The coming melt-down in higher education (as seen by a marketer)

[mia]

For 400 years, higher education in the US has been on a roll. From Harvard asking Galileo to be a guest professor in the 1600s to millions tuning in to watch a team of unpaid athletes play another team of unpaid athletes in some college sporting event, the amount of time and money and prestige in the college world has been climbing. I'm afraid that's about to crash and burn. Here's how I'm looking at it....


Back before the digital revolution, access to information was an issue. The size of the library mattered. One reason to go to college was to get access. Today, that access is worth a lot less. The valuable things people take away from college are interactions with great minds (usually professors who actually teach and actually care) and non-class activities that shape them as people. The question I'd ask: is the money that mass-marketing colleges are spending on marketing themselves and scaling themselves well spent? Are they organizing for changing lives or for ranking high? Does NYU have to get so much bigger? Why?

The solutions are obvious... there are tons of ways to get a cheap, liberal education, one that exposes you to the world, permits you to have significant interactions with people who matter and to learn to make a difference (start here). Most of these ways, though, aren't heavily marketed nor do they involve going to a tradition-steeped two-hundred-year old institution with a wrestling team. Things like gap years, research internships and entrepreneurial or social ventures after high school are opening doors for students who are eager to discover the new.

The only people who haven't gotten the memo are anxious helicopter parents, mass marketing colleges and traditional employers. And all three are waking up and facing new circumstances.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/04/the-coming-meltdown-in-higher-education-as-seen-by-a-marketer.html

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. whaaaaa ? ? ? ? ? ?

Let me raise a digit, kind of centered, on my paw.

The digital revolution allows billions to access shit that used to be hidden and secret.

It is a slow moving, but accelerating wave whose direction and motion we simply are too stupid, shortsighted, and uneducated to truly understand. The first few people who do get it will be burned in effigy, because their insight will be too uncomfortable. But they will be right, and the rest of us will follow in their path.

[anarch]

4. near instant communication

and mass access to all kinds of information


it is a sea change in human consciousness, no doubt about it.


I'm not real sure what the impact is to "higher education"

I went to college, but it seemed mostly based on training me to cooperate with the way things function in this world we've made for ourselves, not on actually providing me access to information.

I dunno.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Here's how I would change higher education in my ideal world:

1. College would be tuition-free BUT open only to students with distinct intellectual interests. Dumb rich kids would not be admitted.

2. There would be no such thing as a business major. Companies would have to train their own employees, as they did in the past.

3. Every student would be required to take a two-year survey of world history and literature, two years of science, and two years of a foreign language in addition to whatever they were majoring in. Writing, especially the construction of a logical argument, would be emphasized.

4. The U.S. would join the Working Holiday program (of which Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, France, Canada, the UK, Ireland, and probably a few other places are already members). This would allow Americans under the age of 30 to get one-year work permits in any of the member countries (and youth from those countries to be temporary workers here). Students would be encouraged to take advantage of this program in order to broaden their horizons.

[mia]

6. The Working holiday program is a great idea.

The Clep test program should be expanded for more college credit too. Many who already have a broad interest in World History and literature could easily gain college credits by just taking a test.

http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/clep/about.html

[Speck Tater]

3. When I was in high school (1963) my neighbor who worked at IBM taught me computer programming...

Then the summer after I graduated he threw some contract work my way. From that I went to Hughes Aircraft, and only after several years of practical work experience did I go back to school to get my Masters degree, eventually specializing in aerodynamic simulation software.

[SocialistLez]

5. I want to be a social worker

I think a lot of my training could come from "on the job." I don't think I need a 4 year liberal arts education to be a social worker.

Oh well.