I have been taking a massive open online course Introduction to Philosophy at Coursera. I have always been curious about philosophy and this free course sucked me right in. I have already completed four weeks and wait eagerly for the next week's course material to be uploaded. I watch the videos, do the reading, and take the quiz. I must confess that I have learned a lot more this way than I have done in some of my university classes the old fashioned way. I am already debating what course to take next. Should I continue to delve deeper into philosophy or try something entirely knew, like genetics or psychology? I am so excited about the future of online learning that I wonder what will happen to brick and mortar universities where students pay tens of thousands of dollars each year to live on campus, drink lots of beer, party like there is no tomorrow, and then occasionally study. They also have lots of weekends, holidays, and breaks with the net result being an undergraduate degree after a ton of debt, and no hope for a job, with so many jobs being shipped to cheap countries like India and China.
While individuals like me are getting all this knowledge for free, things are not so rosy for others. According to The Times, the student attrition rates are as high as 90% in these programs. In other words, people get all excited about signing up for a freebie, but then abandon it, the way so many Americans drop out of even paid, brick and mortar colleges each year. The editorial cites other sobering data that students who are not serious about their education do even worse when they study online.
I guess the message here is that hard working and motivated people will succeed no matter what -- the type who often will borrow a book from the library or go online to research a new topic without any academic guidance or structure -- while the lazy or careless or vulnerable students will fail whether in a traditional class or online. As education costs keep rising and online education becomes more widespread (imagine hardworking and motivated people in the remotest parts of the world being able to study online what I can here in America!), some of us will take advantage of them and go ahead, while so many others who probably need the education even more will fall behind even further, particularly because education is already so unaffordable (I expect educational institutions to reinvent themselves by serving the motivated learners by providing them high-value education like personal coaches or small group education at resorts where you combine education with pleasure and the like). I guess it will unleash such a nasty fight for jobs that those who fail to use online education will find that an individual in Timbuktu who never stepped inside a school has a job writing code for a US software company.
While individuals like me are getting all this knowledge for free, things are not so rosy for others. According to The Times, the student attrition rates are as high as 90% in these programs. In other words, people get all excited about signing up for a freebie, but then abandon it, the way so many Americans drop out of even paid, brick and mortar colleges each year. The editorial cites other sobering data that students who are not serious about their education do even worse when they study online.
I guess the message here is that hard working and motivated people will succeed no matter what -- the type who often will borrow a book from the library or go online to research a new topic without any academic guidance or structure -- while the lazy or careless or vulnerable students will fail whether in a traditional class or online. As education costs keep rising and online education becomes more widespread (imagine hardworking and motivated people in the remotest parts of the world being able to study online what I can here in America!), some of us will take advantage of them and go ahead, while so many others who probably need the education even more will fall behind even further, particularly because education is already so unaffordable (I expect educational institutions to reinvent themselves by serving the motivated learners by providing them high-value education like personal coaches or small group education at resorts where you combine education with pleasure and the like). I guess it will unleash such a nasty fight for jobs that those who fail to use online education will find that an individual in Timbuktu who never stepped inside a school has a job writing code for a US software company.