University of California teachers’ union aims to block online classes

Public Choice:

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/03/don_boudreaux_o_3.h...

Teachers:

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/08/hanushek_on_tea.htm...

Take law, for example. In CA, NY, and a few other states, would-be lawyers can study via apprenticeship, distance learning, or some combination of the two; although this can be a career handicap compared to attending a decent brick-and-mortar school, it doesn't impede one's ability to sit the bar exam and receive a law license. But in Texas (a large and growing legal market), it does - you can be admitted as an attorney to some other state bar and to federal bar, but if you got your law degree by correspondence then you won't be given a TX law license. Of course this won't last; eventually some attorney with a non-traditional legal education will win some landmark case in a federal appeals court, and barriers like this will be scrapped because nothing succeeds like success, and no state bar wants prevent a big client from hiring the star lawyer of the moment due to some ancient admittance rule. But right now there's much more supply than demand, so employers have little or no incentive to take a risk.

Of course, many jobs do not require same sort of rigorous standards that exist in the professions; you could make an economic argument that all credentialism is a kind of rent-seeking. But it's not going away until there's some alternative measure of skill that adequately predicts performance. Again, it's a bit easier in tech; you can sample the results of someone's work on their web page, and often it either works or it doesn't. It's less obvious how to do that in other fields.

You can treat academia like any other industry and you need someone who knows the the system very well to innovate a better means. Plus, mass online education will still have to conform to some form of the highly bureaucratic standards that give real weight to the degree.

The demand is very high, and all three of these are fairly specialized classes.

This is a common fantasy among technologists (and a common fear of teachers) when confronted with educational technology. But it won't happen in our lifetimes. It will not be possible to replace teachers with technology until we discover true artificial intelligence.

Educational technology, correctly applied, can be a force multiplier for teachers. So it may mean we can teach more students with fewer teachers. But it also means that access to education will increase (which may cause demand for education to increase).

One way or another, someone will always need to be available to answer students' questions. Books, videos, and clever programs running in web browsers simply can't do that.

No, it isn't sensible at all.

This is an attempt by an entrenched interest to stave off and destroy innovation for their own benefit. The more teachers that work, the more dues they collect. They couldn't care less about the quality of the education rendered.

Imagine a kid from a poor neighborhood sitting in on a lecture from a top tier university. That's what we're talking about. That kind of educational opportunity. And the unions are trying to destroy that.

It's heartbreaking.

Absolutely on the dot.

As an aside, there are intangibles associated with actually going to a University, e.g. interacting with people in person (serendipitous learning), that online classes cannot undermine.

I see online classes as a excellent supplement to what's being taught in class and in cases where in-class learning is not an option for an individual (monetary, time or location based constraints). It is such an exciting time to be around; we can witness exactly how social networking and online education can interplay vis-a-vis in-person, in-class learning.

I have found that distance learning is great. I have watched lectures on the internet, and found the convenience of watching when I want and being able to rewind are some advantages over classroom-based learning.

While it may still be difficult to have questions answered as quickly as they can be answered in a classroom, I disagree that it "will never be a substitute for genuine classroom-based interaction," as technology will hopefully be able to address the current shortcomings.

Is your view based on a negative experience you had with online learning?

Additionally I've supplemented poor university teachers with excellent online classes to much success. Personally I think the future of education should be something like students taking Stanford's ai class with local teachers acting as TAs and adding a few supplements + classroom interaction. You read Norvig's textbook, why not have him teach the material if you can?

Having taken far more than my fair share of classes, my experience is that, aside from project heavy courses, only upper level grad classes are really something you couldn't replace with a mass-audience, online course. And these are just training wheels for researching closely with a professor or research team anyway.

For lower to mid level undergraduate courses I actually feel that online classes (given that they are top tier classes) are better. A good teacher is much, much more important in earlier learning than later (a smart grad student should have no difficultly learning advanced material even with an awful teacher)

Doing so may come at the expense of students. For example, while it may be in the best interest of workers to prevent online learning, there are benefits to students from online learning.

Additionally, there are instances where actions that are seemingly in the workers' best short-term interest are not in their best long-term interest. For example, the prevention of online learning at a school may benefit workers in the short-term, but in the long-term may drive students to other schools that offer online learning.

Relatedly, I honestly don't understand how people fetishize educational institutions but it seems very common. Perhaps I am a bit more sensitive than others, never having been to a 4 year university, but I always thought it was all about learning. When did preserving the institutions of education become more important than actual education?

~ Immensely Prideful Autodidact

So, really the question is something like "are you one of the best 1000 teachers in North America?"

If not, you're gone in 10 years, and that's a good thing (for students).

EDIT> I've been thinking about this a lot recently. It's a huge problem for society. Software is leverage. We don't need as many people working, but we still structure our society so that people need to work. More and more technology means that if you're not one of the best in your field you don't matter. So, how do you eat?