{"id":44492,"date":"2014-02-01T12:36:15","date_gmt":"2014-02-01T17:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/?p=44492"},"modified":"2014-02-01T16:35:54","modified_gmt":"2014-02-01T21:35:54","slug":"the-end-of-higher-educations-golden-age-shirky-other-curated-items-re-the-pressures-for-change-in-he","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/2014\/02\/01\/the-end-of-higher-educations-golden-age-shirky-other-curated-items-re-the-pressures-for-change-in-he\/","title":{"rendered":"“The End of Higher Education\u2019s Golden Age” [Shirky] — & other curated items re: the pressures for change in HE"},"content":{"rendered":"

The End of Higher Education\u2019s Golden Age<\/strong><\/a> — from Clay Shirky<\/p>\n

Excerpts:<\/em><\/p>\n

Interest in using the internet to slash the price of higher education is being driven in part by hope for new methods of teaching, but also by frustration with the existing system. The biggest threat those of us working in colleges and universities face isn\u2019t video lectures or online tests. It\u2019s the fact that we live in institutions perfectly adapted to an environment that no longer exists.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Our current difficulties are not the result of current problems. They are the bill coming due for 40 years of trying to preserve a set of practices that have outlived the economics that made them possible.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Of the twenty million or so students in the US, only about one in ten lives on a campus. The remaining eighteen million\u2014the ones who don\u2019t have the grades for Swarthmore, or tens of thousands of dollars in free cash flow, or four years free of adult responsibility\u2014are relying on education after high school not as a voyage of self-discovery but as a way to acquire training and a certificate of hireability.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

It will also require us to abandon any hope of restoring the Golden Age. It was a nice time, but it wasn\u2019t stable, and it didn\u2019t last, and it\u2019s not coming back. It\u2019s been gone ten years more than it lasted, in fact, and in the time since it ended, we\u2019ve done more damage to our institutions, and our students, and our junior colleagues, by trying to preserve it than we would have by trying to adapt. Arguing that we need to keep the current system going just long enough to get the subsidy the world owes us is really just a way of preserving an arrangement that works well for elites\u2014tenured professors, rich students, endowed institutions\u2014but increasingly badly for everyone else.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

4 platforms that will disrupt higher education<\/strong><\/a> — from hastac.org by Kevin Browne<\/p>\n

Excerpts:<\/em><\/p>\n