{"id":2459,"date":"2012-04-03T18:09:17","date_gmt":"2012-04-04T01:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=2459"},"modified":"2018-04-03T08:39:55","modified_gmt":"2018-04-03T15:39:55","slug":"a-la-carte-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/03\/a-la-carte-education\/","title":{"rendered":"A La Carte Education"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Whenever I bring up the possibility of getting an education without going to school, I quickly get objections:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cWithout credentials at the end, a university education is meaningless.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cYou can\u2019t learn without guidance from instructors.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cCollege is mostly about forming a network, not passing exams.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cSelf-education only works if you\u2019re exceptionally bright or dedicated. Most students need school.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It\u2019s hard to argue with these objections because they\u2019re all at least partially correct. The signalling benefit of credentials is a major reason to go to school. Access to instructors and peers facilitates learning.<\/p>\n<p>What irks me isn\u2019t that these objections don\u2019t have a grain of truth, rather it\u2019s the presumption that they matter. Formal education is a package including many useful elements. The assumption underlying these arguments is that by missing just one component of the college experience, any alternative is rendered invalid.<\/p>\n<p>The current educational system is a fixed menu. You get the campus, classes and hefty bill at the end, whether or not you wanted all those things. The world doesn\u2019t need a wholesale replacement of college, but <em>\u00c3\u00a0 la carte<\/em> options.<\/p>\n<h2>More Options, Not Perfect Substitutes<\/h2>\n<p>The North American system for education is an inherently elitist one. High tuition and extremely rigorous acceptance processes are filters designed to weed out people who can\u2019t pay or perform.<\/p>\n<p>This isn\u2019t necessarily a flaw. Even if tuition prices continue to escalate to making college a questionable choice for some, it does have the advantage of allowing the brightest to excel. Nobody ever got fired for hiring Harvard grads.<\/p>\n<p>The problem with an elitist system is when there\u2019s only one option. Don\u2019t fit the archetype the system was designed for? You\u2019re out of luck.<\/p>\n<p>The European system is more accessible, with some countries even completely subsidizing the cost of tuition. But while that may be attractive to some, it\u2019s a distant economic and political reality for most of the world. What\u2019s more, education reform doesn\u2019t need to come from the top-down, it can grow from the bottom-up.<\/p>\n<h2>Could OpenCourseWare Be the A La Carte Solution?<\/h2>\n<p>MIT\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/ocw.mit.edu\/index.htm\">OCW<\/a> has been around for over a decade. Yet we don\u2019t see people touting courseware \u201cdiplomas\u201d on their resume. Perhaps this is a sign that the objectors are correct, that self-education is missing some key ingredient which prevents it from competing.<\/p>\n<p>I think that\u2019s a hasty interpretation. While the technology to offer world-class education for free has developed quickly, cultural norms take much longer to shift. This is especially true of education, which is often entrenched in decades-old HR procedures and professional accreditation boards.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, I see online education as quickly becoming a robust alternative to college, but it may take longer to change the cultural assumptions underlying what it means to be educated.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why I\u2019m Convinced Online Education is the Future<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For me, I was convinced after only one class: <a href=\"http:\/\/ocw.mit.edu\/courses\/mathematics\/18-06-linear-algebra-spring-2010\/\">Linear Algebra<\/a>. This was one of the few classes I\u2019ve done as part of my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/mit-challenge\/\">MIT Challenge<\/a> which I had already studied in university.<\/p>\n<p>What I discovered was that the MIT\u2019s free course was better taught, more robustly supported and more entertaining than the course I had paid tuition for in school. Far from being an inferior option, MIT\u2019s free version was unequivocally better.<\/p>\n<p>One class doesn\u2019t prove a generalization, but I want it to throw doubt on the common intuition that cheap inherently means lower quality. Wikipedia is completely free, but the scope (and possibly accuracy) is better than Encyclopaedia Britannica.<\/p>\n<p>I may not have every resource an MIT student has. But I have quite a few, and often those resources are better than those from a less prestigious school.<\/p>\n<h2>What About Credentials?<\/h2>\n<p>The strongest argument I\u2019ve heard against self-education is the lack of credentials it generates. Bryan Caplan presents an <a href=\"http:\/\/econlog.econlib.org\/archives\/2012\/02\/a_brief_letter.html\">extreme version of the argument<\/a>, which claims that the signalling benefits of education is almost all of its value.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not persuaded by the cynical view that the knowledge in a degree doesn\u2019t matter. But the inability to demonstrate knowledge you haven\u2019t paid for is a major current weakness of self-education.<\/p>\n<p>I stress current because I don\u2019t believe it will always remain so. Already <a href=\"http:\/\/mitx.mit.edu\/\">MITx<\/a> and Stanford have begun offering certification for individual courses for free. Even lacking that, I\u2019ve heavily documented my own MIT Challenge, suggesting that an educational portfolio of projects and exams might be a possible alternative.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately credentials have only the value we imbue them in a society. If a significant group starts to signal their intelligence, knowledge and skills in a different fashion, the world will adjust. I already know programmers who say their <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/\">GitHub<\/a> accounts are more important for their career than their formal credentials.<\/p>\n<h2>Nothing is Irreplaceable<\/h2>\n<p>Very few things in an undergraduate education couldn\u2019t be replaced by a free courseware platform. Lectures? Recorded video. Networking with peers? Skype, online forums and local meet ups. Credentials? Free certification or educational portfolios.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t think online self-education will replace college in its entirety. But it doesn\u2019t have to. The world doesn\u2019t need a perfect replica, but more choices. When Stanford offered its <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ai-class.com\/home\/\">AI class free<\/a> to the public, over 50,000 people signed up. This is just the start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Whenever I bring up the possibility of getting an education without going to school, I quickly get objections: \u201cWithout credentials at the end, a university education is meaningless.\u201d \u201cYou can\u2019t learn without guidance from instructors.\u201d \u201cCollege is mostly about forming a network, not passing exams.\u201d \u201cSelf-education only works if you\u2019re exceptionally bright or dedicated. Most [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[657,660,682],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2459","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-creativity","7":"category-language-learning","8":"category-nc-learning","9":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>A La Carte Education - Scott H Young<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/03\/a-la-carte-education\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A La Carte Education - Scott H Young\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Whenever I bring up the possibility of getting an education without going to school, I quickly get objections: \u201cWithout credentials at the end, a university education is meaningless.\u201d \u201cYou can\u2019t learn without guidance from instructors.\u201d \u201cCollege is mostly about forming a network, not passing exams.\u201d \u201cSelf-education only works if you\u2019re exceptionally bright or dedicated. 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