Three cheers for online universities
YOU just have to hear the stories told by the pioneers in this industry to appreciate its revolutionary potential. One of Koller’s favorites is about “Daniel,” a 17-year-old with autism who communicates mainly by computer. He took an online modern poetry class from Penn. He and his parents wrote that the combination of rigorous academic curriculum, which requires Daniel to stay on task, and the online learning system that does not strain his social skills, attention deficits or force him to look anyone in the eye, enable him to better manage his autism. Koller shared a letter from Daniel, in which he wrote: “Please tell Coursera and Penn my story. I am a 17-year-old boy emerging from autism. I can’t yet sit still in a classroom so [your course] was my first real course ever. During the course, I had to keep pace with the class, which is unheard-of in special ed. Now I know I can benefit from having to work hard and enjoy being in sync with the world.”
One member of the Coursera team who recently took a Coursera course on sustainability told me that it was so much more interesting than a similar course he had taken as an undergrad. The online course included students from all over the world, from different climates, incomes levels and geographies, and, as a result, “the discussions that happened in that course were so much more valuable and interesting than with people of similar geography and income level” in a typical American college.
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I can’t see his name anymore without thinking about this-
http://thomasfriedmanopedgenerator.com/
crrr6 on January 27, 2013 at 8:43 PM
Three cheers for pornstaches!!!
steebo77 on January 27, 2013 at 8:44 PM
I know how we can stop these Tom Friedman posts on Hot Air. Let my comment BE THE LAST on this thread. Enough HotGas fools. We don’t want to eat this kind of drool!
SuperBunny on January 27, 2013 at 8:47 PM
OK, Tom Friedman aside, who amongst us actually enjoys paying their student loans for degrees that we earned listening to teaching assistants who had little more knowledge of the subject matter than the students and preening, sanctimonious Marxist professors who, if they weren’t ensconced in an ivory tower, wouldn’t be qualified to clean toilets?
It’s about friggin’ time these arseholes got their comeuppance.
turfmann on January 27, 2013 at 8:57 PM
Online U’s have their place and can be good. My wife already had her masters and wanted to get her + 15. Online U made it possible. I wanted to go back to college to get my masters, and though there are a lot of options near me, for the career field I’m interested in, the only option is an online program.
Logus on January 27, 2013 at 9:09 PM
The left will school Tom on this issue in 5… 4… 3…
Online education, K-12 and post-secondary, threatens to revolutionize education, cutting costs, enhancing access, and putting teachers’ unions and many of the professoriat out of business big time. Hence we can count on the left to block it, just as they block vouchers and home schooling. Bank on it.
petefrt on January 27, 2013 at 9:17 PM
I’m involved with hiring folks at the $100K up level. As long as the school is accredited, we don’t give a rat’s butt. It could be Harvard…it could be on-line…all that matters is if you have the degree. We hire folks all the time with on-line degrees. We also don’t care what your GPA was.
Yeah, “prestigious” law firms and docs might care. Otherwise…
Dingbat63 on January 27, 2013 at 9:27 PM
Exactly. In some fields and careers, where you went to college and got your degree may make some difference, but for the vast majority of people and employers, it won’t make one whit of difference.
My brother is getting his music education degree at a small private college. He’s paying and will pay out the wazoo for that diploma that he could have gotten closer to home and cheaper and learned just as much the same thing.
A lot of people aren’t familiar with the university I’m going “to”, but I know it won’t make a difference when I go job hunting. I could have gone with some place like Penn State, Northeastern or some other prestigious schools. Didn’t make monetary sense. I’m going to learn pretty much the same thing regardless and I’d be in the same boat looking for work.
Logus on January 27, 2013 at 9:44 PM
Surprisingly, the best English professor of mine was a teaching assistant possessing a determination to have the students enjoy the subject as he did. The reading selections were excellent, the exams thoughtful and challenging, the colloquials worthy of the time. Absolute rock bottom was the high falutin’ highbrow professor pimped almost as much the second coming as Barky the Dictator. Dreadful. Boring. Full of himself. A true waste of space amongst academia.
The worst mathematics professor was qualified as an astrophysicist yet had no teaching acumen whatsoever. Speaking English (barely) as a second language didn’t help. That professor hereafter referred to as Fang… wrote the x vah-wee-able as two parentheses )( back to back so order of operations was shot to hell the instant the equation hit the blackboard. Point-slop form to Fang indeed was actually point-slope form. To the unwary ab-soh-root verocity and in-stan-tee-us verocity to Fang meant absolute and instantaneous velocity to reality. I’ll never forget the door slams as each of us left after finishing the final exam. Those shook the building.
viking01 on January 27, 2013 at 9:51 PM
Guess he’s not looking for any type of job at all when he graduates…
AngusMc on January 27, 2013 at 9:59 PM
As one who has three online graduate degrees (Education, Theology, Divinity), I can attest to the fact that many online programs are more demanding than some of the brick and mortar schools I’ve attended (undergrad). Furthermore, when I was a hiring manager I didn’t really care if the school the degree was from was online or not. My main concern was the experience, personality, and fit of the candidate to our team. I’ve also not had one employer question whether I went online or in a building (two of three graduate degrees came from schools that were also brick and mortar).
Centurion68 on January 27, 2013 at 10:24 PM
Yay for spending a ton of money on a degree that on company thinks has any value.
lorien1973 on January 27, 2013 at 10:25 PM
whats sad is I learned more from Dick Morris’ history videos in the past two months than I learned in all of High School AP history.
hahaha..
All kidding aside, I truly believe online education is the future. Both my children learned to read before kindergarten using reading apps on their ipad and are reading two or three grades above their level. This is truly amazing to me as I grew up in between Gen X and Gen Y. I feel lucky to have been growing up to witness the changes that the internet age has brought us. It’s almost like being alive during the industrial revolution.
It still amazes me that my children have grown up thinking ALL screens are touchscreens.. and ALL pictures should be moving. All the high school students I teach all use Khan academy and most music students I teach all use musictheory.net.
University education is easy to get via online courses and thats not including the Maker type websites/apps/blogs etc that are out there educating children.
I do see the teachers unions and liberals trying to stop this from happening, but just like the internet destroyed the dead business models of the entertainment industry, the teachers industry is not far behind. Our kids won’t accept sitting in useless classes in the future. It just won’t happen.
I am considering letting my children graduate high school early, start their own business, and get into college or profession early instead of having to sludge through 4 years of pointless liberal indoctrination.
johnnyboy on January 27, 2013 at 10:30 PM
I’ll bet a lot can be said for the trade schools. Some highbrow, overpaid Hahvahd theoretician may bloviate about how to build a better automobile on paper but a machinist at teaching at some trade school in his spare time who is capable of turning blocks of metal into precision working parts can actually do it.
viking01 on January 27, 2013 at 10:41 PM
Before his term is up, Obama will take steps to block internet education. Watch for it.
His leftist constituency will demand it.
petefrt on January 27, 2013 at 11:02 PM
I’m rather impressed by such folks.
Same as Executive MBAs.
They’re taking a hit and a risk, almost always on their own dime.
When I talk to them I see the kind of drive you don’t see commonly.
CorporatePiggy on January 28, 2013 at 1:38 AM