College IS free. Right now.

[GreatGazoo]

The courses and information sold through brick and mortar colleges are free now thanks to the internet. If what you want is to learn more about the things that interest you as a person or gain more white collar skills for your present or future job then you can use the internet to gain that knowledge, free.

Colleges are archaic and a poor value relative to other ways to educate one's self. Most colleges still use the design established in the 1840s -- one prof, one hundred students, lecture halls, black board (white board or projection), note taking, exams. As archaic as the Amish yet they charge thousands of dollars and employ millionaire football coaches to sell their brand for your resume. Information is free, accreditation is not free (but we can fix that).

Meanwhile on YouTube and other internet sites, College is Free...

A Semester at MIT is $23,200 plus $725 per unit so MIT would be charging you around $600 for the lecture in that video.

Those who don't want to learn can't be taught while those who truly want to learn can't be stopped.

Making brick and mortar college "free" or 'forgiving student loans' are nice ideas but they ignore the calendar and the shift in information. College can be free right now if we change the way students gain accreditation, eg you could study on your own and pay only for testing and certification or the government could make the testing free. But, again, if knowledge is what you really want it is free.

[djean111]

1. Almost all of the best-paying jobs require that degree.

In fact, the automated software that winnows through job applications may even reject resumes without a degree and trash them immediately.

There is no doubt that pretty much any knowledge acquired through college is available out there, somewhere, for free. But as long as employers use having a degree as necessary just to get in the door, college degrees are needed. Sucks, but that's the way it is. Yes, older applicants can sometimes never have a problem getting an interview because of experience, but for many jobs - no degree, no interview.

So yes, we would need to change the certification process, and have businesses buy into that. Great idea!

[Brickbat]

2. There's a big difference between gaining knowledge and getting a degree.

Currently, most employers are more interested in the degree than the knowledge.

[pnwmom]

3. Not true. My family includes scientists and engineers, and there's no good way to get

a high-quality university-level education for free online. That's why schools like MIT offer content for free. They know that can't substitute for the experience of working with real teachers and real facilities. It's no accident that the photo is of a computer class. Computer classes don't need labs, studios, or stages.

And sitting in your room reading online study guides doesn't substitute for the experience of giving a live talk in front of your classmates, or asking questions of a professor in real time.

One of my children had advanced out of all her high school math classes and had to take a couple online through two different companies. She loved math but hated learning it online.

[a la izquierda]

4. Right because discussions with human beings are totally irrelevant.

And people wonder why faculty are on food stamps.

[GreatGazoo]

6. Nothing is stopping anyone from having a discussion with another human being

(without paying for dorms, football, administrators, real estate, parking, meal card, beer...).

People ask each other questions online (or in person) all the time and one's question can be seen and answered by multiple people so I am not sure what your point is.

[a la izquierda]

12. I teach both online and in-person courses for my university.

My students and I both acknowledge that nothing takes the place of live discussions, face to face, with living, breathing people. Students say things online that they wouldn't say to another person. Racist, sexist things. You could say whatever you wanted about any subject because there's no accountability in many of these courses. So no, they are certainly NOT the same.

I'm sorry you have a problem with universities. By all means, continue to lecture us on how degrees are pointless and that you can tell me everything about the history of Latin America (my field) by taking some free classes. It's like 11000 years of history, by the way. I've read thousands and thousands of pages over the course of my career and written hundreds of pages of my own work. So go for it. Or pick some other subject.
I'll wait.



Signed- underpaid history professor (who should be grading final exams)

(I totally appreciate, by the way, the undervaluing of college educations on a supposedly progressive site. Not everyone needs a college degree- my husband doesn't have one- but spare me the anti-college bullshit, thanks).

[DetlefK]

5. College/university in Germany is €200 per semester. And they don't have millionaire coaches.

You gotta be careful. It's not just about the ability to access knowledge.

This is about learning.
About having the intellectual content presented in a way that you can process it. (This eats up most of the time when a teacher/professor has to prepare a lesson.)

This is about having examples presented and discussed that allow you to understand the larger picture.
This is about the option to discuss these topics face-to-face with other people and clear up misunderstandings.



This is about making sure that everybody who dares to call himself a scientist or engineer or whatever was certified by a third party that examined his competence.
"I watched 100 hours of Youtube! I know everything about the Timecube and the Electric Universe! I'm a scientist!"

[GreatGazoo]

7. People can and do call themselves anything they want and colleges resisted strongly a move by Obama

to establish rankings and supply more information to the customer.

It ultimately falls to the employer or customer to sort out the Ben Carsons and Rand Pauls from those that are worth paying for.

Preparing a lecture is part of the one-size-fits-all mode of our education system. People learn differently. Some want the big picture first, some are good jumping right into the details and building up, some people are very emotionally based and need to "love" the subject and the prof.

The cost of a college degree is proportional to the perceived value of that college's brand. The value, to the student, seems to be tied to how likely they are to be discriminated against in the workforce:

[Facility Inspector]

9. distinct difference

between having knowledge and being educated.

Becoming an educated person requires a social millieu.

[Orrex]

8. Tell us how your abdominal surgery went

You know, the one performed by the surgeon who went to free online college?

[a la izquierda]

11. Teehee...

Much obliged, from a university professor. You know, the useless kind (because I teach history).

[Orrex]

13. What? You mean with, like, books and pencils?

What kind of dinosaur are you?!?

[exboyfil]

10. I think brick and mortar can be reduced to two years

That is essentially what my older daughter did. Her first two years were done online with mostly community college classes (with the notable exception of Chemistry I - I will get back to that). She did her Communications class online and filmed all of her speeches. There was an audience requirement for the later speeches. She actually did her final one at her parent's anniversary celebration (not a requirement but a convenient way to get a large audience). The other classes including some team projects were all done online. When it came to my younger daughter, she did several online classes but she also did classes like Communications in a classroom setting.

Things that cannot easily be done online:

1. Laboratories - I was not at all happy with the laboratory approach for my older daughter's online Physics class. It really did not matter because she would repeat the same experiments in her engineering classes. I remember not learning much in my undergraduate college Physics classes, and frankly things have little changed 30 years later. She was not put at much of a competitive disadvantage as she did Magna Cum Laude for her last two years. One class you absolutely cannot do online is Chemistry. Another is Microbiology. Another is Anatomy and Physiology (my younger daughter took this course - I had her follow up with a Vert. Anatomy course taught in a classroom). Engineering lab courses in general are impossible online.

2. Team Design Projects - My older daughter's experience in these classes has been invaluable and cannot be duplicated online.

3. Concept classes requiring interaction. My older daughter had two Philosophy and Ethics classes during her last two years. The opportunity to debate and present ideas in person cannot be duplicated easily online. Of course it can be done in writing, but it really is not the same.

My older daughter had the advantage of my assistance for her classes online. It would not have been possible to take Physics or her sophomore engineering classes without my assistance and that of some helpful high school engineering teachers.

The free content on the internet is amazing. I avail myself of it often, but I do not think it is a substitute for real interaction. I miss the give and take discussions of my business classes for example. Even that can be duplicated to some degree by participation in organizations like Toastmasters.

[Starry Messenger]

14. Internet education has very poor outcomes.

http://hechingerreport.org/californias-multi-million-dollar-online-education-flop-is-another-blow-for-moocs/

[closeupready]

15. K&R - I knew you'd get slammed by many here, but

I think the potential to revolutionize the way people learn is huge. Thanks for posting.

[GreatGazoo]

17. I really do think that if the Amish set up a college it wouldn't be that different from

what is in that classroom at MIT -- black board, chalk, guy talking, etc. I think the current "make college free" argument is a combination of the 2016 election cycle plus the amount of debt that students are carrying. It would be a great time to have a debate about how college could serve the customer better and be a better value. There was a lot of focus on Finland's public school system as a model for what works -- they practice the philosophy that different people learn best in different ways.

When you post anything on the internet, you are most likely to hear first from people who disagree with you. If they present opposing facts and not simply sarcasm or ad hom, you can learn things or tighten up your own argument. I kind of like that.

[ShrimpPoboy]

16. So when you apply for a job

and the employer doesn't know you from Adam, how are they supposed to know you've self-taught online? How do you prove it?

That's what a degree really is: proof of education that can be easily verified and qualified. It also demonstrates whatever level of discipline and commitment the particular degree program required, which is something else that's not going to be evident on a resume or through a few interviews.

If all you want is information, the net is amazing and will probably do the trick. If you want a job, you need a degree.

[GreatGazoo]

18. Germany is now offering free degrees to Americans...

http://www.wtsp.com/story/news/2014/10/03/german-colleges--free-degrees--americans/16658027/

and you don't even have to learn German:

Fortunately, however, there are international language programs in Germany, which have become very popular with international students before they tackle obtaining a degree in a different language.

What's more, an increasing number of German universities are offering degrees in English. These are often called international studies programs or in some other way have the word international in their title.

[aikoaiko]

19. Content knowledge is the lowest level of knowledge

These free resources are great for motivated individuals, but mostly only for content.


The updated Bloom's Taxonomy is a decent description of the levels of knowledge and thinking we hope to achieve in higher education.

https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/

A group of cognitive psychologists, curriculum theorists and instructional researchers, and testing and assessment specialists published in 2001 a revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy with the title A Taxonomy for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment. This title draws attention away from the somewhat static notion of “educational objectives” (in Bloom’s original title) and points to a more dynamic conception of classification.

The authors of the revised taxonomy underscore this dynamism, using verbs and gerunds to label their categories and subcategories (rather than the nouns of the original taxonomy). These “action words” describe the cognitive processes by which thinkers encounter and work with knowledge:

Remember (lower levels)
Recognizing
Recalling
Understand
Interpreting
Exemplifying
Classifying
Summarizing
Inferring
Comparing
Explaining
Apply
Executing
Implementing
Analyze
Differentiating
Organizing
Attributing
Evaluate
Checking
Critiquing
Create
Generating
Planning
Producing (higher levels)

[GreatGazoo]

20. So apprenticeship or trade schools may rank at a higher level than college

because those involve applying knowledge and not merely understanding and summarizing. (?)

[aikoaiko]

21. I disagree that all one does in college is understanding and memorizing.

Those are necessary levels of knowledge but shouldn't be the goal of a 4-year degree.

The similarity between guilds and college educations is the interaction between is the interaction between those with mastery and those without. And that is what is missing from the online free course materials in your OP.

There are other big differences between tracked school education and baccalaureate education, but