everywhere holding us back with insane policies that might make
sense in the physical world, but have no bearing in the virtual world.

You can see examples everywhere: an e-book is priced at almost the same price
as a physical book; the RIAA wants us to treat each copy of a song as a
separate physical thing, newspapers have no idea how to deal with the deluge
of more timely and vast amounts of news curated online for free. There are so
many examples of established industries failing to innovate and thus try to
hold back everyone else who is trying. I wonder how long it will be before the
generations that are uncomfortable with technology get replaced with the
generations that are.

------
mindstab
Great, let's just stop educational progress and innovation to save a few jobs.
Because the economies of the world will stop innovating too to save a few jobs
for us. They would never just leave us behind.

------
algorithms
I smell communism... Joke aside, I can't stand it when people dismiss great
ideas because of the fact that it will cost some people (temporarily) their
job. It's the same with every major revolution in technology, e.g. industrial
revolution, Computers, Internet, Cloud Services, Chips to analyse biological
data, ... Yes, there will be some people who will lose their teaching job
because the system gets more efficient but they will find another job (maybe
even involving the new system).

------
stdbrouw
Essentially, what this says is that doing more stuff online shouldn't be an
excuse to fire teachers. That seems very sensible: online education scales
better than classroom ed, but that doesn't mean that it's a self-evident thing
to do, and we still haven't figured out the best practices, so until we do, we
need as much professionals as we can to make sure those online classes are up
to scratch.

~~~
maratd
> Essentially, what this says is that doing more stuff online shouldn't be an
> excuse to fire teachers. That seems very sensible

No, it isn't sensible at all.

This is an attempt by an entrenched interest to stave off and destroy
innovation for their own benefit. The more teachers that work, the more dues
they collect. They couldn't care less about the quality of the education
rendered.

Imagine a kid from a poor neighborhood sitting in on a lecture from a top tier
university. That's what we're talking about. That kind of educational
opportunity. And the unions are trying to destroy that.

It's heartbreaking.

~~~
nobody314159
The lectures are already online for the poor kid.

What this is proposing is that you turn up at UC, pay your $50K tuition, are
given a list of youtube URLs to the MIT lectures and collect your diploma.

~~~
thematt
The lectures may be online, but he's not getting credit for learning from
them.

Have you ever sat in a lecture with a couple hundred other students? It's not
like the teaching is the least bit personal, so what does the medium matter at
that point?

~~~
nobody314159
If the lectures are online and the lecturers are re-deployed to do
supervisions and one-one tuition that's great.

If as we all suspect, the whole dept is reduced to an admin person to collect
the names and fees and a sys-admin to install the multiple choice problem set
software - then that's less good !

~~~
thematt
Why is that less good? Let the market decide whether it's an effective
alternative or not. If somebody can learn just as well from that medium then
let them. Eliminating an entire department isn't a bad thing -- education is
about the students, not the teachers -- regardless of what the unions would
have you believe.

~~~
nobody314159
>Let the market decide That's the clever part of MIT/Stanford etc putting all
their lectures online.

Whats the point of paying to go to UC when you can learn the same stuff at
home? And then the UC diploma becomes worthless because everyone knows you
just watched the same stuff as the guy at home.

The only diplomas worth having will be those that still have real lecturers -
like MIT and Stanford!

A similar thing happened in the UK 10years ago. All the equivalents of
community colleges were renamed universities. This was supported by all the
UK's IVY league schools! The problem is that somebody going for a job with a
degree from a mid-ranking uni is faced with an employer who isn't sure whether
that is a 'real' university or a former college. So to 'play it safe' they
only look for IVY league degrees. By pretending to support wider access to
education - the top 5 places destroyed neatly all the competition!

------
smackfu
A manufacturing union would aim to block jobs being moved offshore. Why
wouldn't a teacher's union do the same? Just because "management" is the
public / government?

------
jwm
People here may be interested in this.

"Creativity in Mathematics, pt. 1 of 3, Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) and the
Moore Method" <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLVTV-vXJBg>

I think its relevant in the current debate of the different learning styles:
Physical presence lecturing, Long-distance lecturing, Class participation,
Team problem solving, Individual problem solving, Individual rote learning.

If anyone has any studies comparing the end result problem solving ability of
students who have gone through all the different combinations of the above
learning styles, I would love to see them.

------
TruthPrevails
Bad move. A step backward for humanity. All efforts should be made to make
knowledge available easily and on large scale.

------
itsjaredc
The dangers of factions slap us in the face every day. (See Federalist 10,
James Madison, 1787 AD.) Someone save us.

------
willpower101
Also they aren't really blocking online classes. The title is just a little
fluffy. They are simply stopping implementation of online classes that would
change any teacher's employment for the next 3 years. They can still create
online classes and teachers can still choose to teach online and hybrid
classes.

Anyway, they cited a case of laying off two developmental math teachers and
replacing them with supervised computer testing. LOL. Even here in the south I
don't know many dev classes that are any different. And the teachers all don't
really care anyway.

------
nickik
Its always the same some trie to stop it others embrace it. Examples:

-Radio people start podcasting

-Jurnalist start bloging

-Muscians putting up there stuff for free.

-Programmers started doing opensource

-Sientists move away from publishing in journals

More will follow.

The field of education is way behind. But its started allready in the lower
levels Khanacademy and in the higher levels universitys like stanford and mit.

Nice future.

------
rshm
I think it us unfair to see the education system only from economic
standpoint. Every one regardless whether they are poor are reach needs to have
access to education. Technology bridges the gap caused by economic status by
offering classes to mass audience (Stanford) as well as for people who cannot
attend class because they are in some other part of world.

IMO, the competition needs to be based on quality. If institutions offer a
quality education, people will recognize that and choose that instead of
online system.

Over the time both class room based as well as technology based classrooms are
bound to get better.

~~~
amartya916
"If institutions offer a quality education, people will recognize that and
choose that instead of online system."

Absolutely on the dot.

As an aside, there are intangibles associated with actually going to a
University, e.g. interacting with people in person (serendipitous learning),
that online classes cannot undermine.

I see online classes as a excellent supplement to what's being taught in class
and in cases where in-class learning is not an option for an individual
(monetary, time or location based constraints). It is such an exciting time to
be around; we can witness exactly how social networking and online education
can interplay vis-a-vis in-person, in-class learning.

------
endtime
Every time someone tries to manipulate the government into legislating them
out of obsolescence, I am equal parts amused and disgusted.

------
epicureanideal
This is great news! No competition from these dinosaurs!

------
kellyreid
how dare people want to learn stuff.

------
scrod
I hope they succeed and I fully support their efforts. Distance learning
programs will never be a substitute for genuine classroom-based interaction,
and under no circumstances should they ever be used to replace skilled
teachers.

And even if that weren't the case, unions have every right to fight for the
interests of workers, and should do so at every available opportunity.

~~~
Homunculiheaded
I think 'never' is way too strong a statement. As mentioned in other comments
100+ student lectures are pretty much as impersonal, the only difference is
you can rewind an online lecture, and usually have it taught by one of the
best in the field.

Additionally I've supplemented poor university teachers with excellent online
classes to much success. Personally I think the future of education should be
something like students taking Stanford's ai class with local teachers acting
as TAs and adding a few supplements + classroom interaction. You read Norvig's
textbook, why not have him teach the material if you can?

Having taken far more than my fair share of classes, my experience is that,
aside from project heavy courses, only upper level grad classes are really
something you couldn't replace with a mass-audience, online course. And these
are just training wheels for researching closely with a professor or research
team anyway.

For lower to mid level undergraduate courses I actually feel that online
classes (given that they are top tier classes) are better. A good teacher is
much, much more important in earlier learning than later (a smart grad student
should have no difficultly learning advanced material even with an awful
teacher)

~~~
byoung2
_Personally I think the future of education should be something like students
taking Stanford's ai class with local teachers acting as TAs and adding a few
supplements + classroom interaction._

I like that model, especially since you can break geographical boundaries and
get the best instructors into places where it would be impractical to get them
otherwise (e.g. the remote village in a developing country). You can also
break time boundaries, by taking classes when they suit you, instead of when
they're offered, and it allows future classes to learn from teachers who may
no longer be living. It is impossible to take a physics course taught by
Albert Einstein or a business class taught by Steve Jobs, but with new methods
of education, this would be possible.

