Steve Jobs was quite upset with the cost of textbooks, and he thought our education system was flawed. He’d accomplished quite a few disruptions in several industries, and much of what he did and others are doing now is leading to the slow demise of academia as we know it. The information available is now available everywhere, it will begin to flow like water being disseminated by the very top academics in the country for next to nothing. In other words information wants to be free, including all the information in their heads, so much for intellectual property in that regard.
But why do so many people want things to change? Is it because the 8% year-over-year cost increases of tuition are more than people can stomach? Is it because when people graduate with their degrees they are unable to find work, but must still payoff the high cost of student loans, much of which is going to professors with tenure, and their benefits after they retire. It appears that the bubble is building and ready to burst on the student loan programs as well as the modern-day college academic model.
There was an interesting article, it was an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Mr. David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale published on August 9, 2012 titled; “The Friendly, Neighborhood Internet School,” which stated; “we have the technology, the people and the institutions we need to usher in online education revolution.”
Indeed they do, but wouldn’t that also negate the value of our current professors? Or do the elite professors from places such as Harvard, Yale, and Stanford want to seize control of the message, and because of their stature, notoriety, tenure, and Ivy League position pull rank on all the other professors and colleges out there? In many regards I believe that in the future many of the colleges and especially the major universities will prevent their professors from posting online lectures, as a protectionist act.
They will have to do this otherwise people will not pay the tuition to sit and lecture halls with 400 other people when they could be watching them in high definition on the Internet at the local Starbucks using the Wi-Fi for the mere cost of a Venti Frappachino. You see my point yet? In fact, the technology and the ability to get these free lectures online is so profound and so revolutionary, it’s so disruptive that it may render the need for our current style of teaching and education unneeded.
Certainly it will have a profound effect on the number of students who apply, the cost of tuition, and the inherent value once considered of an Ivy League degree or education. It probably will hit the smaller institutions first. Are these Ivy League professors willing to literally shut down all the other colleges so they can get their personalized lectures and message out to the masses, and hopefully make money on the high volume even if they are only getting perhaps a couple of dollars for everyone that views one of their lectures?
You see, it appears to me that many people in academia are already operating in a very monopolistic business model. So it wouldn’t surprise me that these academics feel entitled to taking a one-ups-man-ship approach on the rest of their peers throughout academia. Still, in the end it will matter, the entire higher into education will slowly dissolve just as the mainstream media is today, starting with the newspapers, trade journals, and magazines. Surely you can see that future, the writing is on the wall. Whereas I agree with the op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, I also have a tough time with the motivations and future course of action that these schools might take.
Some might say that they have completely noble intentions, and they certainly intend to stand on their pedestal of self-proclaimed integrity and ethics, almost an intellectual socialism approach to giving knowledge to the world, but we know that’s not usually the case when push comes to shove and it is their paycheck which is being affected. That’s when people change their mind, and they maneuver for a better position for themselves. I also predict that, and I almost am assured that that prediction will come to pass. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.