BYU Prof. Says University Classrooms Will Be "Irrelevant" By 2020

dragoncortez writes "According to this Deseret News article, University classrooms will be obsolete by 2020. BYU professor David Wiley envisions a world where students listen to lectures on iPods, and those lectures are also available online to everyone anywhere for free. Course materials are shared between universities, science labs are virtual, and digital textbooks are free. He says, 'Higher education doesn't reflect the life that students are living ... today's colleges are typically tethered, isolated, generic, and closed.' In the world according to Wiley, universities would still make money, because they have a marketable commodity: to get college credits and a diploma, you'd have to be a paying customer. Wiley helped start Flat World Knowledge, which creates peer-reviewed textbooks that can be downloaded for free, or bought as paperbacks for $30."

Comments

Re:Why Pay for a Degree

[sckeener]

If everyone in the world has access to the information then why bother paying for the degree? As long as I can prove my understanding of the knowledge then why should I pay a particular university to vouch for me?

By that reasoning most certification programs should be a thing of the past.

Agreed. All the certifications I have passed, I've done through book study or cbts. I hated computer class room training.

I still get certified even though I know the material because of the weed out factor which is the same reason most people get degrees.

I know of one other degree though that people get not because it is a weed out factor but for the power that it brings...Lawyers. My dad loved his letterhead. Any time he had issues with a company, his complaints were taken seriously since they didn't want to get sued.

One consequence of free learning though is all the DIY users. I can image the number of DIY users would go up making a higher base line of education. The jack of all trades and master of none would be common.