Daniel Lemire, researcher and someone who knows more math than I can imagine, debunks the common knowledge view that you need to go to a quality university to get a quality education:
More generally, if you want to know how to get really smart, go watch what really smart people do. How does the famous professor learn? Does he spend days in lecture halls listening to some colleague? Nah! I bet you will find him interacting with some of the smartest people in the world every day, and spending a lot of time working in his office, crouched over his desk. My point is that you do not get smart by sitting in lecture halls. You get smarter by working at it. Smartness is not contagious, at least not by physical contact.
I am in the process of writing a proposal for consulting services to help develop an online learning strategy for a university. Daniel’s point confirms our premise in the proposal that it’s getting easier to connect with knowledge and knowledgeable people, without jumping through what are becoming arbitrary academic hoops.
The Web is making everyone (at least the one billion who are currently connected) only a few clicks away from each other. Add in free Voice over IP, video conferencing, lectures online and YouTube presentations and voilà – a new platform for learning. It’s time for universities to think about a new role as learning enablers and no longer gatekeepers because the horse (knowledge) has escaped the barn.
Good luck with this proposal … it sounds like it might contain important and potentially ground-breaking work. If anyone knows how to take them there, I imagine it will be you.
Thanks, I’m working with Rob on this one.
It is not only the universities that have to understand that they are not the gatekeepers anymore. The people financing the universities should shine their lens and more importantly their crystal balls.
The bulk of the knowledge is not within the university walls anymore. Unfortunately economic development agents still think that knowledge and research capability mainly resides in universities. That might have been true 20 years ago, and still is in certain fields, but in the IT field universities represent a trivial amount of knowledge. Economic development strategies based around university centered clusters will lead to sub-optimal technologies being developped.
It is not only the Internet causing this breaking of the walls. There are probably more masters degrees and Ph.Ds outside of universities thant inside. Our small company had more Ph.Ds in the field of learning technologies than our local university did. Still the research/economic development agency would suggest that we would go see the lesser qualified university researchers.
Universities are great. There like a real world version of PlentyOfFish or something. Maybe some kind of daycare system for young adults or a buffering mechanism to increase employment stats. A few teachers showed me what excellence was.. but I am not too sure that the institution did the same.
I hate being linear..
Gilbert
The bulk of the knowledge is not within the university walls anymore.
What universities are good at is communicating knowledge in a formal way. For informal knowledge on any given topic, you have better sources out there.
in the IT field universities represent a trivial amount of knowledge
Right. Mathematics and philosophy is one thing. IT is another.
Where is the most knowledgeable businessman in the world? You think he holds a professorship? I doubt it.
There are probably more masters degrees and Ph.Ds outside of universities than inside.
In 2008? We probably produce 10 times the number of Ph.D.s we need to cover the retiring professors. At least 10 times. Despite the fact that statistics often fail to reflect this fact, I claim that 9 out of 10 Ph.D.s are outside universities.
Maybe some kind of daycare system for young adults…
Oooch!
That’s a hoot, Gilbert – a real world version of PlentyOfFish – sounds like MtA ;-)
Georges Seimens presentation, “A World Without Courses” provides great reflexions on the education of the future, which should be of the present, because the present, as we know it, is a thing of the past…
http://www.elearnspace.org/media/worldwithoutcourses/player.html
One of the things a quality university brings is a perception that the graduates are better/smarter/…
A manager hiring might think an MIT graduate is better than let’s say me. He might be right :)
Oops.. did I say “Real World version of PlentyOfFish ”
I really meant Physical World… don’t want S.Downes to get me on this one ..lol
GB