The Impending Demise of the University

Most universities make a large part of their money through research - the money will always be there so I don't see colleges ever going away.

What about the value of the diploma? Sure, I could code out of high school. But now employers can see my resume, my GPA, and my college achievements and get a fair idea about my abilities. Unless there is a great innovator that can provide a great testing/grading service for topics covered by traditional university classes today, there is no way that the university system will start faltering.

>But a credential and even the prestige of a university is rooted in its effectiveness as a learning institution. If these institutions are shown to be inferior learning environments to other alternatives their capacity to credential will surely diminish.

I think the author is blissfully unaware of the fact that universities are often judged (from the outside) on their effectiveness not as "learning institutions," but as markers of belonging to a particular social stratum.

The existence of anachronisms such as "legacy admissions" seems to merit this view.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/arti...

Universities aren't going to disappear completely. The strong ones will survive through adaptation - witness Stanford and MIT vis-a-vis online courses. The stodgy, bureaucratic, state-supported universities risk becoming the do-do birds of higher learning. Current fiscal stressors may be the thing that drives the weaker universities into extinction.

We could be even more confident about this if universities were not so thoroughly funded, controlled, and supported by the government. If they weren't, then sure, better methods of education could easily replace them. But the government will continue to invest large sums of money to prop up the existing university system. We can hope they fail.

university won't go away if govt joins in further in cooperative exploitation, like requiring degree/certificate to do something

like, what if the average mom is required to have a degree just to cook regular food? because otherwise she's unqualified and can 'danger' her family

altho it seems that certification is required for lucrative professions (we prolly won't see degree is required for cooking, gardening, plumbing, etc) ... to protect the incumbent

anyway, we won't see law and medical schools going away if the artificial limits, exams, certifications still exist (those further making these fields harder to enter -> more lucrative)

like it or not, education (and religion) is a form of social control.

College is valuable as hacker incubation period, even if a degree is not attained. You have a lot of time to hack on a lot of things, hopefully without worrying about rent quite so much (be it through parental or federal/stage aid/loans).

For this hacker crowd (in general), the ROI of a university education isn't fulfilling the promise proclaimed on my former high school walls, that college grads will make 1 million more in their life time than non-grads.

That being said, I can't wait to start college next year. For learning to be independent, for networking, for taking courses like Accounting I and II.

That being said, I am going to college starting next year but for 2 years I have been watching podcasts through iTunes U. Learning economics from berkeley, CS from Stanford. Thanks to the web, my professors are not limited to my university. :P

You know, the original idea of a university was to research stuff in three areas that weren't covered by other institutions of society at that time: philosophy, medicine, law.

What about that?

Couldn't agree more with this article. For a more rich analysis, I'd recommend checking out Disrupting Class by Christensen and Horn. All about how disruption is going to transform education.

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