As Technology Brings New Life to Education, The Establishment Resists
By Susie Madrak Saturday Oct 24, 2009 4:00pmThere are some amazing technological innovations in education right now, and of course the education establishment is doing their darndest to obstruct them in any way they can. (Remember the newspaper industry?)
This is just one fascinating example, and the story's too complex to excerpt - go read the rest:
Like millions of other Americans, Barbara Solvig lost her job this year. A fifty-year-old mother of three, Solvig had taken college courses at Northeastern Illinois University years ago, but never earned a degree. Ever since, she had been forced to settle for less money than coworkers with similar jobs who had bachelor’s degrees. So when she was laid off from a human resources position at a Chicago-area hospital in January, she knew the time had come to finally get her own credential. Doing that wasn’t going to be easy, because four-year degrees typically require two luxuries Solvig didn’t have: years of time out of the workforce, and a great deal of money.
Luckily for Solvig, there were new options available. She went online looking for something that fit her wallet and her time horizon, and an ad caught her eye: a company called StraighterLine was offering online courses in subjects like accounting, statistics, and math. This was hardly unusual—hundreds of institutions are online hawking degrees. But one thing about StraighterLine stood out: it offered as many courses as she wanted for a flat rate of $99 a month. “It sounds like a scam,” Solvig thought—she’d run into a lot of shady companies and hard-sell tactics on the Internet. But for $99, why not take a risk?
[...]The same courses would have cost her over $2,700 at Northeastern Illinois, $4,200 at Kaplan University, $6,300 at the University of Phoenix, and roughly the gross domestic product of a small Central American nation at an elite private university. They also would have taken two or three times as long to complete.
And if Solvig needed any further proof that her online education was the real deal, she found it when her daughter came home from a local community college one day, complaining about her math course. When Solvig looked at the course materials, she realized that her daughter was using exactly the same learning modules that she was using at StraighterLine, both developed by textbook giant McGraw-Hill. The only difference was that her daughter was paying a lot more for them, and could only take them on the college’s schedule. And while she had a professor, he wasn’t doing much teaching. “He just stands there,” Solvig’s daughter said, while students worked through modules on their own.
And then there's Flatworld Knowledge, a company offering free online college textbooks (and customized textbooks for a low fee). Anyone who's gone to college (or paid for their kid) knows how expensive textbooks are:
Flat World Knowledge is the brainchild of two industry veterans who, back in 2007, decided to reinvent their industry from the bottom up. Co-founder Eric Frank explained to me how the company’s model works. “We still produce books in the traditional way, i.e., we approach top scholars, conduct peer review, and integrate all of the elements (photos, charts, graphs) into a high-quality textbook. But then we flip the model on its head.”
As opposed to publishing a paper edition under copyright, the company applies a creative commons open source license. It then publishes each title online, where every single book in its catalog can be read for free. (They are also presently free on iPhones, though I suspect that will eventually have to change.) There also are a number of paid options available to the professors and students who sign up with the company:
* A black-and-white soft cover edition will be printed on-demand and delivered within five days for $29.95.
* A color edition produced in the same manner costs $59.95.
* An audio book, in mp3 file format is available for $39.95. (Individual chapters cost $2.99 each.)
* A PDF costs $19.95. (Chapters are priced at $1.99 each.)
* Study aids that include sample quizzes and other helpful material can be purchased for $9.95. (Chapter study aids are priced at $1.99.)So how is this model working out to date? “Our data indicate that 65 percent of the students choose to buy at least one of our products, with 35 percent choosing the free option,” says Frank. “The average amount spent by a student is about $30 a semester, or factoring in the free use, $20 per student per class per semester.”
The important thing is that consumers should get to have choices. All other things being equal, if these products are as good as the ones offered in a standard academic setting, the establishment is only delaying the inevitable by fighting them.
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schooling online through a local community college. Between getting my education online and attending courses on the physical campus, I prefer the former, although I try to take one course on the physical campus each semester.
What bothers me about online education that's tied to a regular educational institution is that there's still a stubborness about insisting upon having students use paper textbooks that can cost over $100 per book, despite the fact we are doing all of our work at home, and on the internet.
When Gov. Schwarzenegger had expressed some interest in weaning California colleges off of paper textbooks in favor of e-books, I decided to buy my Kindle so that I would have a headstart on the technology.
Now that I am thoroughly comfortable with my Kindle, I'd say I'm ready to work with e-books for my online classes. But traditional education is still moving slowly on it, both to adopt e-books into their curriculum, and also to quit charging through the nose for these e-textbooks.
I guess I'm a bit too ahead of the times for my college! :S
Students see book prices of $150 to $200 per course as such an important factor because book prices appear to be a large portion of out-of-pocket costs for most community college, state public 4-year, and even scholarship private college students (a majority pay nowhere near the full sticker tuition). Even at $1000/semester full load is only $8000 for a degree that adds many hundreds of thousands to lifetime income, gives you access to more comfortable, fulfilling careers, and transforms people into thinking human beings who can contribute to society.
But taxpayers pay most of the cost of higher education at community and state colleges while alums and donors pay for all those financial aid (along with taxpayers via Pell Grants and low interest loan subsidies) at private colleges.
Further compounding the book cost illusion, however, "traditional" students seldom write the tuition checks. Those students seldom know what their tuition is. But students buy books themselves, even though Daddy pays, so they see the prices -- and could have bought more beer with those funds from their back to college allowance.
Of course textbook companies have always been a convenient villain, and rightfully so. As a longtime textbook author, I can tell you the real problem is how awful texts are because editors lack subject matter and pedagogical knowledge, book companies only care about imitating the market leader, "doorstop" books stuffed with the favorite trivial topic to please every topic and method to please every faculty member on department textbook order committees.
And the real problem is that most students don't even major in "real" education anymore. Less than one-fourth major in liberal arts subjects today. Most colleges are disguised trades schools for studying business, criminal justice, hospitality, and other votech subjects that cheat students out of learning how to think, analyze, vote, and make informed decisions. Nobody takes courses with college level math, guys and minorities are avoiding college altogether, and academic graduate schools (i.e., not MBA, law, etc.) are disappearing completely for lack of enrollment. American higher ed has become the laughing stock of the world, but we are still in denial.
George Carlin had a classic message I'm sure many remember, about how the nations powerful want to keep you uneducated and stupid. I firmly believe his theory.
“The best thing about getting old is you’re not responsible for remembering things anymore. Even important things. ‘But it was your daughter’s funeral.’ ‘I forgot!’ You can even make believe you have Alzheimer’s disease. It’s a lot of fun. You can look around the dining room table and say, ‘Who are you people and where is my horse?’
Try this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q
but not smart enough to question... why?
MIT has put its lectures online for free:
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index...
(The only things you miss are the labs and the sheepskin.)
educational audio and video resources from many different universities, the Library of Congress, various museums, etc.
(just go to the iTunes U tab of the iTunes store)
carpentry, home maintenance, making things . . . . lousy things like that?
ive been taking some online computer courses given by both stanford and mit...learning alot...although i do miss the lab parts
We need to strike that degrading moniker out of existence anyway.
It can only go away - truly- if we stopped being one.
The trick in that case though is selling and marketing yourself. Most people want to see a piece of paper that says. . "Degree" . . 'yeah, I'm now entitled to sit in a cubicle for the rest of my life I got a degree. I'm as qualified as the 5000 people who stood in line before me to try to get this job.'
My job shipped out to China and I was considering retraining for a new field. I also have a daughter in College, so double-thanks!
Who is this "education establishment" you're referring to?
fully understands technology does have a dark side that's seldom discussed these days. Snow White promised happy endings to and was considered high technology in it's day.
I'm ready
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPmVhyHBRAM
. . . !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2l4bz1FT8U
your an incredibly valuable player with lots of experience at making companies make money.
Just be able to back that up though.
If you can't speak to an interviewer, but have the skills to do the job, well fuck you.
"free enterprise" . .
school is bullshit for most people.
It is a structure enforcer that is designed to mold young minds. The problem is that one way does not fit all. No matter what the change is that schools continually make, the results are dismal.
Break free and make education voluntary, free market and al la carte. Stop with the rules and the boxing in of minds and stifiling of talents.
Until school is freed from the education administration, a select group will excel, most will languish and get by, a some will be crushed and destroyed.
There will be cost, but freedom always brings cost, but there is no denying the rigid, structured, developed, unitary system we have now, and have always had, is for the state - not the individual.
I like the what these companies are doing, but let's get radical. Schools should be much more like restaurants.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zuxhmPAHpY&fe...
Is littered with the relics of new technology, from slide projectors, 8mm film learning kiosks, to computers as teaching machines.(each kid gets plugged into the machine, no teacher input required)
Whats problematic is the cost of the new, and how it doesn't get to all the schools that need it, just the more wealthy ones.
PS; in the late 70s, one classroom at the school I went to, had a dual seat movie teaching kiosk sat in the corner gathering dust. It looked like a large version of a dual seat video arcade machine.
The appeal of 'learning machines' is that content and curriculum can be dictated from high above, removes those troublesome teachers with their dissident and out of date ideas.
Welcome To The Machine
of competitive business, obviating costly brick & mortar education models, putting skill sets and diplomas into more and more people's hands, for prices that drop lower and lower!
Buh-bye, Olde Skools!
Mildly interesting piece, but where was the "education establishment obstructing progress" part?
I attend www.cnm.edu online. I currently take 4 classes which cost me 445.00. This price included the registration fee. Now the books were very costly but I went to Cheep.com or valore to rent of buy books used which saved me 231.00. I figure I'm paying about the same as the school with 99.00 monthly fee. CNM is the state community college of UNM. New Mexico Tech school is ranked very high and UNM is ranked 68 for law school and the medical schools are in the top 20. UNM cost about 209.00 a class, so a full load with fees is around 2400.00 a semester; which is still much cheaper than other state run schools. However, UNM doesn't offer a winter semester. :( You can take up to 70 credits from other schools and transfer them in to speed things up and save money at the same time. Thats what I'm doing now.... I will check out these other sites to see if UNM will accept credits. Thanks for the information
I have really mixed feelings about this. I think online courses are good as an option, especially if they make education available to people where it otherwise wouldn't be (flexible scheduling, cost, etc.). However, my college experience was so much more than adding up classes to equal a degree, and it was a tremendously liberating experience. This "establishment" we could rail at here and say they want to keep us in the dark ages of limited education, we might be talking about the same academia that Conservatives want to tear down for its socialist/feminazi "brainwashing" of their children. Noam Chomsky for gawdsakes.
It's hard for me to imagine that online courses could totally measure up to the experience of a university; the latter is what I really want for everyone. To the extent online classes bring more of that to more people, sounds great, but I definitely worry about the university being cannibalized.
Full disclosure: I'm a university professor, so I obviously have a stake in the "Education Establishment." That said, Fox in the Stars couldn't be more right that a university education is far more than a sum of the classes one takes to earn a degree. Being immersed in a university environment and having access to leading scholars in the field makes the difference. As an undergrad, I went to two public schools, and one private. It absolutely changed my life--the way that I approached the world, knowledge about the world, and my relations with other people. I questioned all of my beliefs and opinions and changed about every one of them. I entered college as a religious conservative and emerged as a secular liberal dedicated to accepting theories only tentatively and subjecting them to critical thought and empirical testing. There is no way that I could have become the person I am today through online education. Imagine what the creationists home-schoolers would do with a system like this--unlike me, their children wouldn't have a prayer of being exposed to theories and facts that challenged their beliefs. It is also far more difficult to get a proper education without in-class interaction, and face-to-face consultations with instructors and teaching assistants.
Not to mention that I wouldn't otherwise have had the opportunity to take classes like fencing, modern dance, theatre, poetry and the like--which are effectively off-limits to a person of limited means.
For the past number of decades, universities have been a critical intellectual resource of our nation--supplying not only technological and scientific innovation, but also mass university education to the middle class, while cultivating progressivism and social and political dissent.
I think turning higher ed into a "product" that people can consume in their bathrobes on their own time in the privacy of their own homes is no substitute for access to excellent four-year institutions of higher learning. So I favor making higher ed more affordable, like it was for me when I went to school on pell grants, work study and other federal financial aid.
I am sympathetic to the situation of those who want to get a university degree and further training in midlife and cannot return to college because of financial concerns and family obligations, so I think there is a place for online learning (also for people who want to take a course to get more work skills or for personal edification). That's why I have mixed feelings about this trend. But, I really think there is a systemic problem with the U.S. higher ed where talented and intelligent people aren't able to afford to go to university and so are forced to put it off until middle age. I think fewer people would be in this situation if university education weren't so friggin expensive that you have to be in the upper middle class to get a four-year univ degree.
Even without the issue of unethical price gouging, traditional publishers are dinosaurs. Today students have netbooks and PDAs. Who WOULDN'T want textbooks in PDFs and other electronic forms that weigh nothing, making it possible for a student to carry everything rather than worry about weight? Publishers have been unresponsive to that reality.
Then when you do begin to discuss the issue of price gouging, of creating "new editions" simply to force new purchases, it's a wonder the thieving companies haven't been charged with collusion and anti-competitive practices (no doubt a result of brib...I mean, lobbying politicians). All monopolists hate capitalism and the free market.
I'm very skeptical of these sorts of articles. The thrust of the article is that these online courses are going to revolutionize (and destroy) the existing university system because the for-profit online colleges are *just as good* as the universities.
But the support for that claim is that Solvig's course material was the same as her daughter's *community college* course material. Community colleges are valuable institutions, but they are very different from four-year universities.
More problematic, the hero of the story couldn't get accredited and so engaged in a roundabout method of having its course offerings validated. Even if this is not credit-laundering (as the article suggests cynics would describe it) this sort of laundering is only necessary for a product on the margin of acceptable quality.
As a university professor, I will be the first to acknowledge that the costs of textbooks is ridiculous - and the new editions whose only difference from the last one is the picture on the cover? Give us all a break. The same with equipment and educational supplies - it is really a racket.
I will also allow that there are some courses that certainly lend themselves to online or other forms of self-instruction. But there are many other courses that you simply cannot do that way and expect to be as well informed as someone who sat in the classroom. In the sciences, for example, hands-on technical instruction is a must to succeed in the field. No matter how much time you spend on a computer, you will not have learned, much less mastered, the use of standard biological or chemical laboratory equipment. And without someone more knowledgeable than yourself to ask questions - in real time - of, or to have the option of discussing issues with classmates and colleagues, a large part of the educational experience is lost.
I have had students in my upper-level courses who took their lower level courses online, and it is usually pretty easy to spot who they are - and they usually self-identify when they are the ones who do poorly on their ifrst exam and express disbelief due to the fact that did so well in their online courses.
I can see hiring someone as an accountant or a writer of some sort who has earned an online degree. But I would not hire - and know of nobody who would - an online degree holder to work in a research lab for example.
It is all well and good to decry the 'establishment'. But it really displays a lack of true understanding of what is going on out there. Or out here, as it were.
I would also add that financial aid is NOT the same as 'the taxpayers paying for higher education.' Most financial aid is in the form of loans that must be paid back. And even if financial aid DID mean that taxpayers are footing the bill, I would much rather pay for education than for prosons.
Learning should be a lifetime pursuit -- knowledge available for all who want it. Some people want to learn a skill for building a house, etc -- and if it can be learned on line, etc, then the market will fill those needs. Others may be after a liberal arts education, broad and deep (!), where they can engage with the best minds in the various disciplines, e.g., classes in philosophy, art, math, science, language, anthropology, semantics, engineering, economics, -- gawd, my undergraduate years were so amazing, and a life changing (saving?!) experience for me! You're not going to get that for $99 per semester!
Ms. Madrak seems to be trying to label universities and book publishers as villains. Books are expensive, and publishers are indeed guilty of pushing authors to write new editions of books, so as to push new versions of their product that may not be needed. OK . . but students (and professors) have pushed back, and today there are plenty of publishers that are now providing electronic versions of their books -- either on CD or on-line. These save paper, shipping costs, are good for the environment, etc -- and allow users to access content anywhere w/o lugging the textbook around.
Many of the brick/mortar universities have on-line courses today, or ones that include a periodic physical campus mixed with on-line participation. Like a few other posters here, I can't imagine my undergrad, or grad years in a virtual environment. Much of my learning took place engaging with professors and my student peers. The market is working to commoditize this experience, and that product will meet the needs of some students, e.g., those that are remote or immobile for some reason, or are after knowledge that is easily commoditized (any number of books on Amazon on any number of subjects can be purchased for, say, $10 -- this opportunity really isn't new!). The sheepskin is going to cost you though!
But you still have professors / scientists, in the field, and in their labs, doing research. And, if you want to engage them in their habitat (!), you'll have to travel to where they are, and take a class from them. But not for $99.
In strictly financial terms a huge chunk of college grads would have been better off going to a vo-tech or community college. If they'd banked the tuition money and headed into the job market earlier they'd have a jump-start in job experience, a nest egg in the bank and not be spending the next ten years paying off loans.
Granted, sheepskins are essential for a lot of professions, but the idea that higher education is the ticket to a good life is a complete myth. It might be personally edifying and make for a more rounded intellect, but its sort of a luxury, has been for decades and doesn't necessarily mean you'll end up with a great job.
First, read the FAQ, you either pay $99 per month for as long as it takes you to complete your courses or buy individual courses for $399. There are community colleges offering courses online for less than this and those courses transfer to many more institutions than the view that this company has agreements with
I find it funny that a product that claims to open up education for more people includes Blackboard as a partner. Blackboard has a lot of institutions by the throat with it's product. Once they bought the system to deliver their courses, it became very difficult to switch systems. Blackboard bought up it's main rival (WebCT) and then started suing others (DesiretoLearn) claiming that Blackboard owns all of the patents for the online learning systems (not true). They then started contacting institutions that use DesiretoLearn and telling them that they better switch to Blackboard or they would be without a system when DesiretoLearn is forced to shut down.
They charge huge licensing fees and one of the latest versions (institutions had to upgrade because Blackboard threatened to stop supporting all previous versions) required organizations to also upgrade all of their servers.
Blackboard is all about keeping control of education. They aren't better than the "system". They are the "system".
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