

The Impending Demise of the University - jamesbritt
http://edge.org/3rd_culture/tapscott09/tapscott09_index.html

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joshhart
Most universities make a large part of their money through research - the
money will always be there so I don't see colleges ever going away.

What about the value of the diploma? Sure, I could code out of high school.
But now employers can see my resume, my GPA, and my college achievements and
get a fair idea about my abilities. Unless there is a great innovator that can
provide a great testing/grading service for topics covered by traditional
university classes today, there is no way that the university system will
start faltering.

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gaius
_But now employers can see my resume, my GPA, and my college achievements and
get a fair idea about my abilities._

None of that has any correlation to productivity as a commercial programmer.

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rml
>But a credential and even the prestige of a university is rooted in its
effectiveness as a learning institution. If these institutions are shown to be
inferior learning environments to other alternatives their capacity to
credential will surely diminish.

I think the author is blissfully unaware of the fact that universities are
often judged (from the outside) on their effectiveness not as "learning
institutions," but as markers of belonging to a particular social stratum.

The existence of anachronisms such as "legacy admissions" seems to merit this
view.

[http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/arti...](http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/09/28/at_the_elite_colleges___dim_white_kids?mode=PF)

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jzachary
Universities aren't going to disappear completely. The strong ones will
survive through adaptation - witness Stanford and MIT vis-a-vis online
courses. The stodgy, bureaucratic, state-supported universities risk becoming
the do-do birds of higher learning. Current fiscal stressors may be the thing
that drives the weaker universities into extinction.

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johnnybgoode
We could be even more confident about this if universities were not so
thoroughly funded, controlled, and supported by the government. If they
weren't, then sure, better methods of education could easily replace them. But
the government will continue to invest large sums of money to prop up the
existing university system. We can hope they fail.

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hs
university won't go away if govt joins in further in cooperative exploitation,
like requiring degree/certificate to do something

like, what if the average mom is required to have a degree just to cook
regular food? because otherwise she's unqualified and can 'danger' her family

altho it seems that certification is required for lucrative professions (we
prolly won't see degree is required for cooking, gardening, plumbing, etc) ...
to protect the incumbent

anyway, we won't see law and medical schools going away if the artificial
limits, exams, certifications still exist (those further making these fields
harder to enter -> more lucrative)

like it or not, education (and religion) is a form of social control.

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rjurney
College is valuable as hacker incubation period, even if a degree is not
attained. You have a lot of time to hack on a lot of things, hopefully without
worrying about rent quite so much (be it through parental or federal/stage
aid/loans).

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quizbiz
For this hacker crowd (in general), the ROI of a university education isn't
fulfilling the promise proclaimed on my former high school walls, that college
grads will make 1 million more in their life time than non-grads.

That being said, I can't wait to start college next year. For learning to be
independent, for networking, for taking courses like Accounting I and II.

That being said, I am going to college starting next year but for 2 years I
have been watching podcasts through iTunes U. Learning economics from
berkeley, CS from Stanford. Thanks to the web, my professors are not limited
to my university. :P

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access_denied
You know, the original idea of a university was to research stuff in three
areas that weren't covered by other institutions of society at that time:
philosophy, medicine, law.

What about that?

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wyclif
Don't forget theology. Otherwise, point well taken.

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glen
Couldn't agree more with this article. For a more rich analysis, I'd recommend
checking out Disrupting Class by Christensen and Horn. All about how
disruption is going to transform education.

We are working on a startup that hopes to facilitate this wave. If you are
interested in helping us beta test, then please sign up at www.nixty.com.
Thanks!

~~~
netsp
Months ago (or was it years), there was a similar article on here. You (or
someone else from your startup) suggested the same thing. I signed up. Even
though watching your video or reading your blog doesn't tell me what you do at
all.

Now looking back, no mail in that time. No blog posts for a year. In other
words: You don't call! You don't write!

What's the point of encouraging signups?

