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Comments: 272 +- News: All-You-Can-Eat College For $99-a-Month on Saturday September 05, @10:18AM
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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."
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Community college, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
This already exists... I went to community college for about $300-$400 a semester, including books, supplies and parking. What, just because it's on the internet, it's a new concept?
Oh. RIGHT...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Going this semester for some professional development.
6 unit + student fees + parking -- $126
Books: $145 at amazon
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.)
Parent
Re:Community college, anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny, I'm more of a "kid" in many ways now than I was in college...sure didn't score with women! (Young geeks - it *does* get better! Have hope!) I was taking challenging classes -- was actually trying to do a dual degree in CS and physics, before my brain started to melt and I decide that was Not Fun. and working part-time, certainly not living with no responsibility.
When I look back at my college days, the thing I remember most fondly is the continual encounter with new ideas. Yes, that is something that you can and should keep going for the rest of your life. And I have, to some degree -- besides voracious reading on many topics, I went back to school a few years ago to study Asian Bodywork Therapy [earthtouchshiatsu.com], and in the past few years I also took two semesters of Japanese at the community college.
But as an undergrad, my prime occupation was learning new stuff.
There's a Roger Zelazny novel where the protagonist inherits a trust fund that supports him so long as he's in college -- so he manages to keep changing his major, and doesn't gradate for over a decade. I always thought that sounded like an excellent way to live.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
I guess I can't relate to this. When I went to college, I took the maximum allowable (or more) credits per semester and spent most of my free time either in labs, working on coursework or working on personal projects that extended my knowledge. That's not to say I didn't have some free time to do other things, but I would never describe the process as primarily a chance to do any of the things you listed. If you do it right, you can end up with enough specialized knowledge to avoid becoming stuck in a jo
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For some people it's a chance to be a kid for 4 more years. Actually, the people that had that attitude usually didn't last past the first year. You would find them walking around the dorms with a beer bong while the rest of us were studying. For the ones that actually made it through all four years, it actually was about living with the most responsibility we'd ever had in order to get a degree so that we get the job instead of the guy with the beer bong or the ones that even didn't bother to go. For s
Re: (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 reimbur
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Re:Community college, anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
Lucky you. I did one semester at a local Comunity College. $1200 for tuition and fees, and then another $500 for books.
In my country education is free... :)
And on-top of that we get educational support, which is just about a 1000USD per month... I have to buy my own books, do my own cooking, laundry and have a place to sleep, but student housing programs and government housing support (on-top of the educational support) makes my education virtually free...
But if you want to go out once in a while... Buy a new laptop, tv, stuff like that it's good to have a little savings, or take a student loan (which the government offers at a favorable price).
By the way I live in Denmark, Europe...
Parent
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)...
Parent
Re:Community college, anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
What, just because it's on the internet, it's a new concept?
No, actually, that still doesn't make it a new concept [openuniversity.ac.uk].
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Books should average about $250/semester
http://www.cos.edu/view_page.asp?nodeid=2822&parentid=2864&moduleid=1 [cos.edu]
This information is according to the College of the Siskiyous website (Where I went to community college 8 years ago).
Assuming you take 15 units/semester which is what you need to grad
Re: (Score:2)
It's all about how well you can organize your time and which classes you're taking.
Re:Community college, anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
You get what you pay for (Score:2)
When $99/month becomes the future of (community) college, then you're going to see people competing for the schools that are desirable enough that they can still charge $30K/year like the Ivies do.
Then again, most people coming out of those aren't going into IT... except as managers.
Re:You get what you pay for (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:You get what you pay for (Score:5, Insightful)
Need for work? No.
Potentially benefit massively from in ways completely removed from work? Yes.
More education gives people a more broad experience of the world in that it opens up areas they may not have otherwise been exposed to. Sometimes this is frustrating (witness many /.ers bitching about how they had to take english lit classes when they just wanted to be engineers) and obnoxious, but it helps folks to avoid the tendency to becoming hyperspecialized drones.
A lot of people who were self-taught think that anyone who wants to know about something will just go look it up - but usually these self-taught individuals are completely unaware of huge swaths of ideas and terrain that have been explored because they weren't required to take classes in subjects that initially didn't interest them.
Full disclosure: I was sort of like that myself - I absolutely loathed the idea of certain classes that were just not interesting to me. Then I grew up, and discovered that there's more to conversation than whatever was on TV last night, there's more to life than work and talking about work, and in fact, I've been turned on to many new activities and interests thanks to some of those "useless" classes.
It also wound up having a TREMENDOUS impact on my career: I used to work in tech, and when I went back to school I wound up surveying a couple of psychology courses, and it turns out that the "expreimental design in psychology" course that I took was INCREDIBLY fascinating. Trying to design experiments with human subjects - subjects who can and will lie, try to wreck the experiment, or otherwise do the least amount of work to get their pay - is VERY challenging, VERY interesting, and VERY fun. Even better for me, I was able to bring my technology skills into a field where there is not a lot of technological know-how, and so some incredibly obvious things I developed and implemented wound up being very valuable to my lab, and helped to really accelerate my career; despite coming to the field I now work in so late in my life/career, I've been promoted several times and in the 1.5 years that I've been out of school since getting my new degree, I've been made a director at my lab.
The point to this is that we are not insects, we are not our jobs, and learning new things - even things that are possibly frivolous - is tremendous. EVERYONE in the world can benefit from learning new things, especially the people who don't have the finances to attend more expensive schools; I'll say those people are probably the ones who benefit most from exposure to new ideas and ways of being.
If your college degree is only helping in your job, or if you're going to college solely to get a better job - well, that's certainly your right, but you're really missing out on 90% of what an education can (and IMO, should) be.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
witness many /.ers bitching about how they had to take english lit classes when they just wanted to be engineers
My beef with lit classes in college is that they are all about kissing the professor's ass. If that's the direction you want to go, more power to you. I love Shakespeare and one of the worst mistakes I ever made in college was taking a Shakespeare class.
Disclaimer: My favorite class in High School was an American lit class with a teacher who loved to teach and inspire students. He certainly inspired me.
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What you've described is basically the premise of every Gender Studies class. Well, except that the teacher will argue that all women are angels and all men are evil creatures who oppress aforementioned angels.
To be fair, there are good teachers who will reward you for putting in effort to thoroughly explain a dissenting opinion. But the level of indoctrination that goes on in these feminism-oriented classes is just plain scary.
Yet another reason I'm glad I'm Asian and not white.
Re:You get what you pay for (Score:4, Insightful)
To be perfectly honest, most people don't really need a college eduction. The thing is, our society seems to make more and more people take college classes. When people have no real use for the classes, the natural outcome is degree mills and cheaper education.
I think another part of the problem is it turns the rest of education into "college preparation" instead of real education. Right now, I'm almost inclined to say we want everyone to go to college, but the reason for that being that education all the way up through high school isn't much of an education. We've lowered our standards so far that we consider the ideal high school kid one who behaves himself, and we don't give any kind of vocational training or responsibility until after college. And then we can't seem to decide whether college is vocational training or real education.
I really think we need to step back and reinvent out public education by asking, "What is it that we want people to learn, and what knowledge and skills do we want the least educated in our society to have." No, I don't think that's what we're doing now. I think we're pretty well running our education system on inertia alone. But once we get good at making sure everyone knows whatever we consider the "base minimum," we can split off those who *want* to pursue further education from those who would prefer vocational training for a good job that's useful to society.
Not everyone needs to go to college, but we're better off if everyone has a decent education. Ignorance isn't good for anyone.
Parent
Re: (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 po
Education shouldn't be for profit anyway (Score:3)
Now go ahead and wonder why smart but poor students need to sell their future to get a chance for a decent life.
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With college and health care, corporations have developed a really nice system of voluntary slavery.
IT is the worst- 200+ people at my company are working on a project with such insane deadlines that they are working 10 hours a day- then going home and working 2 hours off the clock.
And they are *happy* to be on this project. They are going to give up three years of their youthful lives. There is no bonus at the end for them-- there will be for the departmental president (and likely promotion to the execut
Re:Education shouldn't be for profit anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
The system is pretty clever: Everybody cranks their rates through the roof; but they all offer "financial aid". Because they are such nice guys, they even have a standardized form(de facto, the FAFSA qualifies). By doing so, the schools can have a sky-high price for cost insensitive students(ie. cost insensitive families) and charge pretty much everyone exactly as much as they can. Even better, doing it this way allows them some pricing flexibility on their side, in case they want to attract a particularly interesting student, while also creating broadly fixed prices, which works to the advantage of the more prestigious and deep pocketed schools.
Really quite clever.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not just a dedicated place of learning, it's a place of research.
Many of the top schools aren't called "top schools" because they teach well. They're top schools because they have to researchers and experts a wide range of subjects who make themselves available to students. If you have a large number of the top people in the world, and they all expect to have the highest salaries of anyone in their line of work, then you have to find a way to increase income to meet their demands. When you see a facult
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.
Parent
Won't take over top schools... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (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 d
If all you want to do is learn (Score:5, Informative)
If all you want to do is learn for free, you can always watch lectures online.
http://www.youtube.com/user/MIT [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/user/stanforduniversity [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/user/ucberkeley [youtube.com]
You can even get lectures from Australia or India:
http://www.youtube.com/user/unsw [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/user/nptelhrd [youtube.com]
And if you want to learn stuff like how to solder and splice try http://www.tpub.com/neets/ [tpub.com]
Or watch someone make vacuum tubes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl-QMuUQhVM [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S5OwqOXen8 [youtube.com]
Sure you might not be able to afford all that equipment to actually do everything. But at least you have a better idea of what you might like and what's worth it before forking out lots of money (or going in debt) in fees.
Parent
Re:Won't take over top schools... (Score:4, Insightful)
This type of system will never dominate the top engineering/science schools. The key to a top notch eng/sci school is extremely knowledgeable faculty that know how to teach and know what material/projects are important for students. Maybe that's why this StraighterLine company focuses mostly on freshman courses...
I agree completely. It has always been possible to get almost all of the material found in a typical undergrad curriculum from your public library, and there have always been people who have done so. So why doesn't everybody get educated that way? Because most of us need the guidance and structure provided by a curriculum, not to mention the dedicated blocks of time that you have to carve out of your life if you're not a full time student. There's also the trusted agent certification aspect. Schools with top reputations still produce some duds, but there's a reason people value an education from Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge, Berkeley, MIT,... As you move into the top tiers of schools, the ratio of duds to doers declines. (How's that for alliteration?)
Parent
It's more than courses. (Score:4, Insightful)
As a consequence, such an "education" as described in TFA is more a training system, the reproduction of the proletariat, not an education, not a method of making connection.
RS
Re:It's more than courses. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:It's more than courses. (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what I learned from "team" projects in college?
Just do the whole damned thing yourself if you want any shot at passing. Because otherwise, come the due date you'll have your part done, one person with a partially-working-but-incompatible part, and three people with weak excuses.
I learned that "team" really does have a "me" in it, and you can't spell much with "ta". And, after 10 years in the "real" working world, I haven't found much to change my opinion on that matter.
THAT'S why people spend stupid amounts of money on an Ivy League education. "What you know" is assumed. "Who you know" is particular and requires access.
One small correction there - In the case of Ivies, "Who you know" counts as a prerequisite for getting in, not a benefit of going there.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Nor did I ever deliberately try for that particular goal (though I won't pretend I didn't usually define the top of the grading curve). Didn't even graduate with a 4.0, primarily because I don't "suffer fools gladly" and don't play along with the cute little political games.
The point is to learn how to work together with people so that you can accomplish greater things than any of you could have done by yourself.
In the working world, you can some
Re:It's more than courses. (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely true for real working environments.
The problem is that the GP is also 100% correct - lots of college curricula pretend to cover team-work, but few courses (if any) can teach effective team dynamics. Actually, they unintentionally teach the opposite, as the parent described.
A good experience for team dynamics needs attributes that are omnipresent at work, but are difficult to have in project course-work:
- Project size must *require* a team - not be easily achievable by a single person.
- Work needs diverse skills and complementary roles in equal(ish) measure
- Results persistence after the project - in the real world, your initial 'grade' is almost irrelevant, long-term quality is what matters.
- Social persistence after the project - in the real world, you'll see and work with this people every day long after a single task is done.
The typical "team project" crammed on half a semester course (or less) is the antithesis of this: too small and too short, heavily biased towards one-two skills (so everything else are 'slacker' tasks), and you can choose to never see your teammates again after completion.
Of course, if you can more easily complete everything by yourself by hacking it all together over a few weeks - you would be a fool to do otherwise. So most smart people end up doing exactly that, because what matters is the grade.
But in the workplace, most Real Work *requires* teamwork because it is simply bigger, more complex, and requires more complementary skills and expertise than an artificial CS assignment. And you cannot piss off, or even under-utilize, your peers without burning important bridges, because you'll typically work with the same people over *years*, not weeks. And you need to depend on peer feedback, and on people with complementary roles and skills you don't have (and do require a lot of work) - because a feature gap or quality issue can follow you for a long time.
Sadly, typical college projects seem to train the smartest students to be lone programmers - try to do everything themselves, assume theirs are the only 'real work' skills and they're the one indispensable worker in the operation... and if that doesn't scale, it must be the 'assignment' was broken and doomed anyway.
Fortunately most people learn some teamwork somewhere, but it doesn't seem to be through college.
Exception *might* be team sports... I've never been a big fan of sports, neither practice nor spectator, and before working on the Real World always thought the whole 'teaches teamwork' idea highly overrated. But it does seem to have characteristics missing from course projects, and (anecdotically) I've noticed people with that background tend to grok some of the team dynamics and social subtext more easily than me (which is admittedly not a high bar).
Parent
Maybe so... (Score:4, Informative)
If you just wanted to go to school to learn sure. But I don't think that has been the main focus for many years now.
Re:Maybe so... (Score:5, Funny)
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of Liberal Arts students suddenly cried out in horror.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Just one comment on TFA... (Score:3, Funny)
Your ancestors - Not impressed.
The two tasks of educators (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a shame, because I think that for many students, these kinds of programs could provide an education as good or better than a traditional classroom for a much lower price. But until there is a good reason to take the final transcript seriously, I don't think it will ever really catch on.
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.
Parent
Re: (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 s
Subsidies, accountability, running like a business (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not just freshman classes that subsidize the more expensive offerings. Humanities courses cost less than sciences but are billed at the same rate, so English departments subsidize more costly departments. The people in these institutions are uncomfortable talking about who subsidizes whom [nytimes.com]. In business, the criterion is simple: make your unit profitable or it dies. Colleges have been unwilling to live by that. As a result, programs aren't cut and tuition only goes up. But as we know, unsustainable trends cannot be sustained indefinitely. The brightest minds no doubt will continue to get free rides to places like Harvard, but I suspect that some other bright minds are at work on creative ways to get tuition within reach for those who have to pay their own way.
Profitable? (Score:3, Insightful)
I wasn't aware that Colleges and Universities were for-profit driven businesses. I just don't accept the premise that "freshmen lecture" is driven by profit motive.
Degree mills and correspondence schools aren't really anything new. Online education isn't really either. I remember 25 years ago QuantumLink (the predecessor to AOL) had an online university program. At the time I was a dumb kid and thought the same thing the author of this article thought. 25 years later it didn't change the entire landscape of education, and neither will this. Whiz-bang technology might make some parts of education easier, but the distance aspect of online education is always going to make things more difficult.
Also, like it or not there's a HUGE component of education that's simply driven by the name and reputation of the school you went to. How many people really want to proudly say they went and graduated from the $99 online school? As others have pointed out we already have a 2nd tier of education with Junior colleges. I certainly wouldn't want to start comparing the actual quality level of one vs. the other, but what I DO question is whether there's really a need for a 3rd tier of these Walmart schools (low low prices!).
Eleven courses (Score:3, Informative)
and 4(!) partner colleges (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A friend of mine recently decided to enter school, not having pursued any secondary education after high school. He asked for my help with prep for a math placement exam, not wanting to waste his money and time on remedial courses that would not have even counted as credits toward his degree. If this kind of 'corporate education' was more established at the time, he could have spent some money, worked his ass off, and placed higher on the placement test. Consider this small course list a 'beta' for this
Sounds fishy (Score:3, Insightful)
From the StraighterLine web site:
When you take a StraighterLine course you will select one of our Partner Colleges to award credit for the course. You can continue your major studies and pursue your degree through this college or transfer those credits to your college of choice.
The important part they are leaving out is that the "college of your choice" does not have to accept the transfer credits.