College Education: Adapt or Die

The point of a college education is not for you to learn stuff. It's to provide a cost efficient mechanism for employers to weed out the people who can't even be diligent enough to memorize a bunch of facts for four years. As a result, traditional college isn't going to go away if there's a better way to learn stuff; it's only going to go away if employers can get a better weeding out system.

What is going to happen instead is an entirely different can of worms. What should happen is yet another.

Thanks for the post. I hadn't heard of Udemy - I'll have to check it out.

I certainly hope we move to at least a more inexpensive educational system. I'm sick of schools sucking away all of my money for a degree that doesn't add up to much in today's labor markets. I only retained maybe what, 5% of what I learned in university? Most of my profs were incompetent, and all of the information can be found online too. I think school's should follow a CFA-like business model: (online) self-study and a mandatory sit-in exam at the end of the semester.

Online.

Also, Lore.com and Symynd.com.

I would like to add the Open Yale Courses to this list. -- oyc.yale.edu.

Some of these classes look great, thanks for posting. Screedich, you've been posting up some good stuff lately.

I think the traditional model will continue, but I also think this online stuff will take off a little bit more. I hope it does. I think it is a great idea, and as a student at an undesirable "non-target," I can honestly say that I look forward to being able to take some of these classes for the sake of learning the content. Other than the fact that it may have some kind of advertising effect, I don't see the incentive for these sites and schools other than simply wanting to improve education and providing it for those who really want it. Overall, I think this is an honest and good-willed effort.

MIT's free online classes http://ocw.mit.edu/

Here is a comprehensive list on resource for self education: http://www.marcandangel.com/2010/11/15/12-dozen-places-to-self-educate-…

Interesting, but OCR and the weeding out process are still a huge component. I'm curious if any employer anywhere gives any merit to these self education modules. Employers look at experience, school, gpa, and major....in that order and not much else.

I like the cfa testing method mentioned above; if it were viable I'd have several degrees at this point.

This whole online thing is pretty cool, but it will never come close to replacing actual college since the value of going to a top school lies in its signaling mechanism to companies, grad schools, etc. Since everyone can do online course at stanford or MIT, what value is there, aside from the joy of learning?

I take courses at www.coursera.org. They are from professors of different colleges throughout the US.

Guys, everyone will clearly network and collaborate via Skype, Dropbox, etc.

In the future, you will never have to leave your house. Amazon will have 1 hour delivery to your door.

I can vouch for Coursera. I took the Stanford Computer Science 101 course there and it was very well done. Nick Parlante teaches the same course at Stanford, and it was a great introductory-level course into the physics behind computers and a primer on Javascript. I didn't expect to be as impressed as I was.

Most students don't socialize before and after classes anyways. If you're going to be a hermit in a physical classroom, might as well do it online.

Speaking of the CFA model of just taking a test, that's already sort of available with Excelsior, Charter Oak and Thomas Edison. They all let you test out of classes. Some people finish a 4-year degree in a year or two.

Of course, that school isn't gonna get you into high finance. Maybe if you get into a decent masters program.

One of the main problems to me is the cost of bad schools is really increasing. Of course that's shortsightedness on the part of the student, Nobody put a gun to anyone's head and told them to go into $50k debt at a bad school. But if top universities offering online courses decreases costs that's a great thing for future students.

Let's not overstate the importance of college. Most students go to school to drink, party, and postpone adulthood, not meet up with like minds and change the world. I'd say the majority don't even learn to think critically since there are lots of cake majors and grade inflation.

Education is a barrier to entry, if it was free for everyone then all the rich people would just give high wage jobs to their children and limit middle class opportunities. In order to climb the barrier to entry that college provides, parents need to have less children, save more and for longer before having children and the government needs to make it illegal for schools to openly signal their admissions rates. There shouldn't be a difference between different state schools, I feel as if all state schools should be standardized as "college", be funded by federal tax dollars, allow students to choose campus location and have equivalent degree worth. How is it fair that a state like North Carolina gets to have a public school ranked so high while South Carolina and Tennessee with greater levels of poor needing a good education get shitty in state universities? Everyone knows which schools are "good" and which schools are "mediocre" and don't need to be reminded that the ivies followed by Duke, Northwestern, etc are the best. Eliminating college rankings by forcing admissions stats to be confidential (of course with the college being able to "recommend" the sat/gpa needed to apply) would benefit schools in desirable regions and will save students from having to go to schools in shitty areas like Cornell

If you sign up for a BA in the UK then the courses are deliberately designed to avoid maths. The later you realise that this is a problem the less scope you have to change degree or include quantitative courses, so online is the only way. Because of the tendency for BAs to be totally innumerate, coding skills are a useful way to differentiate. Lots of people seem to think that excel formulas are voodoo witch magic so if you can do basic code on top of that then it makes their socks roll up and down.