Is Big Tech About to Take Over Higher Education? (nymag.com) 65
"In 2017, Scott Galloway anticipated Amazon's $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods a month before it was announced," reports New York magazine (in an article shared by long-time Slashdot reader Faizdog).
Galloway teaches marketing at NYU Stern School of Business, and he's now predicting the pandemic "has greased the wheels for big tech's entree into higher education." The post-pandemic future, he says, will entail partnerships between the largest tech companies in the world and elite universities. MIT@Google. iStanford. HarvardxFacebook. According to Galloway, these partnerships will allow universities to expand enrollment dramatically by offering hybrid online-offline degrees, the affordability and value of which will seismically alter the landscape of higher education.
Galloway, who also founded his own virtual classroom start-up, predicts hundreds, if not thousands, of brick-and-mortar universities will go out of business and those that remain will have student bodies composed primarily of the children of the one percent. At the same time, more people than ever will have access to a solid education, albeit one that is delivered mostly over the internet. The partnerships he envisions will make life easier for hundreds of millions of people while sapping humanity of a face-to face system of learning that has evolved over centuries. Of course, it will also make a handful of people very, very rich....
"I just can't imagine what the enrollments would be if Apple partnered with a school to offer programs in design and creativity. I can't imagine what the enrollments would be if the University of Washington partnered with Microsoft around technology or engineering. These would be huge enrollments. The tech company would be responsible for scale and the online group part. The university would be responsible for the accreditation.... In ten years, it's feasible to think that MIT doesn't welcome 1,000 freshmen to campus; it welcomes 10,000.
"What that means is the top-20 universities globally are going to become even stronger. What it also means is that universities Nos. 20 to 50 are fine. But Nos. 50 to 1,000 go out of business or become a shadow of themselves."
Galloway argues that right now universities "are still in a period of consensual hallucination with each saying, 'We're going to maintain these prices for what has become, overnight, a dramatically less compelling product offering'... There's this horrific awakening being delivered via Zoom of just how substandard and overpriced education is at every level..."
"I want to be clear: There is some social good to this," Galloway emphasizes. "You're going to have a lot of good education, dispersed to millions and tens of millions of people who otherwise wouldn't have access to computer science or Yale's class on happiness."
Galloway teaches marketing at NYU Stern School of Business, and he's now predicting the pandemic "has greased the wheels for big tech's entree into higher education." The post-pandemic future, he says, will entail partnerships between the largest tech companies in the world and elite universities. MIT@Google. iStanford. HarvardxFacebook. According to Galloway, these partnerships will allow universities to expand enrollment dramatically by offering hybrid online-offline degrees, the affordability and value of which will seismically alter the landscape of higher education.
Galloway, who also founded his own virtual classroom start-up, predicts hundreds, if not thousands, of brick-and-mortar universities will go out of business and those that remain will have student bodies composed primarily of the children of the one percent. At the same time, more people than ever will have access to a solid education, albeit one that is delivered mostly over the internet. The partnerships he envisions will make life easier for hundreds of millions of people while sapping humanity of a face-to face system of learning that has evolved over centuries. Of course, it will also make a handful of people very, very rich....
"I just can't imagine what the enrollments would be if Apple partnered with a school to offer programs in design and creativity. I can't imagine what the enrollments would be if the University of Washington partnered with Microsoft around technology or engineering. These would be huge enrollments. The tech company would be responsible for scale and the online group part. The university would be responsible for the accreditation.... In ten years, it's feasible to think that MIT doesn't welcome 1,000 freshmen to campus; it welcomes 10,000.
"What that means is the top-20 universities globally are going to become even stronger. What it also means is that universities Nos. 20 to 50 are fine. But Nos. 50 to 1,000 go out of business or become a shadow of themselves."
Galloway argues that right now universities "are still in a period of consensual hallucination with each saying, 'We're going to maintain these prices for what has become, overnight, a dramatically less compelling product offering'... There's this horrific awakening being delivered via Zoom of just how substandard and overpriced education is at every level..."
"I want to be clear: There is some social good to this," Galloway emphasizes. "You're going to have a lot of good education, dispersed to millions and tens of millions of people who otherwise wouldn't have access to computer science or Yale's class on happiness."
Colleges will still need some expensive buildings (Score:5, Insightful)
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This might work fine for language and history classes but how do you teach any chemistry laboratory courses without a laboratory?
The attitude that seems to leak out of the big tech companies is code supremacy. It's the single most important, interesting, difficult and worthwhile thing. Why would anyone need anything else?
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This might work fine for language and history classes but how do you teach any chemistry laboratory courses without a laboratory?
The attitude that seems to leak out of the big tech companies is code supremacy. It's the single most important, interesting, difficult and worthwhile thing. Why would anyone need anything else?
The attitude that seems to leak out of the big tech companies is code supremacy. It's the single most important, interesting, difficult and worthwhile thing. Why would anyone need anything else?
Or big tech understands they are only equipped to make a big impact in areas which scale in a similar manner as their products. Why focus on subjects where they wouldn't provide much assistance?
It is no different than if I decided to tutor neighborhood kids I would probably focus on STEM subjects. Not because I think they are the only important thing to teach; it's just the subjects I would be most qualified to help with. I would let someone more qualified help the students with literature, arts, and shop class.
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It is no different than if I decided to tutor neighborhood kids I would probably focus on STEM subjects. Not because I think they are the only important thing to teach; it's just the subjects I would be most qualified to help with. I would let someone more qualified help the students with literature, arts, and shop class.
I sure messed up the quotes on my last post, so I'll try again.
Big tech understands they are only equipped to make a big impact in areas which scale in a similar manner as their products. Why focus on subjects where they wouldn't provide much assistance?
It is no different than if I decided to tutor neighborhood kids I would probably focus on STEM subjects. Not because I think they are the only important thing to teach; it's just the subjects I would be most qualified to help with. I would let someone more q
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> This might work fine for language and history classes but how do you teach any chemistry laboratory courses without a laboratory?
VR allows you to teach chemistry with "real" equipment that would cost a lot more than most schools could afford. This has already been done and tested also so we know it is possible. Actually they made a study where they compared it with real laboratory and there were no significant differences found:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.10... [acs.org]
Re: Colleges will still need some expensive buildi (Score:4, Funny)
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I learned about sex before I had it from "The What's Happening To My Body Book For Boys" and from reading erotica on USENET (yes really) and I was able to get my first partner off the first time we had sex, have had numerous partners almost all of whom praised my skills, have had mostly barrierless sex and yet have no unwanted offspring and have had numerous STD tests without any positives.
Perhaps learning chemistry in a VR lab would not be so bad. In fact it would even have some benefits, notably being abl
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With a laboratory, as needed? (Score:2)
The summary says:
"According to Galloway, these partnerships will allow universities to expand enrollment dramatically by offering hybrid online-offline degrees"
That "offline" part is for the labs for teaching chemists.
Online is for all the chemistry I've ever needed to know.
My chemistry knowledge is probably roughly equivalent to Chemistry 101 and 102 and I've never been in an expensive lab. I know, and recently reminded my handyman, to always pour acid into water rather than the other way around. I underst
More than Teach First Year Courses (Score:3)
At this lower level you can anticipate student misconceptions and mistakes and program the computer to spot and correct them. At higher levels, you need something to understand a
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I think MOOCs should become standardized and it should be possible to take them as AP courses in high school. Also, this is unlikely to break university economics just yet. Intro classes are now getting so big that universities have problems catering to demand so relieving some of that pressure would be a good thing.
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The other HUGE aspect of universities that the idiot who wrote this article forgot: we do research. Universities are not going anywhere fast.
You either didn't read the article or you didn't comprehend much of it. The article never claimed universities are going away. It claimed some of them are going away. And not the research universities. It will be the local colleges whose primary focus is expanding higher education opportunities to those who cannot get accepted at (and/or afford) top universities, not research.
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The article never claimed universities are going away. It claimed some of them are going away.
Try reading the article again carefully. To quote it:
"What that means is the top-20 universities globally are going to become even stronger. What it also means is that universities Nos. 20 to 50 are fine. But Nos. 50 to 1,000 go out of business or become a shadow of themselves."
That is literally saying that there will only be *50* universities *globally*. This is far, far fewer than the number of research-intensive universities globally meaning that the majority of them will go out of business. Indeed, one thing that clearly shows it is nonsense is that there is no way 50 institutes are going to provide support for all the different languages and school systems globally.
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But Nos. 50 to 1,000 go out of business or become a shadow of themselves.
That is literally saying that there will only be *50* universities *globally*.
I bolded the part that shows the article does not say what you think it says. I do agree the article paints a more doom and gloom picture than I would agree with, but it doesn't say there will only be 50 universities globally.
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Work in/with online education. We use a few different models
- fully online - no physical presence required, almost all have no synchronous time requirements (ie, live chats, etc)
- Hybrid. Approximately 50/50 split between online and in-class. Meet Tues/Thurs? No, now only meet Tues. What you'd do for Thurs is made up online. This is where courses that require lab facilities OR use a lab component or lab-time component where the instructor is present and the students do work (programming lab, networkin
Education is not scalable! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is all find and good ... but the preliminary evidence from this spring's digital education attempt is that online education is a *far cry* from in-person education, especially for good teachers. Education is not just about conveying information ... it is about providing guidance, instilling values, and mentorship - these all require a personal connection with the student and an interaction with an involved instructor.
We can scale bad education to the masses ... but good education will require in-person classes. If you're worried about the cost, dump the administrators and red tape who don't know what to do with themselves but make busy work for the people actually doing the teaching.
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> but the preliminary evidence from this spring's digital education attempt is that online education is a *far cry* from in-person education, especially for good teachers.
I agree with you. But how many good teachers there are? My estimate is 10%. I also estimate that 10% are really bad.
Now, lets take a normal class of 20-30 students. The teacher has a couple of options:
- Speak to all of them -> simple video would do much better work, especially if done as a group effort
- Give exercises -> Easily do
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Online education is not new - we had correspondence programs way back 50 years ago. These programs work fine for the top 10% of students - who don't need much education anyway (they teach themselves from existing sources). The remaining 90% of students need a psychological connection to their instructor as part of the educational process. If they don't connect to your instructor and feel inspired by what he/she is offering, they are going to get precious little out of the course.
To be clear - transfer o
Extremely rushed isn't done very well (Score:5, Interesting)
When I worked at Texas A&M, my primary project for the first year was helping to move from one on-line campus system to a different, better, one. That was a year long project, to move the existing courses. It had taken many years to develop the online courses. That involved hiring a whole team of online curriculum professionals who worked with the instructors to build the courses.
My department had graphic designers, web programmers, people with a masters degree in education. We all got training in pedagogy (the science of teaching).
Building a proper online-based school is nothing at all like taking a bunch of teachers who teach in classrooms and suddenly telling them "start teaching over Zoom next week".
Comparing what has happened with covid to what universities can build is like saying cars will never work because your attempt to design and build one in a week, with virtually no prior knowledge of how cars work, didn't go so well. In fact people CAN build both Ferraris and Corollas and they work pretty darn well - even though your average mechanic can't design and build one from scratch in a week or two.
Here's a little more about online-based education done right:
https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
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Will they learn to spell? "fine and good", not "find and good"....
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Really ... this is the most serious criticism you could find in my post?
Re:Education is not scalable! (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed. For context, I worked for a state university.
What is really being highlighted is that educating people is different than pointing them to a set of online resources. I mean, we already knew that. We have had good math textbook, algebra, calculus, differential calculus, topology, etc. for about a century. How many self taught calculus expert do you see? I haven't met any.
We see every year flocks of high school students who claim to be able to pass CS1 because they have taken up some programming by themselves in High School. DO you know how many get credit-by-exam? Less than a quarter. In practice, many think they know, but they really don't.
The more advanced the class, the worse it gets. We have many that claim to be able to skip a database class because they have done "some sql" before. The number that actually understand relational algebra (which implies what can and cannot be expressed in SQL) is very low. Some can tell you that your database has a weird schema, but few can point that the database violate some normal form and are able to provide practical step to normalize the database and make it robust and easy to use. Virtually none understand query optimization, indexing, or transactions.
If you got to algorithms, then the gap becomes ridiculous. Students who claim to have algorithm knowledge without having followed a formal course in algorithm usually understand one algorithmic tool (say hashing) and believe they can solve every single problem by cleverly using hashing. That just does not work.
The "I've watched some videos and answered some quiz approach" is good to get an idea what a topic is and get a couple high level principles. It does not give you much actual knowledge.
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Education is not just about conveying information ... it is about providing guidance, instilling values, and mentorship
You missed the most important aspect, which arguably eclipses everything you mentioned combined. Higher education is about certification, as one of the more insightful parts of the article describes:
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Again ... I think that this information is outdated.
Interviewers today could not care less where you got your degree (although HR corporate types still do); ... all meaningless.
when you go to a software interview, it is assumed that you have learned nothing until you prove otherwise.
All that matters is your ability to answer technical questions and relate to the interviewing group. Your
school, your grades, your background
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Again ... I think that this information is outdated. Interviewers today could not care less where you got your degree [...] Your school, your grades, your background ... all meaningless.
I don't think this is true for your first job. After your first job I completely agree with you, but right out of university it really does matter if you went to Harvard / MIT / Stanford or a random state school. I really think it matters a lot. And as the article points out, your first job largely sets the trajectory of your career. Not for everyone, but for most people.
The very snippet I quoted was quite clear it was referring to an increased salary right out of school. The article never claimed many peop
A few things... (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason students think education is substandard and overpriced right now is precisely because it's currently being delivered via Zoom. It turns out that sitting by yourself in your parents' basement looking at a screen where a professor is delivering a lecture is not valuable education. Meaningful interaction with the instructor and the other students is actually useful for the purpose of learning.
Yeah, we can all watch YouTube videos. Doing that does not equate to having a college education. You can't sit in isolation, learning about a field, and then be expected to go into the industry and do it cooperatively with other people. I'd pay money to see a physical chemist who got their degree by video try to actually perform a titration.
One of the things that I've learned from teaching college students is that most of them don't learn the material that well from lecture. The way they learn is from applying the knowledge and skills they gain from lecture, preferably in cooperative environments where they can help each other. I'm not saying that on-line education is impossible, but we're not there, yet.
Furthermore, Galloway seems to ignore the fact that a significant portion of what universities do is research and education beyond the level of the bachelor's degree. His imagining of the elimination of universities involves the wholesale destruction of the US research enterprise. I can't quite imagine the consequences of the academic apocalypse that he is projecting. For starters, land grant universities routinely provide valuable services to the agricultural sector around them. And it goes on.
You are interacting online RIGHT NOW :) (Score:4, Insightful)
> professor is delivering a lecture is not valuable education. Meaningful interaction with the instructor and the other students is actually useful for the purpose of learning.
Watching the lecture online instead of watching it in a lecture hall means I can rewind, pause while I go to the bathroom, etc. For me, the lecture is more effective in video form than the same lecture in a lecture hall.
I don't know if you noticed, but it's possible to interact with other people online. You can even have conversations via the web. In fact you could do that in the 1990s, using a script called comments.pl. In fact we're doing that right now. Interaction. Using 1990s web technology. There are also more advanced web technologies available for even better interaction.
Here's a bit about how it works (well) at Georgia Tech:
https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
Re: A few things... (Score:2)
"Meaningful instructor interaction" isn't worth the price of tuition these days.
Colleges banked on the drug loving sex orgy animal house experience that college provides.
Whether or not you partook in it is besides the point, without the on campus experience (coeds and all) college is an over priced commie factory of a joke.
The grand culling of higher education is a good thing. It's time for the ivory tower academics to feel what it's like to be laid off for once.
"But muh tenure!"
Can't get blood from a stone
Self serving prophecy (Score:3, Insightful)
Google involved? (Score:1)
They won't be doing this out of the goodness of their tiny wee hearts. If you think that then you believe in the tooth fairy.
They's slurp and slurp and slurp to their hearts content.
IT is all about data. The more data that Google gets on you the better their advertising friends can target you with ads. Talk to a fellow student about going away for 'Spring Break'? Suddenly you get deluged with flight offers.
Google or rather Big Brother at its finest.
Sell out to the devil by all means. Take your forty pieces
I hope so! (Score:5, Interesting)
In my field of cybersecurity, one of the top universities is Georgia Tech. They put out a lot of research etc.
Because Georgia Tech partnered with Udacity, they are able to offer a masters degree in cybersecurity, taught by world-class experts, for under $10,000. I can take the courses mostly after work (and re-listen to the lectures while I'm driving).
Rather than doing the lectures for the class twice per year, the professors record lectures once every few years. What the profs spend their time on, other than research, is interacting with students primarily through a message board where I can read the prof's response to other students, so I get the answers to questions I didn't know I should ask. The TAs often answer the easy questions; the prof replies when the TA didn't fully answer the question or the Prof wants to add something to the answer. The other TAs and the prof can also edit an answer to improve it. It's kinda like posting a question on Slashdot except the responses come from the professor and from PhD students in the field. :). One can also reply to your fellow students - after 20 years in the field I can provide a viewpoint on some questions where I happen to have created the leading solution in the industry.
Guestimating, I might pose a question once every three weeks. (My together questions were already asked by someone else). With say 200 students there are maybe eight questions per day. I'd guess is takes the prof under an hour a day to answer those 8 questions.
There are live (Zoom) office hours three times per week to go over the homework projects, discuss anything that needs back and forth, etc. Those are also recorded so I can watch / listen to other people's questions and discussion if I didn't need to have a conversation with the Prof that week, perhaps listening during my commute.
I don't feel that I've missed out on interaction at all. I could talk to professor Alexandra (Sasha) Boldyreva a couple times a week just like any on-campus student could. She's been doing research in crypto and teaching crypto for 20 years. Her name comes up in the leading textbook on crypto. The difference between me and an on-campus student is that I could talk to the prof while I'm in the waiting room at the dentist office or wherever I have to be.
Btw Georgia Tech also offers other degrees in the same format.
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Most cybersecurity degrees aren't worth the paper on which they are printed ... just ask industry what they think of their interviewees with "cybersecurity" degrees.
A good cybersecurity actually requires a huge amount of background in as many diverse fields as possible; most programs are just giving you a buzz word.
I've been in the industry 20 years, hired many peo (Score:4, Informative)
I've been in the industry for 20 years and I've hired many people. I don't have to ask the person making hiring decisions / recommendations, I am the person making them.
In case you're interested in the field, here is how it works.
I have six resumes left after I eliminate the "no way".
I need to decide who to interview and who to interview FIRST, based on a very short summary of their experience and education.
Probably top of my list is experience. How relevant is it and how much experience. This can very easily be a wash because someone has a lot of networking experience, they weren't specifically in a cybersecurity role. Someone else has a shorter time, but in a cybersecurity role. A third person almost new but has a little experience with exactly the tools and techniques we use and what matches the specific job role.
Then we go to education and certs, which are very specific claims about exactly how much they know about specific subjects. A masters in comp sci tells me pretty specifically what their level of knowledge should be, in what areas. It's specifically almost twice as as many in-major courses than a bachelor's. So the person with the masters is further educated than the person with a bachelors, a comparison that can't be made with any self-taught people. A cybersecurity major is a better fit than a comp sci degree. A computer engineering degree is better than a comp sci degree, etc.
It's not that "I watched YouTube videos and learned stuff" can't be valuable, it just doesn't tell us anything about how much you learned, about what topics.
Certs are similar. A CCIE knows more than a CCNA. A CCNA knows much than a CCENT. A CCNA Security is a better fit than a CCNA R&S, and I know exactly what all of these certs mean, because I have all of them other than the CCIE - I know precisely what knowledge you must have to pass the CCNA Security. Somebody with no certs or degree may have more knowledge in some area, but there's no telling what areas, if any. Maybe they know nothing - there is no evidence.
So I stack the resumes in order. The guy with a masters in cybersecurity from a top school is on the top of the stack. The guy who read some books on his own in is the stack - on the bottom. He may or may not get a call. Well that's IF the HR department forwarded his resume to me, after a recruiter forwarded it to them. Probably the recruiter called the CISSP, not the guy with no credentials.
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I'm afraid that this information is outdated - it used to be the case, even 10 years ago.
Today an MS in most institutions is *less* than a BS degree, with many of the graduates coming in from programs that do not give them a solid CS or CE background (in some cases, not even a technical BS!) and ending up with significant holes in the background. Given a choice between an MS from a school whose program you don't respect and a BS, you're often better off taking the BS.
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Of course you look at the bachelors that the person earned before getting their masters.
The comparison is between someone who has only a bachelors vs someone who had a bachelors and then also earned a masters. (Combined programs are a special case). The person with the masters has strictly more education (well-defined education) than when they had the bachelors, and more than the candidate who has only that bachelors.
And yes, as I said a cybersecurity degree better matches the jobs I hire for than a Women
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I probably should have said "I've interviewed many people" rather than "hired many people". In most cases, I've been only one of the people involved in the hiring decision. I've only been the sole decision maker for about 6 positions. Which is maybe 24 resumes that I've selected from purely by myself.
For all of the other positions someone else was also going through the same stack of resumes I was. What has struck me is how often you have people with very different skills, education, and experience, but
Distance remote ? (Score:1)
I don't know about you, but I dont want my doctors medical degree coming from Hollywood Upstairs Online Medical School.
Thanks all the same.
Unlikely (Score:4, Insightful)
We've had online and distance learning colleges for some time but they don't carry the prestige that a brick and mortar college does. Not only that, students clearly perceive less value from online courses than they do in-person lectures, hence the hullabaloo over not getting what they paid for at this very moment. Most people are not disciplined enough or can't escape the distractions of home to learn effectively without moving their butts to a structured learning environment for the day.
We have already seen technology enter the classroom in a supportive role and having carved out a useful niche. I don't see anything changing the way Galloway has envisioned.
Wikimedia Foundation could do this (Score:3)
Seems like a bad idea (Score:1)
I would expect each tech company to encourage teachings about and on their respective platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)
Plus I think an online education is nowhere close to being the same as an in-person education. Part of the benefit of going to better universities is networking. Sure it can still happen online but it just isn't the same.
Probably more of a trade school (Score:2)
I'm not sure it would be such a terrible thing. I really enjoyed all my general-ed courses, they were very enriching. But the rise of the internet has su
Scott has the gift of gab and makes a good point (Score:2)
Some of his commentary is downright hilarious. He's a great story teller. I think that he is right in that this will "democratize" a basic level of higher education. You'll be able to get the equivalent of a community college level of learning for people who have the drive to stick with it. You'll also be able to get it "on the cheap."
What you'll miss out on, and what I felt was the more valuable aspect of attending college, is learning how to deal with people. Not just the people in your family or in
Great! Just what the world needs. (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like a system for training future employees of Amazon, Apple, Google, etc.
Eventually, everyone will work for one of those companies. No more borders. Just one world ruled by a few corporations until they go to war with each other. Eventually one will prevail. And all will be well.
Why the hell does Apple come to mind the minute anyone says "design"? Apple has had maybe 3 or 4 guys who design products, and what did they come up with? A rectangular slab with rounded corners. Doh! That's the first 3D object every CAD student learns to make when they are introduced to the filleting tool. So 10000 people per year will be "design" students at the Stanford/Apple university? What are they all going to do for a living when they finish school, even at Apple?
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"Just one world ruled by a few corporations until they go to war with each other. Eventually one will prevail. And all will be well."
Now ALL restaurants are Taco Bell.
The future probably looks more like Snow Crash than Demolition Man, though. The difference between corporations going to war and nations doing it is that corporations have to spend their own profits, while governments spend ours.
Might not affect community colleges as much (Score:2)
The more hands on classes at community colleges like welding and machining and aviation mechanics aren't amenable to distance learning, or just not practical. Where are you going to put the lathe, milling machine and drill press?
And the chemists need all sorts of equipment, not to mention the reagents that Homeland Security gets nervous about, even including simple things like nitric acid.
And the chemical engineers have their distillation column. Maybe you can simulate that well enough. Aspen and Hysys try.
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"The more hands on classes at community colleges like welding and machining and aviation mechanics aren't amenable to distance learning, or just not practical. Where are you going to put the lathe, milling machine and drill press?"
I took machining in college. There is no substitute for actually using the machines if you are doing the work by hand, but if your goal is to learn CNC then there's no real need to get your hands dirty until you already know how everything works. So your basic classes could all ta
Microsoft at Cornell (Score:2)
This was done for a while now. Back in the early 2000's Microsoft was pushing Windows clusters to counter the upward trend of Linux clusters.
Nobody was interested in M$ clusters, so what they did was simple: Pass some cash to the CS department at Cornell and the university was only to happy to install a Windows Cluster.
They also announced it with great fanfare and forced students to use it.
Universities are always cash-starved, so they will happily ram down the throats of the students whatever technology the
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They're right and wrong (Score:2)
People learn different ways and certain subjects/skills lend themselves to in-person instruction. Hopefully the pandemic will cause education in general to rethink the use of technology. Just about all courses and curriculum should benefit from technology. but tech is not some magic solution.
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Correspondence school has been a joke since it's inception; it's better than nothing but it's like wearing a maxi pad instead of a face mask. So we add "online" to correspondence school and speed up and enhance the process slightly so now it's somehow good?
The REAL problem is classic good education wasn't common enough and we've largely only been exposed to lower quality education where the transition to automating it doesn't seem as much of a loss. If you have interaction and customization going on it'll
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KAIST is actually getting quite a bit from the government and is seeking more.
http://www.koreaherald.com/vie... [koreaherald.com]
They are specifically concerned about competing with even more government-funded universities in China.
The universities are safe... (Score:2)
Sure, the education may go downhill, but that's not the value they provide to the customer (student). The value is in the degree. Earnings of those who earn a degree are massively higher than those who are 1 credit short despite nearly identical knowledge acquired.
Unless companies start the very expensive process of testing employees knowledge themselves, they'll continue to rely on the piece of paper. And thus it is that piece of paper is what is valuable, not what the student learns.
People recognize th
The inevitable would happen (Score:2)
Microsoft technology & engineering? (Score:2)
Neither can I, since everything they sell has been bought-in or out-right cloned from the others.
Is slashdot going to police bettridge headlines? (Score:2)
No.
About to? (Score:2)
I thought it had already happened.
Big corporations have already been there, done that.
suka (Score:1)