8/8/2011: From economist Alex Tabarrok:
…I pointed out that the market was moving towards superstar teachers, who teach hundreds at a time or even thousands online. Today, we have the Khan Academy, a huge increase in online education, electronic textbooks and peer grading systems and highly successful superstar teachers with Michael Sandel and his popular course Justice, serving as example number one. One
of the last remaining items holding back online education is a credible
system to credential and compare student achievement across
universities. …
Dog says this is crap:
Any dog can teach on line to hundreds or thousands of students in strictly an information oriented class (e.g. a memorization process factory on some subject).
Where Universities excel is in the mentoring process and there simply is not an electronic substitute for mentoring.
In the Dog’s University – all of the general education shit would be done on line (so I don’t have to teach that crap) and university professors should be just in the mentoring business – then we would all be happier and students would get a much better education.
The current system is totally broken as defined by providing students a meaningful education in the context of today’s real world. Anything would be better!
In Dog’s University, there would be a hell of a lot fewer professors. Where does Dog think we get most of the income to run the upper division and graduate programs? From the intro courses!
But I think the thesis of professorial obsolescence is at best premature. In my department, one of the natural sciences, enrollments are way up in both the intro and upper division courses. If anyone is getting science degrees, or even the science education, from the lame Khan academy, I haven’t noticed it.
It’s always been true that in principle a student could learn, say freshman physics, chemistry, bio, or calc from a textbook. But in practice, very few people have the discipline to do it. Plus, when you get stuck, as almost everyone will be at some point, you’re screwed.
Dog says – probably not true.
In the Bean era we have hired so many adjuncts
to teach intro courses that I don’t think we run
the risk of reducing our actual number of professors because that clearly has not scaled with student enrollment.
In addition, the lower division credit hours are not overwhelming the upper division ones.
In 2010 in CAS there were 334000 SCHS at the LD and 195000 UD. Don;t believe me?
go here
http://ir.uoregon.edu/credhrs
and run your own report
On the principle of being screwed – I don’t see how your screwed less by taking a 500 person Chemistry 111 class, for instance, than taking it on line. I think your equally screwed.
So no, I don’t see a “hell of a lot fewer professors” at Dog U – I see more engaged professors with student learning via mentoring.
However, tradition is everything and academics are always right and nothing changes.