My Educational Diatribe

This is just a taste of a much longer article that I want to write, but I want to get it down roughly here…
For thousands of years (think Socrates, Plato) ‘higher education’ was a place were the wisest of people came and literally sat at the feet of the wise men who contemplated the world and made advances in philosophy, science, and the arts. Those who came to these academies (Plato’s was the first real university per se) were the upper crust of society.
For the rest of us, we learned what we need to from our parents and other local elders. For thousands of years, humans died within miles of the place they were born. Almost everyone was a farmer, and learned the art of farming from their parents. No need for language, science, or mathematics because milking cows and planting seed did not require a such rounded education.
In the early 1800’s, the industrial revolution started lots of things, including formal education. With technology, fewer people had to farm the land, so we could train people for new jobs (different from what their parents were doing) so they went off to school. People moved into more cities and interacted with more of the world. A base knowledge of education was required to be a productive member of society. First is was K-5, then K-8, then K-12. Soon after formal education started, major universities (many in the US starting as teachers colleges) sprang up like daisies. At many of these schools (known as research-I schools) the millennia old style of young wise people coming and studying with the older wise people occurred. At Harvard, Stanford, MIT, the people who were discovering how the world worked were teaching the future scholars (leaders, teachers) all their knowledge so the students could start from there and move society on. Freshman classes containing 1000 students follow this model even today.
Two things have happened simultaneously to disrupt the 2000 year old University model 1)K-12 not being enough and 2) the internet
In today’s society, having only a HS diploma is considered a pretty crappy education. You need a college degree these days to get any sort of high paying job. It’s just a reality. College is now becoming a 13th and 14th grade if you will, but it is stuck in the old model. Compare the learning environment between a 12th grade social studies class in a small HS in rural Michigan in one year to a theater style lecture hall with 1200 students (no joke) in a History 101 class the next year. Those two systems are so completely different; many students have a hard time with the transition.
The internet has removed the universities as houses of intellectuals and information. If you wanted to be a historian, you read books (written by academics) and took college classes to become a historian. With the internet, that education can be received in a completely different way, requiring nothing from the college. If I want to learn about life in Russia, I would rather go read the local news from Pravda or read a blog from someone who lives there. Governments can no longer hide information like they used to. There are so many places to get information, why get it from an academic? ahh, because of that damn degree…
Degrees are what we need to get a job. It’s our proof that we slogged through the flawed educational system and can get a job. Even those degrees are becoming meaningless in some cases, take computer technology. If you have a 4 year degree in computer science, some would say you are 4 years behind and might as well be 30 years behind. People who hire IT professionals these days don’t give a hoot about your degree, they want experience.
These two things are intertwined. As people start getting their education from elsewhere (enrollment drops), employers will start recognizing that and put less emphasis degree attainment. (enrollment drops some more)
The universities are even helping it by posting lectures as podcasts on the ‘net for anyone to hear. We are even starting down a road where the traditional college textbook is no longer needed as every piece of information in it can be attained (for free) on the internet.
This can be discussed at some length. Maybe I will take a sabbatical and write a book about it…