The Web will dismember universities, just like newspapers | Hacker News Reader

The Web will dismember universities, just like newspapers

thebigmoney.com

35 pointssmanek59 comments

Major flaw in this argument: college = information; information = newspaper; therefore college = newspaper. A better analogy would be college = information + experience; newspaper = information.

I don't know about everybody else here, but the major reasons I went to college were: a) my friends were going b) I wanted to meet new people c) I wanted to expand my sphere of knowledge, i.e I wanted to get the hell out of the town I grew up in d) I wanted a job I liked, but didn't know what I wanted to do

College provided this, in the form of a lot of other students who didn't know what they wanted to do. Because I didn't take classes online I went to London and Paris, made close friends from other areas of the country. I was exposed to new cultures that my mid-western, white-bread town never had. I learned culture, I made connections that will never be lost, I interacted, face-to-face, with people, everyday.

So much of college comes from the unique atmosphere created by academia. While the smear of ink and crinkle of cheap paper may be called an experience, I don't think it's even remotely comparable to a true college experience. And while the web can certainly provide the information more efficiently and inexpensively, it cannot provide the experience.

I don't doubt that online classes will continue to grow, but I don't think (and I certainly hope) they will not replace traditional brick and mortar colleges, but instead augment the college experience.

Universities aren't in business of educating, they are in business of:

  1. Pre-selecting the best, so that employers don't 
     have to spend money on the selection process.
  2. Getting similarly-minded people to know each other.

The education is just a ruse, really.

To be fair: most students aren't going to college strictly for education either.

Neither are most of the professors. In fact, I'd assume that most of the professors aren't even there primarily for the teaching.

People keep assuming that universities are an education business. They aren't. They're a research business, with education as a side job. The only reason they do that is to provide grad students (indentured servants) to the professors, who themselves are only as good as their last grant.

For one, just look at the operating cost of the top research universities. I pay $50,000 a year at my university. That's a drop in the bucket of the actual operating cost. What really pays the bills? Grant money, patents, etc.

> I'd assume that most of the professors aren't even there primarily for the teaching.

Professors are at universities to do research. Teaching is a necessary evil.

Some of them really do care about teaching. Hint for college students: find these professors.

In fairness I was overgeneralizing; but the main point of being a professor is to do research, and plenty of professors have no problem reminding their undergraduate students of this fact.

Also, to serve as a stepping-stone from childhood (living with your parents) to semi-adulthood (doing your own laundry) without having to worry about the "making money, paying rent, and not getting fired" just yet.

I never had it that way. Lived with my parents through college then went with make money or no rent.

1) Colleges DO NOT filter out bad students. I know good and bad programmers who graduated out of my college.

2) The student community formed is also very important. Student communities really foster creativity and help students encourage each other. Online you are alone, isolated. This is a general problem of online human interaction, you are more alone and isolated than usual.

You're right, (1) is useful for the parents that don't want their children living with them anymore, but still feel responsible for sustaining them. (2) has more use from the student's perspective - one of the best things about college is being inundated with smart people.

I disagree, if they are pre-selecting the best I would venture its because this gives them the numbers that will increase their perceived value- they're in the business of making money and advancing their brand, or rather simply, like any institution, they're in the business of being in business.

In other words, you agree. :-)

I think they will. I'm not saying it will happen overnight, but it certainly will be in the future for the average person.

Right now, we have a bias against online learning since we think of it as a low-class experience or for people who didn't go to "real" colleges. But I think this is a lot like online dating. It used to be that people who met each other online were the exception. In 2000, if you told a friend that you met your significant other online, it carried a heavy social stigma. Nowadays it's still there, but it's less. In 20 years, there likely won't be one at all. The same applies to education.

I had some terrible professors in college (especially for intro classes). I'd go sit in class and we'd go over chapters in a book or we'd just be bored out of our minds. Imagine if the Dalai Lama was teaching your 30 hour class on Buddhism or Michael Chabon was teaching you creative writing, and Michael Beschloss taught you American History. Imagine if this caliber of teachers was available online. Would you think that this was a worse experience than a traditional college? If you only need one teacher to teach all your classes about a particular subject, you get the best you can get.

Maybe you'll still have to go sit in a classroom if you want an Ivy degree (Up until somewhat recently, they primarily functioned as a way for America's elites to meet one another and network. This would become their primary function once again.) But why wouldn't a top state school like the University of Virginia offer a world class online program of lectures created by only the very best professors to every student at a fraction of the cost online (especially if it saved the taxpayers money)? If one had to weigh the cost of getting a degree at the University of Virginia for 3k/year or 50k/year at Princeton, that would be a very easy decision for many many people.

I also wonder which lower "upper tier" college is going to break from the ratings game it wasn't going to win anyway and start selling their degrees online. They'd be the prestigious low cost alternative and claim a massive market share. It seems to me that there's a considerable first mover advantage for a school that jumped on it. There's also room for foreign schools that are already heavily subsidized by their governments to offer these programs abroad inexpensively.

Right now, we have a bias against online learning since we think of it as a low-class experience or for people who didn't go to "real" colleges. But I think this is a lot like online dating.

Umm... I want to point out that the actual dating still happens in person.

I'm not sure this is the best analogy. You could just as easily compare online dating to choosing your university or your courses online, which already happens. Or you could compare online learning with cyber relationships, which AFAIK is still far from the social norm.

That's because so much of the dating process actually requires you to be in the same place.

But really I wasn't making the point that taking online classes and dating were the same. I was making the point that people's perceptions and acceptance of a new technology encroaching on an old institution took some time to overcome.

And any actual learning would still happen in your head, just as it does now (if it happens at all that is, now or future).

Sorry but this is full of holes. "Imagine if the Dalai Lama was teaching your 30 hour class on Buddhism or Michael Chabon was teaching you creative writing, and Michael Beschloss taught you American History. Imagine if this caliber of teachers was available online" People of this caliber DO teach, and they teach at GOOD schools, not phoenix u.

Also, if the Ivy League started a low-cost online option, it wouldn't be the same. As it's been said many times, one of the reasons these schools are so good is that they are a meeting place for a. the rich and well connected and b. the extremely bright

First, I said this would be the experience of the average person. People that typically go to Ivy League schools are way above the average.

Yes, many of the very best, well known professors teach at good schools. But I think you'd be mistaken if you didn't think that many of these professors wouldn't jump on the idea of communicating their ideas to many thousands of people at once instead of a select few (especially if they were paid royalties for every student who took the class).

No one was saying it would be the same experience. You wouldn't be singing with the Tiger Tones in Nassau Hall or playing frisbee on the quad, but for many people that wasn't ever the choice. The choice for people that go online isn't going to be between a school like Princeton and the University of Phoenix. It's going to be a much smaller gap of prestige.

If schooling (like mine) had cost 12k instead of 160k, there would be many who see the opportunity in carrying no debt and using that money for another purpose. There will be tradeoffs, but an extra 100k would surely have paid for one hell of a semester abroad.

Universities have erected enormous barriers to entry such as accreditation and state-sponsored scholarships that will severely limit competition. Furthermore, a college degree is not merely a certificate that you have knowledge, but an objective standard of proof. This piece of paper, not the knowledge, is what will keep large institutions in business.

As an extreme example, I’m a cancer survivor who has spent over 5,000 hours researching my type of cancer. I have a science background (MS in CS) and I have spent some serious time in medical libraries and online forums during my recovery. I am convinced that I know my specific form of cancer as well as my oncologists does. It would be interesting to compare scores on a standardized test covering the narrow topic.

Now, how many people would be willing to trust me as an oncologist?

I'm not sure what your point is. Someone could go to college, do poorly in everything except one particular area and be the optimal candidate for a job in that area.

Just like you may well be more helpful to someone with a similar condition than the general oncologist.

I agree with you. In a perfect world, the person with the most knowledge would get the job. But my point is that knowledge is very difficult to judge and universities offer, however flawed, an objective proof of competence.

Related to the problem of flawed proof is the competitive barriers that have been erected to limit who can offer objective proof (a degree).

All other factors being equal, if you were a new mid-level hiring manager at a 200 person company would you hire someone without a high school degree? A college degree?

In the real world, the answer is no because, just like hiring me as an oncologist, it is seen as too much risk.

Right. But I took your comment about the standardized test as a possible alternative certification idea. Certification could be finer-grained than a college diploma. Maybe that sort of testing is a good idea for a business for someone who thinks that this is the way education is headed.

As it is people try to apply other criteria to their choices of professionals besides relying solely on a diploma.

Ahh. Sorry, that was a bit confusing. I meant to imply that a test would be an interesting question but not a substitute for experience or a degree.

Re certs, there are powerful political interests working to preserve or extend the status quo. It is interesting that most states have gradually increased the requirement for instruction from accredited institutions for professional licenses like law (Bar) and accounting (CPA).

Regardless of its PV, a degree is far more important for entry level jobs where there are tons of applicants and little experience between the candidates. I agree that other criteria become more important as a person gains experience and as the position increases in importance.

Of course an exception to this rule is, surprise, higher education.

Nope, they certainly won't.

Let me also mention the "4 million stdents took an online class" line. The vast majority of these students took one or two classes At THEIR school during summer/winter.

Exactly. I have taken 150 credits of engineering & computer science classes in person, and 3 credits of engineering online.

I would never again take an online class, the experience is miserable. Sure there are videos. Sure the professor answers the questions. Sure you have the same book, homework, and tests. But it just isn't the same quality of learning and it isn't nearly as interesting or motivating.

Universities don't sell education, they sell degrees. The education part is just an opportunity for them to get students to drop out, netting them money without inflating their degrees. People who actually want to learn have been doing it better on the internet than in the classroom for the past fifteen years.

In most fields you probably still need to go the library (and you certainly did 5 years ago even for something like CS), but point well taken.

People who actually want to learn have been doing it in the library, study hall, or in their own dorm room. You can't learn most of the hard sciences, or even the humanities, from online. You have to do it in a lab, or read the hard copy/visit the site/examine the artifacts.

CS you can learn online. Math you can learn online. Everything else, offline trumps the shit out of online, and it always will.

I don't think online education will have a significant impact on major universities. However, there are a lot of colleges and universities that probably shouldn't exist. I can think of two types:

1. State schools that became 'universities' in the past 30 years but were previously 'teachers colleges' 'nursing colleges' and other specialized tertiary educational institutions for specific careers.

Seriously, does a big state like Illinois need 12 different business colleges, 12 different English departments, 12 different chemistry departments? Or how about Idaho, population 1.5 million with its 3 state universities and 5 state colleges. Really?

No - a lot of 'universities' only got that appellation because administrators lobbied state legislatures really hard for more money if they created the appearance that they'd be a 'world class' institution. They're not. The quality of education at many of these schools, excepting a handful of departments or colleges where they've really invested heavily, just isn't that different from what you could get in an online program. It'd be different if the University of Northern Iowa went back to being the Iowa State Teachers College - Iowa needs teachers! It probably doesn't need three different universities graduating International Studies majors.

2. Small standalone private colleges founded in earlier periods that don't really have a particular rationale for existing anymore.

Back in the 1800s, the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church needed to have a college that would be attended primarily by Methodist Episcopalians who wanted to be taught by other Methodist Episcopalians. Now, what is it exactly that distinguishes Goucher as an institution from any of the dozens of other tiny private colleges dotting our nation's landscape? Do their degrees carry much weight?

They're expensive, and up in the northeast it seems like most of them are for well-to-do suburban kids who couldn't get into the Ivy League and don't want to study with the state school rabble they've been looking down on most of their lives. What's more, it seems like a lot of them spend more time focusing on holding onto real estate than they do investing in research and academia that makes our nation better.

So I think major state research universities, commuter colleges in big cities, and the private university giants will do fine, and probably make even more money from whatever happens online. But if you're giving Swarthmore $50k a year, or Western Michigan $20k, you literally get what you pay for.

I don't agree with all of the details, but I think the author is dead on with his point. I've been thinking for a while now that in about 5 years people will be asking "How do we save the universities?" instead of "How do we save the newspapers?".

The biggest difference is that the initial costs for an education startup are orders of magnitude larger than the costs to start a news aggregator. Still, it's only a matter of time before someone figures out a clever hack or a big enough tech name makes a serious effort at solving the problem.

I don't think major educational institutions will disappear any more than I think that the New York Times will close up shop. The college experience can't be replaced by online classes. But if a less expensive alternative existed, a lot of people would probably take advantage of it. The more people that get degrees online, the more accepted they'll become.

I'm honestly surprised so many people in this thread are sceptical or even resistant of the idea of education being transformed by the web, because I have been thinking about it for a while and I honestly think it could be a huge boon to society.

No, Universities aren't going to be completely replaced anytime soon, particularly at the top-end and at the higher levels of education. However, I do honestly think online education is the future, and I honestly think online adult learning can provide a multitude of benefits over a traditional University education.

For one, it provides greater access for many people who otherwise wouldn't have access to a university by reducing hte barriers to entry - whether due to circumstance, expense, or otherwise. This will foster the idea of lifelong learning, where rather than a person going to University for four years gaining a degree, a sufficiently motivated person, would be able to take a high-quality University-level education in a variety of subjects over several years for an extremely low cost while working full-time.

It would also allow people to tailor their learning to help progress in their particular job or area of expertise which currently isn't possible. This could come in a variety of guises - whether people in the IT sector learning more about programming and networking, or those in doing programming taking courses on related areas like statistics, electronic engineering or even business. This would create a group of people with a much broader range of skills that are less likely to overlap, and that would be good for the workforce.

A more solid curriculum would mean more consistently high quality courses taught by experts and good teachers, as well as enabling more dedicated high-quality materials to be made around a particular series of lectures which could be used for many years. This means that people taking courses would no longer be at the mercy of a poor lecturer, a poor course structure, or a dedicated poorly-written expensive book. It may also drive standards up as people have access to materials from good Universities rather than having to rely on worse local institutions.

Hahah, no. The Web is shit. You know how many web-based educational tools there are? You want to know how many of them are any good? Close to none. None are even close to the PLATO system or offer anything like the TUTOR language.

Videos, lecture notes, and reading lists do not cut it.

One reason they aren't very good is that Blackboard Inc. makes a business out of suing anyone that tries to enter the market.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_Inc.#Blackboard_lega...

The good news is that it looks like they won't be able to do it any more.

Oh, wow, I linked that list without reading the latest version. That's really cool. Seems like a great time to start an education startup.

"Current implementations of this are shit" has never, ever been a tenable argument against fundamental technological change--even back to the days when firearms were a new thing.

What are you talking about? Pushing more computer usage in education has been done for a long time. PLATO was an online system for education and it came into usage in the early 1970s. We've had a long time to learn from the mistakes of the past and to adapt all the good bits into current implementations.

Working with shit that makes your life difficult is a damned good argument against online learning. A lot of people already hate dealing with systems like Blackboard. Would you like to torture them further and force them to use it on a daily basis?

Your argument boils down to "hand cannon are slower to use and less safe than longbows". My argument boils down to "you can invent the flintlock musket, and if that's not enough to sway you, just wait a little longer and we'll have caplocks and repeating rifles."

There is no invention that will replace great teachers.

There is no invention that will replace working with a team of peers at your level on a difficult problem, and finally figuring out the solution and everyone LEARNS from the moment.

There is no invention that will replace learning how to jump into many group projects over 4 years and get used to the social dynamics of that situation.

The only thing technology can do is get the lecture part of the class conveyed to you at home. But my value from college is 10% from the lectures, 30% from the book on my own at home, and 60% from all the intangibles. I've learned a hell of a lot more at 2am in the study lounge with my friends trying to crack a problem than at 10am sitting in class listening to the lecture.

You name a lot of elements which are not necessarily bound to the university experience. Technology can enable these elements to come together in a better way.

Education is not a technology.

How do you replicate a discussion class? Everyone logs on at the same time in virtual reality at the same time?

Seems like we're having a discussion right now... Online. On my other screen I'm following Apple's special event in real time. The technology is already here.

Ah yes, but can you share the information from that special event with us? Oh, we have to click a link to view it? Well what good is that. And we can't properly annotate it. Well shit, might as well go back to pen & paper.

Of course I can share it. What's wrong with giving you a link? That's the base of the web. It's just text and graphics, you can annotate it however you want.

Yes and the base of the web is insufficient. I won't get into it now though, I haven't had a coffee yet.

meetup.com.

Most of these are really simple problems if you're targeting the subset of people who care enough to take the initiative for their own education. In that case, the problem is not what to replicate, the problem is what to get rid of. One thing to get rid of is spending tens of thousands of dollars on tuition. Another is having to convince bureaucrats in the admission office to let you in.

People will still move away to study if they can't find a community of peers where they live. The more self-directed students, though, don't need to pass through the admissions barrier or become part of an institution.

The social aspects of college could actually be improved this way. Instead of being stuck with whatever 20-somethings were selected to the same college as you by merit of income level and admissions fiat, you could work with a self-selected group of ambitious full-time students and even experienced professionals trying to maintain and further their education.

You're right--you have to build a social system, not just a technical system--but it's not impossible to build a better social system than the university. Technology's only an enabling factor, not the whole solution.

I used the PLATO system a lot when I was a kid. Really opened my eyes to what computers could do, it was way ahead of its time. A touch screen WAN networked graphical terminal in 1979. Unfortunately I spent considerably more time playing EMPIRE than learning on it.

As other comments point out, the university/college institution is not purely about information, learning, or research. In fact, before World War II, they really weren't about much that was educational at all. They functioned more like social clubs that molded adolescents into young women and men.

Post-WWII, many institutions took on new roles because they were either the only ones that could or because it seemed like a natural fit. Colleges seem like one such institution with research and technical training being good examples of how they did so. This worked great for a while.

Today there are a number of alternatives that can probably do these things better. As a result, colleges seem to have three options, in descending order of difficulty: 1) adjust to compete 2) revert back to their earlier-condition or 3) cease to exist. I think we'll see examples of all three and probably a few hybrids.

Attending college is more about gaining status than learning.

If the effectiveness of learning is in question here then we would have already seen a decline in college attendance.

Yet college degree has only become more obligatory over the years for even the most mediocre jobs, despite the fact that employers know whatever students learn in college rarely contributes to real world job skills.

Online college will only take over if it becomes more prestigious than traditional college. However, currently they seems to be on the same status bracket as community college.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all about changing the broken education system. In fact, I have a hybrid distributive model of education, but it will take too long to explain here. An article is due.

I think the driving force will be the demand for cheaper education as Zephyr mentioned. Tuitions seem to be nearing a point where someone who could swoop in with something quality and more affordable would do great- the only problem with that being that brand seems to play so strongly into the college decision. I think this makes projects like the Open Yale Courses very interesting.

The trend for online classes will continue to increase, however universities will still require faculty. College classes are not one-way broadcasts, they are interactions. Perhaps rather than 'dismember', the web will 'dismantle', ie, remove some of the brick-and-mortar requirements, but certainly not all, and certainly not its staff. Faculty are what make a university good.

> College classes are not one-way broadcasts, they are interactions.

Some are; some aren't. There are some college classes -- intro (100-level) courses at big state schools -- that are pretty much just broadcast. Some really big lecture halls even have TV screens so you can clearly see the lecturer (who more often than not isn't a professor, but just a grad student forced to teach the class in order to pay for their own education) from the back rows. If you're doing that, you might as well just watch a recording, and if you can do that, why not just watch it on your computer?

I don't see the Internet eliminating labs, seminars, or Socratic-method classes, or just about anything else where there's genuine classroom interaction going on. Unfortunately, there are a lot of college classes that involve nothing close to the sort, and could easily be moved online. I say "unfortunately," because the real solution ought to involve making these courses not suck and have them take advantage of being conducted in-person, rather than just moving them online as if that's the way things should be.

They still own the equity of accreditation and geographic name recognition which seems proportionate to the price of tuition.

Solve the global accreditation issue and universities will be forced to respond to the pressure of declining enrollments.

They still have a lot of money and will respond. But we said that about newspapers too didn't we.

Um, newspapers haven't been dismembered. So, I'm not feeling inclined to believe author's punditry re universities.

Newspapers are going the way of the typewriter my friend, the writing is on your screen.

The writing on my screen is nytimes.com.

The format may change but the content will survive. Most newspapers will fold but the important ones - NYT, WSJ, Washington Post, Financial Times, and 1 or 2 per city will still be profitable in the future.

Look up what IBM use to sell. Technology comes and goes, companies adapt.

affiliation with universities has something that reading a newspaper lacks; status. The web does not yet have anything that approaches a social indicator to replace that.

How can exams be conducted online, if we want to prevent cheating?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com