All-You-Can-Eat College For $99-a-Month 272
theodp writes "Writing in Washington Monthly, Kevin Carey has seen the future of college education. It costs $99-a-month, and there's no limit on the number of courses you can take. Tiny online education firm StraighterLine is out to challenge the seeming permanency of traditional colleges and universities. How? Like Craigslist, StraighterLine threatens the most profitable piece of its competitors' business: freshman lectures, higher education's equivalent of the classified section. It's no surprise, then, that as StraighterLine tried to buck the system, the system began to push back, challenging deals the company struck with accredited traditional and for-profit institutions to allow StraighterLine courses to be transferred for credit. But even if StraighterLine doesn't succeed in bringing extremely cheap college courses to the masses, it's likely that another player eventually will."
Re:You get what you pay for (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:You get what you pay for (Score:3, Interesting)
You miss the point. This doesn't mean getting a degree from the University of Phoenix... You take the fluffy liberal arts prereqs of which most universities require a good two years' worth, then get your actual degree from the Ivy.
And I have no problem with that, as long as they actually uphold some decent academic standards rather than just passing any moron who can pony up a C note. Personally, I did something not all that dissimilar - I went to a community college for a liberal arts AA for $800 per semester, then transferred into a decent 4-year as a Junior. Dropped the total cost of my education by about 45%, and I have the same papers as those who paid the full 4-year tuition.
Re:Won't take over top schools... (Score:3, Interesting)
There are plenty of subjects that are necessary for the study of advanced science or engineering(or advanced topics in the humanities for that matter) that do not themselves require an especially high caliber of teaching. Downright bad teaching isn't good enough; but the difference between decent and brilliant isn't huge.
Taking those courses at a top school is a waste. Of money, sure; but also of time. You pretty much get a finite number of course slots during your college time. If you are at a good school, every course spent going through calc 3 with a grad student is a course not spent going through some advanced topic with an expert in the field.
If a system like this could be used to cheaply and efficiently teach post-high school, but essentially standardized, prerequisite courses, you could then focus on taking only the courses that excellent schools have the greatest comparative advantage in. Not a wildly new concept; basically just the "first year or two, community college, transfer after that" strategy; but with more internet.
Re:Community college, anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
isohunt.com and a search for "The Teaching Company" - free
knowledge gained from hearing the world's best professors - priceless
Now true this won't get you that coveted degree which the Human Cattle..... er, Resources office demands to enter their exclusive clubs called corporations, but it will make the actual degree easier to earn. You can skate through with 25 or even 30 credits a semester, plus summer, and finish your college experience in just 1.5 years.
Of course I think most of us who HAVE gone to college realize that's not really the point. College is a chance to be a kid for 4 more years, scoring with women, and hopefully meet your future wife or husband. The reason people remember their alma maters so fondly is because it was the last time they lived without any responsibility. The piece-of-paper is just a nice bonus along the way to being a white-collar serf..... oops, employee.
(Do I sound bitter? Nah. Just less idealistic and more pragmatic.)
Re:The two tasks of educators (Score:4, Interesting)
Nothing is stopping me from enrolling my girlfriend's cat in an on-line degree program and taking all his tests.
The same is true of physical universities. There have been a few cases recently where wealthy South-East Asian families have sent someone else to university in their son's place. The surrogate has attended the lectures and sat the exams. Even if the lecturer comes to the exam, he still won't be able to say 'you're not the correct student' (even if he does recognise his students) because the person sitting the exam is the one who was in the classes. At the end, someone gets a degree without ever having been to university.
If you're wondering why the person you hired doesn't seem to have the most basic understanding of the subject, then it may be because the person who actually did their degree is working in McDonalds because he can't get hired for a skilled job without a degree...
Over time, I expect the assessment part of a university to dwindle. If you look at companies like Google or Microsoft, they don't hire based on your qualifications at all. They regard them as simple ticks in boxes, and hire based on the results of a day-long (or longer for some companies) assessment.
Re:The two tasks of educators (Score:3, Interesting)
How is it any more difficult to evaluate an essay or project submitted electronically than one submitted on dead trees?
Ah, now that's a problem of authentication, completely orthogonal to evaluation.
Nothing (except my generally honest nature, and a lack of money) was stopping me from hiring a smarter person to write my papers and do my projects, or even sit in classes and take my tests. (If John Q. Brainiac was in your class all semester claiming to be Tom Swiss, you wouldn't suspect anything f he showed up to take the test, too...)
The authentication problem is real, but I don't think it's fundamentally worse for on-line education than for face-to-face classes.
Re:Education shouldn't be for profit anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
Doctors in England and France do quite well, and their entire health care system is run not-for-profit. In Europe doctors don't have to deal with insurance reimbursement troubles, can focus entirely on treating patients and making them well, get paid more for improving the health of their patients, and still make enough money to be considered upper class. There is a good way and a bad way to run health care and education, a free market/capitalistic approach is a bad way. It's non-optimal. Solutions that are good for organizing the general economy aren't always great for solving social problems.
Re:Community college, anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
Besides I'm glad my changes of a proper education doesn't depend on my parents ability to support me...
It's not that my parents are irresponsible or unable to help me... But I'm 21... I'm a grown man and have been for a few years... I'm proud that the system we have here, ensures that your changes for an education doesn't depend on your parents ability to support you, it depends on you and your brain, and nobody else (well, yeah, that average tax-payer maybe)...
Re:You get what you pay for (Score:4, Interesting)
I loved my Shakespeare prof in college. I took him for 2 Shakespeare classes and a classical mythology. One of the things I loved about him was that he didn't require you to agree with him. You DID, however, have to read--the best bullshit detector I've ever come across.
I had a prof for a Thoreau class, though, who fit that negative stereotype perfectly. Outdoorsy hippie naturalist students got As; those of us who, for example, interpreted vast sections of his writing as masked professions of homosexual longing, however, found ourselves with Cs on every assignment. I actually went to her office twice and basically pleaded, "What do you WANT?" It was a required 400-level class, and I was just trying to get out of school at that point. I'd been kind of biding my time in the English department, waiting for the International Studies degree program to start, after which I could transfer in all my Japanese language and Asian history/poli-sci/economics credits and get a degree that reflected what I'd actually spent my mental energy on--a program that, once it finally materialized, was in the ART DEPARTMENT--No thanks! I'll take English over that!!!
She told me I needed to try to get in touch with nature more.
Towards the end of the class I just kind of gave up. I said, "I don't see why my personal philosophical orientation towards nature should have anything to do with my grade in a literature class." I kind of resigned myself to getting a C in my last semester of university, in my major department, and having to take another semester to make up that one class.
Then my professor invited a renowned Thoreau scholar to come speak to us.
He said at one point, "of course, all serious Thoreau scholars now recognize that Thoreau was gay, and that much of his writing was an attempt to deal with that in a society in which that could be dangerous." I shot a glance at my prof. She blushed and lowered her eyes.
I got an A.
If you are a high school or early-undergrad who is reading this, please take my advice on this: DON'T major in English, or any of the humanities, unless you want to be a teacher. That is coming from a university English professor (well, a linguist, whose research is all statistics, but who works in an English department). Just don't do it. It is a silly place.
Re:Community college, anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
I hate to see tax payers get the bill for something that benefits the few like colleges and universities do. Especially since so many drop out of college without getting a degree. It's wasted tax payer funding. Scholarships or tuition reimbursement would be a much better system.