Forget University — Use the Web For Education, Says Gates

An anonymous reader writes "Bill Gates attended the Techonomy conference earlier this week, and had quite a bold statement to make about the future of education. He believes the Web is where people will be learning within a few years, not colleges and university. During his chat, he said, 'Five years from now on the web for free you'll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university.'" Of course, the efficacy of online learning is still in question; some studies have shown a measurable benefit to being physically present in a classroom. Still, online education can clearly reach a much wider range of students. Reader nbauman sent in a related story about MIT's OpenCourseWare, which is finding success in unexpected ways: "50% of visitors self-identified as independent learners unaffiliated with a university." The article also mentions a situation in which a pair of Haitian natives used OCW to get the electrical engineering knowledge they needed to build solar-powered lights that have been deployed in many remote towns and villages.

Comments

The Net is no Substitution for University

[FreeUser]

While I used to often boast about having learned at least as much on the net as I did in class, the net is no substitution for a formal education. There is value to the structure of coursework, to the demands of learning material and being tested on it, and to requirement to learn to think and apply logic. There is also value in the advise and teaching of professors, as well as the social and academic interaction you have with other students.

The Internet is a wonderful tool, and may become something much greater, but it is certainly no replacement for a university education just yet.

Re:The Net is no Substitution for University

[tverbeek]

Only a small fraction of what people learn at a college is from the lectures. Most of the rest comes from being in actual contact with other people.

Re:The Net is no Substitution for University

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

While I was finishing my Master's I was offered a chance to get a certification in International Affairs through the same university. The caveat was that all of the courses were online. I can honestly say that the classes were basically worthless, the lectures were online, the readings were good, but without physical interaction an entire dimension was missing.

Re:The Net is no Substitution for University

[Registered Coward v2]

Only a small fraction of what people learn at a college is from the lectures. Most of the rest comes from being in actual contact with other people.

Exactly. Gates is confusing information with education. If classroom education could be replaced by non-traditional means; books and VCRs would have done that years ago.

The real value, as you point out, is in the interaction with professors and fellow students. When I was in grad school, the ability to speak to a professor, who was an acknowledged expert in his field, ask questions and bounce ideas off of him were what I really paid for. No amount of web based lectures can replace that as a learning experience.

Re:The Net is no Substitution for University

[History's Coming To]

Agreed all round, with a caveat. I'm paid minimum wage in the UK (around $9/hr) and I frequently use the internet to learn about programming and computational science. Admittedly, it's never likely to turn me into a well rounded commercial coder, but that's not what I want. I want a FREE education at approximately university level. I can't afford £20k to do a degree that I won't use, that probably won't get me a job in the industry and will leave me burdened with repayments for a decade or more.

I want the information that's useful for my little projects and I can't afford to pay much, if anything. It's freely available. That's really cool. I might end up doing something computer based for a living eventually, but I'm certainly not going to spend two years income and five years with no income, that's SEVEN YEARS WAGES in effect, to be interested in something.

how about getting rid of need BS or MS for level 1

[Joe The Dragon]

how about getting rid of need BS or MS for level 1 jobs and most IT jobs. The need BS or MS just to get on the help desktop is pushing way to many people to go to a Univerity rack up the bills and hope to get a $10 /h IT job and at the same it be overqualified for mcdonalds.

Worked for Gates

[russlar]

Gates dropped out of Harvard to found Microsoft, so seeing him say that university isn't necessary is a little unsurprising.

"Good Will Hunting" scenario

[Gopal.V]

There's so little taught in a university course that I couldn't read off a public library.

But here's the deal, I don't think the epistemological quest for knowledge motivates me. I learn purely as a way of solving the problems I have. Sometimes real life doesn't even let me near interesting problems, because the cost of failure (and the risk) is too high.

College and teachers have worked as a nice cycle breaker of that situation. They've thrown problems at me, which have taken weeks to solve (or groups of us, weeks to solve). Some of those have seemed pointless, but most of the stuff I remember still have been the ones that I've had to dig up again for some reason or the other (calculus, for instance).

Essentially, without teachers, I'd have never really sat down and banged on a problem for a week - mostly to avoid having the shame of going back without an answer.

On the other hand, I've had at least a few teachers who've cared enough about teaching me than making sure of their paycheck. I don't think the world needs less of those. And I don't think you (or anybody) should stop learning because they're out of uni.

(goes back to reading wikipedia on RCU data structures)

Re:"Good Will Hunting" scenario

[painandgreed]

There's so little taught in a university course that I couldn't read off a public library.

Actually, I doubt that. Most public libraries simply aren't interested the technical books and journals needed to provide a university level education and research. They're more interested in what the public wants and reads and have limited budgets to provide it. After leaving the university system for the real world, I kept up with some of my research and tried using the local public library. The references were there to tell me what I needed, but they had none of the required reading. From there I had to go to the local university library and search for things, and even then I had to leave the main library and use the departmental libraries that were scatted across campus to find books and magazines I needed. Sure, you can get about anything you want via interlibrary loan, but guess where those technical books and journals are coming from, most likely a university library which is being paid for by the university.

Academia = filter

[TheMeuge]

There is also another important benefit, that is really easy to understand if you just read a few science, and especially healthcare stories on Slashdot. Just reading the associated comments should generally be sufficient to realize how exquisitely important it is to have some sort of a moderating filter of an "academic community" of professionals. Yes it stifles dissent a bit, and yes there are other downsides that aim to preserve status quo. But the penalties we pay for having such a system pale in comparison to the fact that the upcoming professionals are in general guided to the more reliable sources, and are at least partially shielded from the self-important Charybdis of the "internet knowledge".

Yes, he is right - all the information is out there on the Internet... somewhere. But where you need peer review, and a structured learning environment, is for the Sisyphean task of filtering out the noise... and the amount of noise has gone up exponentially with the advent of the internet and the complete absence of barriers to publication. It's easy enough to spend weeks, months, years on the Internet, perusing websites that are dedicated to supporting strictly one's own point of view, and have it become an essential part of one's worldview. That's how we would up with Vaccines/Autism and HIV-doesn't-cause-AIDS crowd.

Furthermore, for all its failures, the academic environment does TEACH the students the skills they will need to acquire to be able to interpret primary data on their own, which is a far more important role, compared to teaching the students facts.

If we let the Internet loose on the population to an even greater extent, I shudder to think of the kind of idiocracy we'll be living in, just one generation from now.

Re:Traditional Eduction

[vlm]

There are two types of people in this world, the self learners and those that require a structured if not forced educational environment.

HR uses type #2 as a gateway, real world management demands type #1. The bigger the company the worse the disconnect. Look at how many companies provide no training or at best, on the job training for the new technologies they roll out, yet demand the new hires have a 4 year degree and 10 years of experience with a 2 year old technology. Only folks with inside connections or BS artists can pass the filter, causing failure. Solution to the failure can't be pinned on "important" people, must come up with a nonjudgmental soution... How about tighter, higher requirements of course, leading to the spiral down the drain.

Guy with lots of money says it, so it must be true

[blind biker]

I noticed that in most modern cultures, having a lot of money seems to imply automatically that they are right. "Sure, he killed those children, but he's a billionaire." or "Well, this statement seems like bollocks, but it comes from one of the wealthiest persons in the world, so we should pay attention." Problem is, Gates really has no authority regarding higher education or any kind of career that leads to creativity. He's a very successful businessman, that's all. You can make a lot of money just by manipulating powerful people and making the necessary contacts.

Now, if some of the established and creative scientists, engineers or physicians had made this assertion about education, I might listen. But Gates? What does his authority stand on, apart from his money?

Online Learning

[bacon volcano]

I admit, I attended a brick and mortar school, but there are simply some things that you learn online that aren't covered in college:

- Cats have horrible spelling and grammar skills
- There are hot and lonely singles in my area that I wasn't even aware of
- My great grandfather was a wealthy Nigerian businessman
- Acai berries cure everything
- Baby Pandas sneeze, and yes, it's amazing
- People that I thought had few friends, actually have many, many hundreds (per Facebook)
- Clock spiders are the scariest ones

Spoken like a born rich college dropout

[bADlOGIN]

Besides, higher education is only about coursework the same way international travel is only about airports...
Would he like to tell the world how it should approach physical therapy based on the one time he sprained his ankle?

A Self-Appointed Teacher Runs a One-Man 'Academy'

[KPexEA]

The most popular educator on YouTube does not have a Ph.D. He has never taught at a college or university. And he delivers all of his lectures from a bedroom closet.

This upstart is Salman Khan, a 33-year-old who quit his job as a financial analyst to spend more time making homemade lecture videos in his home studio. His unusual teaching materials started as a way to tutor his faraway cousins, but his lectures have grown into an online phenomenon—and a kind of protest against what he sees as a flawed educational system.

http://chronicle.com/article/A-Self-Appointed-Teacher-Runs/65793/

http://www.khanacademy.org/

Re:how about getting rid of need BS or MS for leve

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got a MSc in comp sci, entry level jobs start at $17/hr...while I get paid $25/hr, under the table, to mow lawns & do landscaping. Yes, I am the worlds most overqualified gardener : p

Re:Guy with lots of money says it, so it must be t

[blind biker]

but don't discard what he says just because he's rich

You're distorting my words. I don't dismiss Gates because he's rich. I dismiss him because he has no authority to talk about this issue - not from his achievements nor his life. To demonstrate more clearly my position, I'll say that I would be very interested in what Warren Buffet has to say about higher education, since he's not only an educated and accomplished economist; he's an economist that has actually contributed original and thought to his field. He's not just a billionaire, he's a creative economist that points his finger to all (or most) that is wrong with modern corporations, banking and investment.

Re:He Did Graduate & He Advises Otherwise

[Belial6]

Actually, your link doesn't poke a hole in his argument, it supports it. Gates dropped out and went on to become incredibly wealthy. Gates did NOT complete their coursework. He did NOT get the professor interaction. He did not show competency in all of the areas the University claims are important.

Bringing Gates in to speak at Harvard is a little like some chick inviting an old boyfriend to her wedding to give a speech explaining to her husband how to perform sexual techniques that will please her in bed because the old boyfriend was hung so much larger than the groom that the groom will never be able to compete no matter how hard he tries. The people at Harvard that asked Gates to speak were just being jerks.

Even though it was surely unintentional, they were basically rubbing the graduates noses in the fact that they spent all that money and time for nothing if they want to be like this incredibly successful guy.

On top of that, it was incredibly unethical for Harvard to give him a degree, as it is clearly an attempt take credit for work they did not do. So, that should be the take away from their actions. Harvard shows their students how to cheat. OK, that may be a little harsh, but only just a little since they did cheat.

Re:Instant /msg on your school's IRC server

[Registered Coward v2]

When I was in grad school, the ability to speak to a professor, who was an acknowledged expert in his field, ask questions and bounce ideas off of him were what I really paid for.

Then your professor can idle on your school's IRC server and do what you paid for over instant /msg.

Right. Let me guess - you don't know many professors, do you?

Seriously, IRC or other electronic communications mediums are no substitute for the interaction you get face - to face. You simply cannot get the same level of social interaction and feedback that you get face to face. Not to mention the ability to walk to the lab and try something, real time, under the guidance of an expert.