{"id":1019,"date":"2010-03-13T10:57:02","date_gmt":"2010-03-13T17:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/universities-in-the-free-era\/"},"modified":"2010-03-13T10:57:02","modified_gmt":"2010-03-13T17:57:02","slug":"universities-in-the-free-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/universities-in-the-free-era\/","title":{"rendered":"Universities in the &#8220;Free&#8221; Era"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Saturday, March 13, 2010 11:00am<br \/>Presenters:<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/aims.muohio.edu\/\">Glenn Platt &#8211; Miami University Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies<\/a><br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/arts.muohio.edu\/art\">Peg Faimon &#8211; Miami University Design Collaborative<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Description:<br \/>MIT, Yale, Stanford, and others put lectures online. Chris Anderson argues all university lectures should be free. From Academic Earth to TED, it&#8217;s free. So what is the value-add of a university education? What models of higher education will survive? How will universities leverage the social web to reinvent themselves?<br \/>Slides: <a href=\"http;\/\/tinyurl.com\/sxsw2010edslides\">http;\/\/tinyurl.com\/sxsw2010edslides<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The university is the enduring institution that has spent it&#8217;s lifetime resting on its laurels.<\/p>\n<p>Best metaphor: The folks who experimented with flight (crazy flying machines), you can imagine someone pedaling on one of these and going off a cliff. The cliff is so high and the ground is so far away that you can actually think you&#8217;re flying, but you&#8217;re actually falling. Higher ed thinks it is flying, but it is actually falling. There is a shake-down in higher ed on its way down the road.<\/p>\n<p>What is the roll of higher education? How are universities in collapse?<\/p>\n<p><strong>What is the purpose of a university anyway?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The roll of higher education is to convey knowledge.<\/li>\n<li>Create knowledge (research) &#8211; 10-50% of new products are developed by universities<\/li>\n<li>Develop the person &#8211; what does an individual do in their free time and how does it shape them? This is possibly one of the larger rolls a university plays.<\/li>\n<li>Contribute to society &#8211; global and local level<\/li>\n<li>Signal ability &#8211; signal the quality of the person coming from that institution &#8211; Harvard lets in smart and lets out smart people<\/li>\n<li>Seen innovation &#8211; moving things forward (working w\/industry)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The System is Breaking Down<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The cost is too high! &#8211; Average private university is $25k\/yr, the inflation rate is significantly higher than the general public. State subsidies are rapidly going away. Many times dept it too high for students<\/li>\n<li>You have to go to the mountain. &#8211; The need is fast disappearing. Many times a single center of knowledge isn&#8217;t going to work.<\/li>\n<li>There is no control over the clock &#8211; you do it on their timetable and their schedule (average is 6 yrs for undergrad degree)<\/li>\n<li>The &quot;experts&quot; are local &#8211; you can only access the best teachers on your campus &#8211; limited set of people you can interact with. Expertise lies in networks.<\/li>\n<li>Universities change one funeral at a time &#8211; Tenure: After people have been there 6 years&#8230; they get to stay there FOREVER (say whatever they want, you can&#8217;t find them). Change management is a big impediment.<\/li>\n<li>Faculty hire people just like themselves &#8211; many times people hiring aren&#8217;t looking for the future.<\/li>\n<li>Tenure is broken &#8211; nobody wants to talk about this, even though it&#8217;s the elephant in the room. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What&#8217;s driving this breakdown?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Change in learning styles &#8211; people learn differently now. Learning styles aren&#8217;t being better identified.<\/li>\n<li>Collapse of disciplinary structure &#8211; rise in interdisciplinary space. <\/li>\n<li>Acceleration of K-12 &#8211; many things taught in college are now being taught in high school. Ohio: Senior to Sophomore, encourages students Sr. in HS to skip over freshman year in college and go to\u00a0 with full year of credit.<\/li>\n<li>Flattening of knowledge hierarchy<\/li>\n<li>Students (+parents) as consumers &#8211; parent attitude on what to study and where to study &#8211; more of a consumer mindset. There are a lot of choices and many more ways to access those choices.<\/li>\n<li>Employers active in curricula &#8211; many companies contract for degree programs specifically for them. Companies get to help design the curriculum (not always well).<\/li>\n<li>Location independence &#8211; doesn&#8217;t matter where you are now<\/li>\n<li>The internet!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Educational entrepreneurs have stepped in<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ocwconsortium.org\/\">Open courseware<\/a> (MIT) &#8211; many universities have been opposed to this type of transparency. Many schools feel pressure to get involved just to stay competitive.<\/li>\n<li>Itunes U\/ Youtube Edu &#8211; stanford&#8217;s iphone dev course has been watched 5 million times! That&#8217;s an incredible reach<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ted.com\/\">TED<\/a> <\/li>\n<li>Accessible education content (textbook options) &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/\">google books<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flatworldknowledge.com\/\">flatworld,<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/textbookrevolution.org\/index.php\/Main_Page\">textbook revolution<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Online learning networks &#8211; students connected to students for notes\/guides\/advising &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/cramster.com\">cramster.com<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gradeguru.com\/sps\/homePagenlu.do\">GradeGuru<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sharenotes.com\/\">ShareNotes<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Structured curricula &#8211; certificate programs, executive programs, grad coursework (w\/out degree)<\/li>\n<li>Online universities &#8211; probably the largest in this area &#8211; actual degrees online. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.uopeople.org\/\">University of the People<\/a>, plan to have a full open free university available to the public. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/\">Open University<\/a>. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.phoenix.edu\/\">University of Phoenix<\/a>, 150k MBA program students right now!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>So how does the traditional university evolve?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It should be a fire hose of information. Anarchy of Wikipedia.<\/li>\n<li>A professor should be an experience designer &#8211; try to get the user somewhere. What is the best way to get them there.<\/li>\n<li>Project manager &#8211; professor working with their students as a project.<\/li>\n<li>Angel investor &#8211; what would a VC partner do? How would you encourage someone to solve a problem? Get them the resources they need to get things done.<\/li>\n<li>Curator &#8211; Make sense of the information out there. How does a student select what is valuable? Where is the good information? <\/li>\n<li>Resource Allocator &#8211; make sure students have the resources they need to do what they need to do.<\/li>\n<li>Life coach &#8211; &quot;yes you can&quot; motivator &#8211; get students to be active in their learning and show them the way.<\/li>\n<li>Validator &#8211; needs to make sure students can communicate their value ignoring the place they got their education. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Where to begin<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Experiential learning<\/li>\n<li>Multi-institutional collaborations &#8211; need to interact with others, in different fields.<\/li>\n<li>Train PhDs to think more contextually &#8211; teach them to teach! <\/li>\n<li>Strategic industry and non-profit partnerships &#8211; engage those outside who need our assistance.<\/li>\n<li>Get rid of tenure!<\/li>\n<li>Student-driven inquiry<\/li>\n<li>Facilitate collaboration &#8211; team teaching, encourage teachers to collaborate.<\/li>\n<li>De-privilege institutional content &#8211; we need to share content.<\/li>\n<li>Reward failure<\/li>\n<li>Get rid of departments and focus on questions &#8211; what do we do about water? Structure around this vs. silos of departments.<\/li>\n<li>Think like social entrepreneurs<\/li>\n<li>Give more than you get &#8211; contribute to the open commons and back to the community.<\/li>\n<li>Hire people who think this way (forward thinking w\/qualities above)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saturday, March 13, 2010 11:00amPresenters:Glenn Platt &#8211; Miami University Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media StudiesPeg Faimon &#8211; Miami University Design Collaborative Description:MIT, Yale, Stanford, and others put lectures online. Chris Anderson argues all university lectures should be free. From Academic Earth to TED, it&#8217;s free. So what is the value-add of a university education? What&#8230;  <a class=\"excerpt-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/universities-in-the-free-era\/\" title=\"Read Universities in the &#8220;Free&#8221; Era\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sxsw"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}