Macleans magazine in its February 22, 2010 issue surveyed Canadian university students on a variety of elements of their post-secondary schooling experience (academic challenge, student-faculty interaction, collaborative learning, enriching experience, supportive environment, student satisfaction). Basic thing I took away… smaller universities are better for all of these things. Bigger/biggest universities were well down the list in all of these categories.
Other thing I took away was an article on free online university courses that are becoming a growing resource for learning. Well worth checking out yourself and getting a feel for the quality of the learning. In particular, check out Academic Earth (academicearth.org). Lectures from Ivy League schools on all manner of subjects. Good learning, freely available, with links to resources.
Post-secondary schooling… apart from the subjective “experiences” surveyed by Macleans… is largely “self-schooling”. A buffet is laid out, and the young adult learners “feed” themselves. Increasingly, they don’t even have to attend lectures or buy books. The primary cost of schooling (K-12 or post-secondary) is “delivery cost”. In a world of advancing delivery technology, those costs fall dramatically and… over time… get closer and closer to “free”. The roles within that delivery system are compelled to change as that “free” turns into “freedom” for the consumer.
It happened with booksellers. It happened with bank clerks. It’s happening to TV. It will happen to schooling. At an accelerating pace, with accelerating economics and accelerating quality.
If you can get First Year Physics from an MIT professor on your iPod, you can and should expect to get every other kind of learning the same way. The roles in schooling will become increasingly specialized and increasingly diverse, as the delivery system changes dramatically and the costs of that system fall away toward “free”.
And what the consumer will increasingly be at liberty to seek out… and pay for… will be the “experience”.
GLO
gordotto@parentsnschools.com
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