What Happens When the "Sharing Economy" Meets Higher Education 94
jyosim writes Professors now make big bucks teaching in educational marketplaces. Sites that let anyone teach courses might just change the way people think about the value of education, about the nature of expertise, and about what teaching is worth. From the article: "When Nick Walter graduated with an information-systems degree, he intended to start his own tech company to create the next big iPhone app, as so many twenty-somethings have tried in recent years. But then something dawned on him: He could make more money teaching. He set up a free account on a site called Udemy, which lets anyone teach online courses and charge for them, and then uploaded a series of lecture videos and exercises showing other people how to make apps. Walter had no experience teaching, no affiliation with a university or accredited educational institution, and—by his own admission—no particular gifts as a computer-science student. But that doesn’t matter to Udemy, or to any of a number of similar platforms that have emerged in recent years."
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You obviously didn't read the article. They are talking about non salaried teachers making up to 20k in a single day
selling online courses. The summary is a bit deceiving though. The article actually talks about someone who isn't
even a professor but just a random guy with a 4 year degree who started making videos.
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$20k a day, or $20k, once, on sales for a particularly timely topic?
$20k a day sounds great, $20k, once every 2-4 months, less costs and overhead, sounds pretty pedestrian.
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20K every 2-4 month is big bucks.
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20K every 2-4 month is big bucks.
$60-$120K/year for a quality STEM lecturer is not big bucks.
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20K every two months is in the range for Senior Software Engineers here in the Portland, OR Area. In the absolute sense, this is "big bucks" as it's above the median salary in the US. On the other hand, if it's what I'm getting paid for doing now? Not so much.
The perception of "big bucks" has three components - a higher salary, less effort, or more security/less risk for future payment streams. Coming up with compelling video presentations on various subjects seems to achieve none of these.
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What I'm hearing is that making apps pays worse than teaching people to make apps. By comparison yes, it's a triumph. But to everyone else with a real job...
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Perhaps because in order to make $ off an app you have to have *the* app to do it wiht... and while a lot of us can code, not that many have a great idea for something that will get someone to pay a few bucks for it.
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I absolutely agree. Coming up with the idea is harder than implementing it. Which actually speaks to another interesting thing: He has no way to protect what he is doing... he's first to market, which is why he's making cash hand over fist... but that's going to evaporate in about 2.5 seconds when other people who are equally smart go out and undercut him on price for their own tutorials... and eventually you will get that high quality education for free from YouTube. So hopefully he milks it for as lon
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Is he first to market? MOOCs offer app-writing classes for free.
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I haven't seen this guy's material, but I got the impression that his work was a big improvement over the super-generic MOOC offerings. Maybe he wasn't first to market, but at least he's in a rarefied market now, and because there is no protection for it... it won't be rarefied for long.
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So you're saying there are campaign contributions to be had for politicians stepping in and "protecting" this market...
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You'll make a fine young capitalist!
Re:Big bucks? (Score:5, Insightful)
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LOL I wish I could mod this up, but I've already commented here. Dead right!
Re:Big bucks? (Score:5, Insightful)
This.
He went to give courses in a gold rush topic at the gold rush time. Don't think you can get anywhere near his success teaching Programming in C++ or Knitting or whatever. I'm not saying you can't make a buck, but the story is about being in the right place at the right time more than about online education.
Re:Big bucks? (Score:4, Informative)
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in 'Murica... (Score:1)
In what universe? (Score:5, Funny)
But then something dawned on him: He could make more money teaching.
What? You lost me there.
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You can make a lot of money in education, Just as long as you are not in the teachers Union.
No this isn't about being Anti-Union. But the fact the Union tries to protect the member, they offer less risk in a teaching career, however as a non-member there is a lot more risk of failure, so you get more reward. So if you want a job and you don't get fired for giving billy the son of the mayor an F because he didn't do his homework all semester, then union protection is important. However if you are willing t
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Misunderstanding of Higher Education Economics (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary (though not the article) begins on the assumption that professors make big bucks. That may have been true at one point, but it's certainly not true now. Yes, full-time tenure track faculty average close to six figures annually, but only 27% of university instructors are full-time or tenure-tracked[1]. The remaining 73% or so is made up of adjunct faculty, who typically earn somewhere between $20-25k annually[2]. So, the idea that the sharing economy is going to be able to massively bring down educational costs by putting market pressure on faculty salaries doesn't really hold up. That market pressure was already there, and faculty salaries are already in the toilet. I'm not sure salaries can go down further without those teachers exiting the market entirely.
It's probably also worth mentioning, the vast majority of traditional (and non-traditional) students don't really go to an educational institute just to learn (though, it would be nice if they were to learn too). Students usually go to those institutions for a recognized credential or degree. Even if you're obtaining excellent instruction from the Internet, you're not going to get that degree. The real scarcity isn't teachers at the university level (as demonstrated by super-low wages for adjuncts). The real thing that keeps prices up is the artificial monopoly created by accreditation systems.
And, that might not entirely be a bad thing. Four year universities usually try to create well-rounded students, who learn much more than they'd ever need in their personal career. Students often complain about having to take classes they don't care about, but being broadly educated does seem to make individuals more open minded to solutions to problems that are not necessarily within their usual field of vision. If students could pick and choose their own courses, they'd rarely get that broad-view approach.
In short: this new app might be fine, but it won't revolutionize higher education in any meaningful fashion.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01... [nytimes.com]
[2] http://www.npr.org/2013/09/22/... [npr.org]
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FWIW I get paid about $700 per credit hour per semester to teach as an adjunct... IF you don't go crazy with course design, grading assignments, etc. you can do a good job in about 8 hours per week for a 3 credit course so it works out to about $20/hr over the term.
Do it wrong, and you'll sink a ton of hours into it though. Teaching 20 students is a lot less work than tutoring 20 students...
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Assuming you're working full-time as an adjunct, and you're doing 8 hours a week per course, you'd need to find 5 courses per term of teaching to be working full time. Most of the time as an adjunct, a single institution won't give you 5 courses a semester as an adjunct (usually because they would have to give you health benefits). So, presumably, you're having to have work at 2-3 different institutions to maintain a full-time load, which often means increased commute time due to having to travel to multi
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Yikes! I thought I was underpaid as an adjunct making $900/credit hour. I did the math, and factoring in benefits, I actually made more per credit hour while TAing as a graduate student. I stopped doing it (though am officially still listed as an adjunct with my university) because it wasn't worth the time investment, and I make a whole heck of a lot more coding.
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Also (Score:2)
Turns out most people aren't good self-motivated learners. You find that if you have the "courseware" kind of model where people can just go and watch lectures and do assignments at their own pace the attrition and failure rate is very high. People just won't do what they need to do. They need a more structured environment to succeed. Now you can get all self superior and say "Well they should just work harder and not suck!" but we have to deal with the real world and that means educating all types of peopl
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No experience teaching no particular gift for it (Score:2)
And a great gift for fooling students ?
He could get tenure at most universities
Re:No experience teaching no particular gift for i (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a Ph.D. and am now fully qualified to teach university courses. The funny thing about that is that in the course of getting my Ph.D., I never once had to take a course on how to teach or even teach/TA a course (I was a research assistant the whole time I was in grad school).
I'm an outlier on not having to teach/TA a course in grad school (I did TA an undergrad, though) , but I don't know of any graduate programs that require actual training for teaching.
The person cited in the summary is just as qualified as most Ph.D.s. :)
As for the big bucks, two of my good friends from grad school (both computer scientists) spent their first two years working for free waiting for tenure track positions to open up. They get decent salaries now, but over the course of their careers, it's not what I'd call big bucks.
-Chris
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Not only that, but someone with a PhD has had their share of teachers who were great, and those that weren't. I've never had a "teach 'em how to teach" course, but I can read about best practices, emulate the good teachers I've had, and do those things I want done to/for me as a student.
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I never once had to take a course on how to teach or even teach/TA a course (I was a research assistant the whole time I was in grad school).
You are a textbook example of why many professors in colleges are horrible teachers. They have no experience, and they are more interested in doing their research than teaching.
The person cited in the summary is just as qualified as most Ph.D.s. :)
Not true. He is not as educated or experienced in the topic as someone who has a Ph.D would be, and it would be trivial to stump him with a more advanced question. He is as qualified with respect to experience actually teaching, but he has not been in as many classes to see what hasn't worked by experiencing it. He may have had a g
Big surprise (Score:1)
Turns out that producing a product worth thousands (a piece of college-level education) is worth more than producing a random app of worth a couple dollars and which might be a flop.
And good for him. Thanks to his efforts, we're one little step closer to education actually being free to everyone (instead of merely subsidized by taxpayers and limited to people of the correct nationality).
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But now that the secret's out, won't Udemy be flooded with lectures by people wanting to make $1,000 a day? Programming a 99 cents app is a lot harder than making a lecture about some easy subject.
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But now that the secret's out, won't Udemy be flooded with lectures by people wanting to make $1,000 a day?
I hope so! More education available in a format that can be infinitely reproduced at near zero marginal cost will put some bounds on the cost and quality of traditional education, as they will be rightly afraid of losing business if they don't perform.
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Until Khan and these other shareducators get the ability to issue actual degrees, this won't matter that much. In many career jobs, you have to have a degree. Just knowing your stuff will only get you so far. (Also, it is easy for HR to see if you have a degree or not. It is hard for them to know if you are any good, but no-one has ever been fired for hiring some-one with a degree. So HR departments will prefer to require degrees.)
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The job of educators is to educate people, not make life simple for some company's HR department.
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It won't happen. With a flood of idiots making 'educational videos' looking to turn a quick buck, you're going to end up with a lot of nonsense. You won't find an accrediting body willing to overlook that.
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I guess "sharing" sounds a lot better than "low-priced amateur products."
A teacher with misc. experience (Score:1)
I don't know how much he gets paid, but here [ed2go.com] are the qualifications for the ed2go "Mac, iPhone, and iPad Programming" teacher:
Wallace Wang is the author of more than 40 computer books including Microsoft Office 2010 For Dummies. In addition to writing computer books, he has co-authored Breaking Into Acting for Dummies and has ghostwritten several books about investing in real estate, day trading stocks, and becoming an entrepreneur. His past jobs have included teaching computer science courses at the University of Zimbabwe, performing stand-up comedy, and appearing on a weekly radio show.
(Most programming ed2go teachers are more qualified that that.)
Goodbye college football (Score:5, Interesting)
Forty years ago there were people out there, sci-fi writers and others, who envisioned that this was how all education would eventually be done, from elementary school all the way through college. They seemed to sense that the television and computer and telephone would somehow be put together to create a learning environment. The entire idea sounded fantastic to me.
When I got out of high school I joined the Navy and went through avionics school. The school was computer-driven and self-paced, and I loved it. For once I didn't have to be held back in classes that had to be taught to the level of the lowest common denominator. I remember thinking that I wish all education was like this.
Now the technology is here to create these kind of learning environments for nearly everyone, and it's affordable. I think that traditional universities, and even high schools and elementary schools, will eventually go away. We're seeing the beginnings of that now.
If I live long enough, I suppose I will miss college football, but in the long run, this is the best thing for education.
Re:Goodbye college football (Score:4, Interesting)
Schools will probably not go away quickly, as there is plenty of value in learning socialization, and kids will not learn that by sitting at home in front of a computer.
Schools are moving towards having some of that kind of learning though. Take, for instance, elementary school math. You have a bunch of kids coming in at K or 1st grade, which have drastically different experience and skill levels. Some kids will barely be able to count to 10, and read small numbers. Others enter K understanding multiplication and division. And yet traditionally, we put them in the same class, and teach them math together.
Now we have computer systems that can throw math exercises and lessons to kids, individualized to their skill level. So when the kindergartener that should be in 4th grade, seems to never miss at counting and number recognition, he just keeps getting more challenging material, until he's quickly doing 4th grade math.
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This has been the dream for, like, a century now... but schools are simply not structured to permit that. Actually about 20 years ago in the USA we/they doubled-down on the issue; the phrase "tracking students" into different classes or programs by ability was effectively prohibited everywhere, and is considered inequitable, immoral, and kind of offensive to even mention in many educational circles. The standard response in recent decades is that the bright kids should spend their time group-tutoring the sl
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FWIW, my son (now about 20) did wind up in special programs, particularly in high school. The high school program he was in was specifically aimed at college prep, and he graduated high school with over half the college credits he needed to graduate (which didn't mean he finished in two years, because a lot of them were in places that didn't count much towards graduation, but did give him junior priority in scheduling classes). The Minneapolis Public School System has its failings, but it does provide di
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I'm sure they won't go away quickly -- probably not in my lifetime -- but I do think they will evolve into something radically different from what they are now.
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The evidence is phenomenally consistent that the online self-paced stuff works great for professional people who've mastered college-level skills in reading, writing, and math... but falls on its face for people who don't have that. For example, every attempt at getting the horde of people who need algebra remediation through online course has been a disaster. UDacity tried it at San Jose state and was suspended after one semester. Community colleges in Philadelphia tried it and concluded "The failure rates
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The evidence is phenomenally consistent that the online self-paced stuff works great for professional people who've mastered college-level skills in reading, writing, and math... but falls on its face for people who don't have that. For example, every attempt at getting the horde of people who need algebra remediation through online course has been a disaster. UDacity tried it at San Jose state and was suspended after one semester. Community colleges in Philadelphia tried it and concluded "The failure rates were so high that it seemed almost unethical to offer the option". So I highly doubt you can replace elementary/secondary schools with this method; at that level, most student need a personal face and hand-holding through the material, especially with technical stuff like using, interpreting, and debugging online resources in the first place.
http://www.angrymath.com/2013/06/online-remedial-courses-considered.html
http://www.angrymath.com/2013/... [angrymath.com]
I think there is a bit of selection bias here. Each course has pre-requisite knowledge, and I suspect a large part of the reason people can struggle with a course (and therefore need a remedial course) is because they don't have a solid grasp of the assumed knowledge. This is especially true for subjects like math, where all the different subdisciplines are inter-connected (e.g. consider how often log and trig laws turn up in calculus).
This problem arises partly because students are not held back a year if
Beware the Do vs Teach dilemma (Score:5, Insightful)
More than half of my engineering curriculum was taught by prolific researchers who couldn't teach worth a damn. I was a tutor through most of college and found myself "reteaching" a lot of the stuff they would teach to others who came looking for help. Not because I was bright, see I struggled to understand the same topics, but I was able to break the topics down in a way that made more sense. Tying "building block" concepts progressively, until the process showed the complete picture, at which point I could teach them to myself for my own understanding, and then to others. That's when I realized good teachers require the whole package of skills; proficiency in their subject and a mind to educate by facilitating the process of connecting concepts.
Sounds like a good place for a free market to open up. What teaching is worth should lean heavily on a feedback/review framework like Amazon's such that people don't end up paying for a class that sucks, by every student's experience, because the professor can't communicate concepts, or communicate at all. Like the time I spent almost weeks trying to figure out what the foreigner in my Space Systems course meant by "papamaaa". By the way, that's "performance".
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More than half of my engineering curriculum was taught by prolific researchers who couldn't teach worth a damn. I was a tutor through most of college and found myself "reteaching" a lot of the stuff they would teach to others who came looking for help. Not because I was bright, see I struggled to understand the same topics, but I was able to break the topics down in a way that made more sense. Tying "building block" concepts progressively, until the process showed the complete picture, at which point I could teach them to myself for my own understanding, and then to others. That's when I realized good teachers require the whole package of skills; proficiency in their subject and a mind to educate by facilitating the process of connecting concepts.
Sounds like a good place for a free market to open up. What teaching is worth should lean heavily on a feedback/review framework like Amazon's such that people don't end up paying for a class that sucks, by every student's experience, because the professor can't communicate concepts, or communicate at all. Like the time I spent almost weeks trying to figure out what the foreigner in my Space Systems course meant by "papamaaa". By the way, that's "performance".
Let me guess, you didn't do well in the classes and you've found it very convenient to blame the professor's accent for your failures.
Just kidding, LOL.
We're in college, there is the internet. You don't need professors of a skill of a stand up comedian to keep you entertained for 3 hours/week. Don't look at the professor for learning, the most important aspect is your classmates. Take classes with your friends or make new friends. You'll do well, you'll have fun and learn a lot. Just don't expect your p
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Wow. You get to miss the point of my post AND show yourself a smart-ass all in one post. Such efficiency!
When I went to college the internet was but a fetus compared to what it is now. And regardless, my classmates were not tasked and paid to teach me something; the guy up front with the diplomas on his wall and the chalk in his hand was. To give a pass to the person who has an assigned responsibility and fails, only to put that responsibility on your buds isn't as clever as you make it sound.
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Wow. You get to miss the point of my post AND show yourself a smart-ass all in one post. Such efficiency!
When I went to college the internet was but a fetus compared to what it is now. And regardless, my classmates were not tasked and paid to teach me something; the guy up front with the diplomas on his wall and the chalk in his hand was. To give a pass to the person who has an assigned responsibility and fails, only to put that responsibility on your buds isn't as clever as you make it sound.
First of all, grow a sense of humor buddy. Don't assume I'm insulting you. I'm replying to your post to add something to what you said.
Anyways, he's not paid to teach you, he's paid to teach the class. If you don't learn anything in the class and you fail, that's not his problem. You and your classmates have a shared goal of learning the material and working together will make the goal easier to attain for both of you.
Anyways you're not in school anymore so this is all just pointless talking.
Teachin music (Score:1)
This sounds like almost every free-lance "music" teacher I've ever come across.
Just because you can play some chords on a guitar doesn't make you qualified to teach music. These folks are either naive about how much work and expertise it actually takes to be a true teacher, or they're charlatans attempting to prey off the naivete of others. I mean, there's a reason why we have education accreditation boards, right?
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"I mean, there's a reason why we have education accreditation
boards, right?"
That would make a good line in a lullaby.
Government accreditation, certification, regulation, are all just well-intentioned market-suppression efforts. With information flowing so freely now, these will be routed around.
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MOOCs provide programming exercises, and forums to ask questions. The problem is with the silly honor code, which results in cryptic, deliberately obfuscated posts that beat around the bush and encourage deviousness, instead of letting students help each other with direct clear answers.
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However, they true purpose of University is to make you a
Minerva Etc. (Score:3)
I'm married to a tenured prof, and I had the idea about 7 years ago (reserved a domain guerillacampus.org) to "uber" the college classroom. My idea was to use only fully tenured professors at area colleges to teach "on the side", so that students who paid would know they were getting the same generic teaching ingredients. Now I've got twins entering as freshmen, and looking at all the expenses and loans anew. I see Minerva Project is trying something similar, to replicate a "highly selective" competitive environment without the added expense of "campus" largesse.
No doubt there is an opportunity somewhere in MOOCs or Minervas or Uber-professors to provide the teaching with lower expense. However, I found that it was a lot more difficult than having an idea and recruiting the teachers. Vetting students, recruiting, providing a certified brand of diploma, etc. proved fairly significant, and without scale of students one faces very high administrative challenges. He's not the first to have the idea and it's not going to be easy when students drop out or demand transcripts 5 years later, or don't pay their teachers as planned. But I hope he succeeds, if only to send a warning shot over the universities bows, ie that colleges have potential competition if they remain in the "arms race" to build massive capital intensive campuses.
Sounds familiar... (Score:2)
Professors now make big bucks teaching (Score:2)
"Professors now make big bucks teaching"
BWA! HA! HA!
Sorry, couldn't read beyond this. Too damned funny. Or stupid, if you prefer.
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You're exaggerating the salaries: Median salaries [wikipedia.org] for tenured Associate Professors is a bit under $70K. Median salaries for tenured Full Professors is a bit under $100K. Not bad, but not the "$100k-200k" that you describe.
Few universities have pensions these days. They mostly have 403(b) retirement plans, which are basically the same as 401(k)s: Faculty contribute their own money and get matching up to some maximum (usually around 5 to 10 percent). How is that unmatched in the private sector?
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Not to mention that these are jobs that require a Ph.D. and a considerable amount of experience. If you figure two years of scraping by on a postdoc's pay, and four years as an assistant professor, that's six years of experience after your doctorate when you can be making that princely $70K.
Khan Acadamy (Score:5, Insightful)
Salman Khan [wikipedia.org] has done rather well considering he didn't get a degree in 'education'. The ability to teach has little to do with the teaching credentials that our education system demands. It's comunication, coaching and mentoring skills. The whole certification industry only serves to maintain scarcity and keep union teachers' wages and tuitions artificially high.
Re:Khan Acadamy (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not saying you need a degree in education to teach, but different sets of skills are required for different students in different settings. Degree programs prepare teachers to succeed in a variety of situations many of which are more challenging than making videos.
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The "certification industry" as you call it is based on a history much older than industry
Not really. People have been learning from elders or through apprenticeship for far longer than universities have been handing out degrees in education. Possibly longer than universities have existed. Where did Plato earn his teaching certificate?
Accreditation is about standards for an institution of higher learning.
Yes, but I was addressing teaching certification (of individuals). Which provides a barrier to entry into the education industry (albeit a pretty low one). But once people have their certificate and a job at the local high school, the union fights any further quali
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Couldn't agree more.
I happen to have both an Engineering degree and a postgraduate degree in relation to (Computer) Science Education; These are all good baggage to have, however after 100s of technical trainings assignments I can testify that nothing beats to be committed to the task of helping others through knowledge. It requires both self-reflection on how we learn and beyond average self-investment in gently pushing others through conceptual leaps and mental barriers.
If teaching was teachable, then who
Slippery slope (Score:2, Funny)
I watched an intriguing documentary about a high school chemistry teacher that lost his job and began dealing drugs...
Some amateurs are Sherlock; some are just amateurs (Score:3)
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