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What If We Ran Universities Like Wikipedia?
Pickens writes "Do university bureaucracies still make sense in the era of networks? At the recent Educause conference, David J. Staley laid out the findings of a focus group he conducted asking educators what a college would look like if it operated like Wikipedia. The 'Wiki-ized University' wouldn't have formal admissions, says Staley; people could enter and exit as they wished and the university would consist of voluntary and self-organizing associations of teachers and students 'not unlike the original idea for the university, in the Middle Ages.' In addition, the curriculum of the 'Wiki-ized University' would be intellectually fluid, and instead of tenure, professors' longevity 'would be determined by the community.' Staley predicts that a new form of academic organization is emerging that will be driven by volunteerism. 'We do see some idea today of how "volunteer teaching" might look: think of the faculty at a place like the University of Phoenix. Most teaching faculty have day jobs — and in fact are hired because they have day jobs — and teach at the university for a nominal stipend,' writes Staley. 'If something like the Phoenix model is what develops in a wiki-ized university setting, this would suggest that a new type of "professorate" will emerge, consisting of those who teach or publish or conduct research for their own personal or professional satisfaction or for some other nonmonetized benefit.'"
Would such a University give out degrees? I'm not sure such a thing would hold much clout. I would have to stoop to actually getting to know a potential hire from this university rather than stare at their GPA and 'work' experience!
ahahahahahh. oh dear, this is going to be a doozy
You'd get deleted.
Most teaching faculty have day jobs — and in fact are hired because they have day jobs — and teach at the university for a nominal stipend
I would guess that they are working a 2nd job to make ends meet. Not for the "love" of teaching.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
It would be great, except that for quite a while now college has not been the best way to learn, it is about getting a proof of effort. It will take a long time for a wiki-style university to be widely accredited.
The South Harmon Institute of Technology.
The University of Phoenix is currently being raked over the coals for not graduating a sufficient fraction of students (16% by federal standards) (from the NYT). Also, it is a for profit university, I'd just as soon volunteer at a local manufacturing plant as at a for profit university.
I don't think open-source crowd-sourced buzzword compliant solutions are a magic bullet for well everything. Making it open isn't necessarily good. It reminds me of the excitement around nuclear energy, people believed radioactive substances would have health benefits. Radium was once sold as a health tonic.
Job Interview:
HR: "So I was told you were valedictorian in your graduating class?"
You: "Why yes, in both my Theoretical Physics MS and my Nuclear Physics PhD."
HR: "[citation needed]"
You: "Mods!!!!"
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
http://www.khanacademy.org/
That all said, parents want to watch their children dress up in funny hats, put on a dress.
Kids want to leave home, make new friends and get wasted.
Real jobs want to see you actually went somewhere with a reputation.
Will never work.
The lack of real expertise on some (many?) subjects, the petty squabbles to protect inconsequential fiefdoms, zero accountability.
I fail to see how a wiki model could remove all that from universities.
Boom. Roasted.
would probably look something like this.
That "nonmonetized benefit" is access to college girls with loose morals.
The future is the University of Phoenix? The one that has one of the highest default rates on student loans because it's graduates can't get jobs?
Sure. That's the future.
If we were really talking about the Wiki-ization of Universities I would image we would have boards of experts to decide who the professors were. It might resemble a university bureaucracy.
consisting of those who teach or publish or conduct research for their own personal or professional satisfaction or for some other nonmonetized benefit.
So, the University of Phoenix, a for profit university, is the model he's using to determine that in the future, professors and researchers will not be doing so for profit. Something seems really, really wrong here.
No trespassing. Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
Universities are as much about research and discoveries as they are about teaching. In fact most of the staff get their positions through their research qualifications, rather than their teaching ability (as is often painfully obvious to the students). if you go for an informal approach, there is no structure in place to enforce or even validate the quality of the staff and it will rapidly spiral downwards in both reputation and quality of graduates.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
It's not a new idea anymore.
Whether or not it's a good idea or ever will be, is a different question.
In the middle ages interested (and I mean wealthy) people would be able to grasp multiple areas of expertise (think leonardo da vinci).
Since then things have gotten a WHOLE LOT more complicated, i.e., Would we want civil engineers building bridges if they could skip structural courses?
Professional expertises are narrower and narrower and with that the margin for freedom in terms of what is required to finish a degree is smaller.
The world is more complex, society is more complex, and while there is certainly some wiggle room for each individual the bottom line is that highly specialized workers require a highly specialized, structured, education.
I spent $80,000 back in the early 1980's going to college. Plus the lost wages from that time. In today's dollars that is a lot more. Ironically NOBODY has ever asked me for my degree or even if I had one. It has never made a difference in my income, my work or my life. I have advised my children that going to college is totally optional and probably a waste of time. There was a short span in history when it was a requirement for advancement but now it is a waste. You can get a fine education and do excellent work without it.
Sounds like an interesting science experiment. I suggest a group of people try it out and see how it goes. Likely there will be lots of revisions to make, very little funding, and most people will thing that they should be in charge.
Wikipedia University
An Almost Entirely Accurate Education
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
While we're at it, why don't we let Doctors intern on WebMD?
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
Run universities like Wikipedia? So you can have tenured nazi's running around like they own certain subjects wholesale, like some Wikipedia admins do? So "truth" is only relative to what the most powerful group of professors (admins) that give a damn about the subject matter?
No thanks. The USA has one of the best university systems in the world, flaws and all, but running it like Wikipedia would just insure that the most incompetent and most vocal (who are often the same) will have an even larger voice.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
This is basically a model of public intellectualism, and popular education. It has three components: 1. Creating a culture of learning which is not dependent on structure, but which is interwoven into life's fabric. 2. Pushing access to information to everyone, with no prejudices about who it will benefit best or who should be prioritized. 3. Encouraging a culture of healthy debate, humility, and a collective struggle for answers, instead of an individual struggle for superiority.
We're already seeing this on some level: Wikipedia, Kahn Academy, Amateur Astronomy, Open Courseware, etc. But I think it's not enough to just keep doing what we're doing, I would advocate that we need to go further. There is no reason that, for instance, a university doing research, no matter how obscure, should not be pressured to put their work online in an accessible fashion. Videos of conferences and presentations, notes, theses, etc. Beyond that, we need to actively break down prejudices about who benefits from this information. We cannot claim to know how people will use information, and determining the importance of their access based on condition, geography, poverty, gender, etc. should not be tolerated. Someone who does studies alternative energies should not dismiss the notion that a teenager living in Nigeria might not want to pour over everything they know, either in order to use that knowledge to create a DIY solar or wind generator, or to create something they hadn't even considered. We cannot keep an international presentation on evolutionary biology within a circle of privileged academics, just because we hold to the myth that if you aren't in a university, you aren't interested in being an intellectual.
And once we have that, or maybe concurrently, we need public spaces, free of charge and open to anyone, that people get together to talk about what they've learned, and to learn more. Like a library where talking is encouraged, or a pub without beer.
This is something I feel very strongly about, that the delineation between the academic and the non-academic, the intellectual and the non-intellectual, must be broken down and done away with. Here, then, is an RSA animate which talks about the structure of the current education system, and touches on the stratification within it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaADQTeZRCY
The businesses I've been in cared about the degree because it showed
1) you could finish a 4+ year project
2) which had lots of jerks along the way and you didn't melt down
3) that had ridiculous hours at times
4) that had absolutely inflexible deadlines at times and you made them.
5) you had to communicate a lot with others.
---
Other that than, I can't count how many times someone is moved laterally away from their degree within 18 months of being hired.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
How would this be useful again? Let's remember that if the objective is to self educate, you can already do that quite well in this day and age. The Internet makes almost anything available to you, there are libraries (including the ones on Universities) open to the public, and indeed you can sit in on classes at some universities, even if you aren't a student (some have to allow that). Learning when and what you choose has never been easier.
However that's not the point of a university. A university is about providing a structured program, with some verification for people that complete it successfully. That has value above and beyond just the education received. This is by no means a complete list but some of the major things:
1) It provides some proof of what you've done. When someone is self taught, they could well be full of shit. You have no idea. If they have a degree, at least you know that they did well enough for the university to consider it ok. I'm not saying that is a guarantee of competence but it is a whole lot more than just "Trust me, I know what I'm talking about."
2) It shows the ability to stick with a lengthy, difficult, endeavor and succeed. That is a worthwhile personality trait to have.
3) It hopefully means you got a broad base of knowledge in the subject. When someone self teaches they often focus just on what interests them or is relevant to the task at hand. A university can mandate a broader range of study on things, and focus on theoretical backgrounds to practical items where the use might not be readily apparent, but important later on.
4) The accredited ones are held to some standards. Not only is the university itself examined, but individual programs are. It isn't just all up to whatever they feel like.
I can't see how such a "Do whatever you want," kind of university would be at all useful. Sure you could learn things, but as I said, if all you are going to do is learn what you want, attend the classes you want, then it really isn't any different than you just teaching your self, watching lectures online, etc.
This doesn't mean university is the be-all, end-all, but the point of the institution is more than just teaching people whatever they happen to be interested in.
...almost complete opposites. A wiki-U would be composed of people working at the university for some extra cash (like gumbi west pointed out) or for the sake of teaching, whereas the asshats at Phoenix only serve to rip off the providers of Pell grants and other financial aid, with barely any care given towards an actual education. Anyway, as cosm humorously said, the major problem of a wiki-U would be that the very nature of a volunteer organization of this nature would make for a questionable education experience. The teachers can come and go as they wish, leaving once they loose interest. Sure, it's possible for a student to learn if they work hard at it, but with a dynamic staff that changes out frequently, and where the volunteers have varying levels of knowledge, I doubt most students would benefit from it. It may seem like a fun experiment, but in the end of the 4 years at wiki-U, it would be hard to prove your worth. I'd rather have a professional (as in they teach in their field of study, and work there full-time) teachers at respected and, if applicable, accredited (like ABET for engineering programs) degrees. If I wanted to learn in a wiki environment, I'd rather go to Wikipedia, etc., than a wiki-U.
Education by concensus would make obtaining the truth even more difficult. Neils Bohr would roll in his grave if he thought answers would have come from popular opinion on whether electrons orbited a nucleus or not, not to mention poor old Galileo!!!
The quality of education would be LCD and all minority opinions would be silenced.
They're already overpaid -- now they have to work for free?
Here in Canada, an undergraduate degree from a respected, accredited university is in effect a 'certificate of cleverness.' It says to potential employers that you're smart enough to have completed four years of full-time course work at a place that is reasonably hard and that you've produced the requisite outputs. With a few exceptions (undergraduate engineering etc.), it's not considered 'job training.'
It may be different in the USA, I'm not sure...
Universities that sponsor research provide a more important function than teaching. Fundamental research is not done well by private industry. Throughout history the arts and the sciences have always needed benefactors. This is still true today. A professor in a science is paid to perform research with no known benefit. Such research is extremely important, because fundamental research seldom has a known benefit. However, eventually benefits become apparent, much later. Private industry does not like to sponsor fundamental research for this reason because the ROI is unclear. That leaves universities with NSF grants. A wikipedia-like university would not be able to pay scientist professors, since the assumption is that work would be volunteer. Then who would pay for the salaries of these highly skilled people as well as the research labs?
Resume of Anonymous Coward
2010 Bachelor of Medicine* - Wikipedia University
*Citation needed
Yes, universities want to get rid of tenure due to their desire to be "intellectually fluid". From every case I know about, universities don't want to replace long-time professors with teaching assistants (called "teaching fellows" at some places) due to desire toward being "intellectually fluid" but due to the fact that it costs a lot less for them. It is almost always about short-term budget concerns, not some goal of greater intellectual achievement
At my college, there are a few core courses which every CS student must take, and they are all taught by long-time, tenured professors. These professors have published papers, really know their stuff, and have excellent ways of teaching about backtracking algorithms, linked lists, stacks, queues and the like. In other classes we get these teaching assistants who are often going for their Masters, don't have a good grasp of the material, don't know how to teach it, and usually seem harried between their teaching and their studies. The only positive for me from my non-CS classes is some of the young, female TAs are attractive and pleasant, although often also incompetent as teachers.
Another thing that professors often mention - professors are usually not judged by how highly they are rated in teaching undergraduate classes, but by how many grants they bring in, what journals their articles get published in, and what they are doing in research with their graduate students. So if universities wanted professors to be better teachers, simply giving their teaching ability some more measure in how they stood could improve undergraduate teaching. If you're paid by publish-or-perish and your undergraduate classes count for little, who is surprised if teaching suffers? It's amazing how many professors put effort into their classes even though it does nothing for them financially.
Also, tenure has already had many nails pounded into its coffin. How many tenure-track positions are there nowadays in a department of a college? And how many classes are being taught by people not in a tenure-track position? It's cheaper for colleges to eliminate those positions, and then tell graduate students they don't have to pay tuition and will get some negligible pay to teach classes.
Despite the idea that universities are outposts of Bolshevism, I know of many, many cases of left-wing professors being booted from their colleges, who the administration tries to boot from college, or fight over tenure and so forth. Paul Wellstone, Howard Zinn, David Graeber, Norman Finkelstein, Joel Kovel, Ward Churchill, Cornel West, these names spring to mind and there have been many more. One of the ideas of tenure is to allow for a free intellectual culture where one can not be booted out of the university for their opinions. I should note that this idea arose a little over a century ago, things used to be much worse, where American scholars who said something some college donor disliked would expect to find themselves out of a job.
How does that work in such a college.
So guy shows up on campus and says he's a electrician and he's going to teach anyone interested. All kinds of students flock over looking to learn a trade. He's got a whole bunch of references, but half of them don't answer the phone and at least a quarter of the rest are just references that lead to the other references.
He explains that this course is just a stub and hopefully some better electricians will come along and make it better and safer. But hey, let's go and get you your ticket!
Bibo Ergo Sum.
An entire university might be a bit too much for a pilot project. How about just a medical school?
university need some change but Wikipedia like? To big of a jump. You need work it in to smaller ways as you don't want a Wikipedia like system to look like a joke.
But university and HR need to change there views on higher ed.
* Costs needs to go down books as well. Having Wikipedia like books may work good at a much lower price and is able to keep up with newer technologies
* There seems to be to much filler college courses that push costs up. Some Basic courses are ok but chemistry or history for all? Some filler courses are fun but why should I have to use more time / funds to get a Degree with filler for stuff out side of by field?
* 2 Years is fine for most jobs and wanting 4 years or a MS to just get a level 1 job start is to much and just leads to high school loans.
* Look at tech schools (not the on line ones) There courses planes are more on topics then board CS courses at some of the big university and the tech school are more up to date on newer technologies.
* To many collages put to much in to there Sports teams over education.
... for my own education and career, I have to laugh at the suggested volunteerism... mainly because it takes a massive amount of effort and resources to teach large numbers of people. Even if you could remove bureaucracies attached to HR (since everyone's volunteering time) and fundraising and JUST focus on the teaching aspect, anyone to suggest such a notion is beyond naive
Here are two, extremely important facts about education:
1) Most people can't simply learn on their own. They can't even bother themselves to be interested in the world immediately in front of them. They need to have some sort of pressure to sit down, shut up, listen, analyze, and output. VERY FEW people actually get sufficient inspiration to seek out information and discussion on their own with sufficient vigor to actually become some sort of specialist in a field some time in the future. This is why we have classes and why attendance is taken.
2) It is difficult being a teacher. Considering the above requirements to get people to learn, imagine striving to do the above while staying relevant to a curriculum with 30-400 students in a single room day-in and day-out. That is a full-effort position... and the only people willing to do that FOR FREE are those who are not in need of money. Good luck getting a quality education from a series of rich, volunteer professors.
Ya, it's a great idea... a free wiki-cation. But it's not possible in a world where housing, food, health care, and entertainment costs money. It's not possible in a world where people have other things more attractive to do than sit in a class room on a regular as-needed basis to learn any topic well. Anyone tell you otherwise is trying to sell you a product that will be DOA.
Where else could I have learned both the managerial skills to organize a toga party AND the technical skill to tap a keg, keeping foam to an absolute minimum? Did I mention that I got laid, too? Wiki that!
I got my Masters in Education from Phoenix, so I'll share my experience. Bear in mind, I'm not in IT, I'm just a finance analyst, so my experience is going to be different than what true IT workers have encountered.
To be honest, I went in because I needed a Masters degree to move up the corporate ladder. In my opinion and experience, a Masters takes ten years off the advancement clock in the corporate non-IT world, and I didn't want to do the fifteen year Sales grind, or having to change careers at 30 and start at entry-level with entry-level pay yet again. I already have a Bachelor's degree, but chose to go out into the real world and get my teeth kicked in for five years rather than jump to grad school (I had too many friends going to grad school straight out of college, getting their Masters, and then ending up as grocery store clerks or waiters because MBAs and what-not weren't guarantees of jobs anymore- this was in 2000) So I decided to do a Masters in something I thought would be interesting: education. I chose Phoenix because I didn't have the time to go back to a traditional school for two years. I also didn't want to do the night school option for an MBA, as I believe those degrees are overvalued due to market saturation, and not worth the debt. Better to study something you're interested in than following the crowd.
My recruitment, in retrospect, was something out of a boiler-room. The difference was that I was ready to commit, and my recruiter was actually pretty cool (she wasn't Mormon, unlike the vast majority of them). Anyway, I jumped into the UoP online program and went in.
Several things became immediately apparent: The GRE, MAT, and other exams are there for a reason-to weed out people who shouldn't be in grad school. Some of the students I saw in my initial classes were atrocious-they should have been kicked straight back to grade school, their academic skills were so awful. The emphasis was more on producing volumes of writing initially than on quality; and the textbook resources were customized for Phoenix exclusively.
Basically, I experienced every horror story you've read about or heard. And my Master's thesis was a joke. But here's the difference. I only had two truly godawful teachers that made me question the integrity of the program: a teacher in a class about a year in, and the one who managed the end step of my thesis. The rest of my teachers (aside from those two) were highly trained educators who worked in the fields they taught in, and they knew their stuff. Wow, were they good. I learned developmental theory, organizational theory, curriculum design & instruction, statistics, educational psychology, etc from people who lived it every day. And by that point, most of my fellow students were also working teachers who knew what they were doing. So I had to pony up and put in mucho hours of study and work in order to be taken seriously by my classmates and my instructors. THOSE people are why I learned what I did about education.
When I found out about all the scandals with UoP, I was devastated. Here I was, a 'smart' guy, who'd been conned out of two years and $50K. It was one of the most traumatic moments of my life. I gritted it out and finished with my degree anyway, but I was convinced that my life was over. I'd done all that work for nothing - a tarnished degree worth nothing. But then my wife (who's a teacher herself) would talk with her fellow teachers about some pedagogical matter, and I not only knew what they were talking about, I could describe it and solve their issue better than they could. I knew what the big issues surrounding Education in the US and worldwide were. And, my company transferred me from sales into finance at a much higher salary and more secure position because I went through what I did.
To wit, the scandals are valid because there are huge problems with UoP.The media says Phoenix is trying to fix the problems, and I've seen their commercials, but I'll believe they've reformed when I see it. I got suckered, a
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Yeah, because research doesn't cost anything, and professors don't really want to be able to afford to buy food.
People don't have day jobs at UofPhoenix because they want to have two jobs. They have day jobs because UofP pays shit and this is the only way the faculty can make ends meet.
Most people ONLY work...in order to get money. There just are not that many altrustic people in the world.
While you're definitely right, a crowd full of F/OSS enthusiasts who likely contribute their knowledge to mailing lists and their patches to mainline programmers isn't exactly the best place to make that kind of argument...
;-)
Just sayin'
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
so a wiki university would be on that you could go to class any day and instead of course work, be given a neo-nazi screed or a gigantic projection of goatse?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Why do we need to create a new Wiki Univ. Just get a cheap PC, photoshop (or Gimp if you want to scrimp), design your own degree and get the thing printed at home. Done!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
What if we ran universities like Wikipedia?
Then education would work like the media does today. The loudest or hottest or most in-line with what you already think "professors" would dominate those that actually know more about their field. You wouldn't be learning as much as concreting your world view - exactly the opposite of what higher education should do.
In fact, why not skip the university concept and meld education into the media entirely? Sign me up for the Daily Show Community College.
Seeing how Wikipedia moderators/admins go on insane power ventures, and many seem to want more and more power to abuse, I don't see how this can be positive AT ALL.
Will it end up like wikibooks.org? Where after five years a book still isn't complete? They start work and then reorg and start work and then reorg?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
The beancounters have been around for much too long ... .
What is the average university/college (outside maybe the Ivy-League)? - A sort of accredited degree-mill. Controlled and regulated by the government of the day, administered a certain number of credit hours, administered a certain number of exams at the end of 'modules' (with a pressure of sometimes the university and/or sometimes the government, to pass a not too low percentage with good grades), churning out a sufficient number of 'graduates' sufficiently equipped to function in the industrial complex.
Their profs have been appointed for a sufficient number of publications of ever more and ever more minuscule details in an exponentially increasing number of journals. 'Producing' is the term. "We are producing professionals", doesn't that smell of an assembly line with off-the-shelf 'products' exiting the milling process? Agreed, we need tradespeople and vocational training. Though: Do these really have to stem from a 'university'? (Read the link to the Medieval University in the article, if in doubt.)
Traditional colleges are probably dead meat due to failure to control costs. Online colleges haven't gotten a clue so far. After all does English 101 need to be any different from college to college and state to state? Standardize the course and make the testing such that a machine can grade it and the entire course could be almost free.
If we make the texts electronic one might earn an entire degree for under $500 while improving quality compared to current methods and standards.
If teachers with kids confront the fact that they will probably take a huge hit when they send their spawn to college perhaps the job will get done. But as things now stand we can't even get much in the way of old sheet music online for free. For example everything prior to 1935 should be out of copyright by now and yet next to none of it is on the net for free.
THEY WOULD SUCK
Seriously, its the main idea being the movie plot of Accepted. If you haven't seen that comedy yet go and grab it, its hilarious. But I like the idea! (And it got the Mac Guy!)
Elements of this make me think of the Anarchist Free University.
I doubt these will replace established institutions, but instead complement them and bring advanced education to communities that might otherwise treat expanded knowledge as something to suspect, even suppress.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Is that why they're under fire from the GAO and their illegal use of title 4 funds? Why are they on a spending and hiring freeze?
The current problem with Wikipedia is that it's run by nerds and assholes who would rather delete unsourced information than verify information at all. Mob rule will ruin all good intentioned open-source projects, every time.
This is why I rarely put anything on Wikipedia, and why various contributors quit contributing as well, they don't want their changes to be reverted or deleted 5 minutes after it's put up because some nerd-asshole didn't see them add the 156th footnote sourcing it's relevancy, or that maybe the sourcing sites (eg newspaper or TV) don't put all their information behind a paywall or expired since it was sourced.
Wikipedia is incredably stupid, and is being played like a videogame to these people, like they are scoring points among their peers for how much they can delete off Wikipedia without even taking into account that NOT EVERYONE IS A GODDAMN NERD. That "unsourced" article that looks like 2 paragraphcs may have taken some grandma an hour to type, and it's destroyed by some 4chan-wannabe in 1 minute.
If Wikipedia wants to be taken seriously, and any "University" in the wiki style wants to not be considered laughable, they need to cut loose the people who are "protective" of "their" pages, and allow original research to be provided by subject matter experts to exist without being deleted by assholes with the WP:Notability hammer.
I get the feeling that that's what this conference was about. I imagine it went kind of like:
"Oh no! All our students are turning to the internet to get some real value of self-education and we aren't all important anymore! How can we get back on top? Oh, I know, just mimic something popular and get some attention back!"
Pass. Dumbest idea I've heard all day.
Reality defined by consensus... is surely a good model that wikipedia espouses. Not that it's all bad but it has major flaws.
"At the heart of the wiki model is a new conception of truth—truth is what we agree upon."
http://www.challies.com/technology/more-truth-about-wikipedia
I am not sure about the whole university being wiki like... but College textbooks should definitely be wiki based. It is the perfect system for it
With an ever shifting version of truth that Wiki represents, you are unlikely to get an accredited degree from such a university. Your courses would need consistent planning from year to year to get that, and each degree would require that you had passed certain courses.
Since that is not what the author is looking for, has he even looked at what small community colleges offer? Sure, some are tied up with the same bureaucratic nonsense that larger schools have; that will happen any place you have enough people vying for attention. Admission is usually just filling out a form for records, courses can be tied into certain degrees but you can take what ever you want to learn. I don't know how hard it would be to teach a non-accredited class through them. Another option is an open university, the local YMCA runs one. Teaching a class is as simple as filling out a form and getting enough people to sign up, attending just requires paying a small fee (around $50 to cover building use and such, more if the class requires supplies). You won't get a degree from something like this, but you can learn a lot.
The problem is, without an accredited degree, what reason is there to take a high end math or physics course? The highly motivated people will use the systems like MIT's open courseware, so the targets for this have to be those who need the structure of a classroom to learn. Can you possibly convince enough people to take these courses without the structure of a university to warrant the staff and time to do so? With a distance learning infrastructure, you might have enough people each year or so; but without the degree there is no motivation to take the course when it is not convenient. And if you offer the degrees with no accreditation and no prestige behind it, what separates Wiki-U from UoP?
While in Canada we have useful unions which restrict TAs from teaching courses. However, in many other countries it's like that... the TAs are teaching the courses. Potentially even worse sometimes. I have a friend who did really well during bachelors and she took a position which had interaction with her university. The professor had a car accident or whatever and he was in the hospital. So she was asked to teach the course and was told to never let it out that she wasnt at all qualified and that she was a collague. What needs to be done is just this: You need to accept everyone pretty much. University is a business afterall and there's no reason you cant accept everyone at all. Offer different levels of service for education to manage large number of people. 1. You get the network access and tutoring/TA access. This gets you access to coursework and such like MIT's free services; but also writing the exams and all that good stuff. This option ought to be the cheapest option. 2. You're in a classroom setting and can interact with the professor and such; but it's essentially streamed and you're not in the same room as the professor. 3. Your typical current offering of you being in the classroom with the professor. Next big change is essentially to move education to similar that of doctors. Whereas you need to have a 95% average to get your degree. The idea being if I'm in school for physics I'm expected to memorize equations. While in the job force I can free look up the equations. In school I can get 65% average and get my degree... in the job force I better not be only getting 65% of my work correct. We should be educating people on how it really works.
Most people forget about the basic research performed by most universities, which is absolutely necessary to the academic industry and flows into every aspect of the rest of the world (especially including tech, medical, and military). A good deal of the criticism on the current system comes from a lack of understanding of basic research and its part in academia. While the Wikipedia-style likely has merits for far more than we currently expect (it was equally ill-received when proposed for encyclopedias!), it can't fit into our current paradigm of research universities while retaining the current organization of journals and how they handle submissions (which is another point of contention that needs a serious upgrade of its own).
Therefore, perhaps the part-time lecturer model is preferable as a starting-point. However, due to its for-profit (not to mention anticompetitive and controversial) nature, Phoenix is not an appropriate role model.
Take a look at examples that are already far closer to Wikipedia, like MIT's ESP and Tuft's Experimental College.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
with my future PhD than to teach people for free. This whole "academics/teachers are not in it for the money" crap needs to stop. We are in it for the money just as much as anyone else. We balance job satisfaction with pay. That "not for the money" meme only encourages people to pay educators less.
Not sure if people have the total concept of what a university looked like in the middle ages (despite looking it up on the wikipedia). Basically people who joined universities were mostly either clergy, civil servants, or what we would call today "professional" students.
Back in those days, other than the church, there were generally no need for preparatory degrees. Most good jobs that regular folks could aspire to didn't require degrees, they required lengthy apprenticeship which one could tackle by working for essentially peanuts for awhile or actually paying money to join various guilds.
However, if one had a patron (or a rich family) or if you wanted to dedicate your life to the institution (often associated with the church, but there were some secular institutions), you could instead attend a university and study law, medicine (usually reserved for rich folks), or theology. In the modern era, who would be paying for all this stuff over the 20 or so years that a typical university course of study would entail is quite an interesting problem.
Of course for those that have the attraction of becoming a professional student, maybe running a wiki-university like the middle ages is interesting, but I don't think it's what many folks had in mind.
I get the feeling that most folks are thinking about a "free" prep-education for business or engineering or some other trade. That's not really like a university from the middle ages, that is like a much more modern re-invention of the university into a trade-guild. Now, instead of joining the guild, you pay your tuition to a "university" and learn a trade or skill from someone there and get your guild-card/degree to hang out your shingle or to join a co-op/company.
I think that the folks interested in the "free" prep-education should instead just be questioning the whole concept of a guild that a university education has become and if a wiki-guild is actually more what some folks had in mind...
I'm surprised on one's mentioned Evergreen State College yet. It's not quite wikified, but a lot closer than any normal college:
Founded in 1967, Evergreen was formed to be an experimental and non-traditional college. Faculty issue narrative evaluations of students' work rather than grades, and Evergreen organizes most studies into largely interdisciplinary classes that generally constitute a full-time course load.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evergreen_State_College
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
It strikes me as odd -- and that's the polite term for it -- that anyone would propose that the university system as a whole emulate the University of Phoenix. UofP degrees are worse than worthless. Given a choice between a self-educated candidate with respectable sample code and the ability to get through an interview and a graduate of the University of Phoenix, the self-educated candidate wins every time. Of course, I'd look at people with real degrees from real universities first, but getting a degree from a diploma mill really calls into question the candidate's judgment, above and beyond letting me know that they probably didn't learn very much to begin with.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
> ...professors' longevity 'would be determined by the community.
Mightn't offing unsatisfactory faculty members tend to reduce the number of applicants for positions? Perhaps it might be better for the community to just determine the length of time for which one holds the position (i.e., the tenure).
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Was a solid, theoretical, background. If you don't recognize the value, well maybe you just need to work for more time.
I work for a CE department and we see older students quite often. Not people who are changing careers or the like, though that happens, but people employed as engineers, being sent by their company. The reason is they are good workers, smart, etc, but they never learned the theoretical electronics background. So they run in to problems they have trouble solving, or solve sub optimally because while they know some of the practice, they don't have a good grasp on the theory.
Also don't think the "Putting up with bullshit, doing as you are told, and sticking with something for 4 years," is useless either. That is part of what companies want. They want someone who understands that work isn't fun it is, well, work. That it isn't about doing whatever strikes your muse, it is about doing what you are asked to do, and following through on things in the long term.
However if you really think you learned more for Wikipedia than your university courses then it says one or more of these three things, none of which reflect well on you:
1) You suck at learning. You did a bad job paying attention in class and trying to grasp all you were being taught. You need things broken down for you in to small, media-size chunks and put in simplified terms for you to be interested.
2) You are lazy at learning. You just wanted to do the bare minimum, memorize what you needed for tests without much understanding, just what you needed to coast by. You didn't bother to learn anymore, or use any of the amazing learning resources you had (like the professors).
3) You chose a really shitty school. Means you either lacked the acumen to make a good choice or the drive/ability to actually go to a good one.
If you really think you learned more off a wiki than in school, that says some rather poor things of you.
- Every section of every textbook would end with a massive, nonsensical collection of anime / manga / comic book trivia, along with non-sequtor references to obscure garage bands that formed yesterday.
- All portraits and photographs would be removed from academic buildings and replaced with enlargements of shots taken with cell phone cameras.
- Professors would hand back papers having noted and corrected the student's grammatical errors. Students would then un-correct the errors and ask the professors to leave.
Here in the US, post-secondary schools must be accredited in order for their programs (and their students) to qualify for federal financial aid. Since the federal government took over the financial aid system, that's a pretty big club to wield over the heads of the universities. I'm on the faculty of one such school and we just completed our ten year re-accreditation process. It was not a simple nor an enjoyable period of time but it was necessary for our student to continue to get the government dough.
A university or college without the structure required by the accrediting bodies will not qualify for the federal financial aid programs, so even if employers hired their graduates, who have no piece of paper saying that they completed an accredited program, the full cost of the educational process would have to be covered by the students themselves. That's an expensive risk to take. Private, for-profit, schools such as the University of Phoenix or Capella must also be accredited but they have whole staffs of people dedicated to that process. They know that if they fail the accreditation, their business model goes out the window.
Schools such as the ones being proposed in the original post would probably be good for continuing education or professional development types of courses, but as degree granting organizations, it would be tough to survive in the US. They might be more successful in a European model if they had access to the same funding sources as the public institutions with which they would have to compete.
Take JPEG2000. It has been slow on the uptake, but it is being used for digital cinema, medial imaging, satellite imaging, and meteorological data. Also its technologies have found their way in to other formats, enhancing their performance. Well guess what? The book on JPEG2000 (as in the reference standard book) was written by one of the faculty where I work, along with another faculty for another university. It is a direct result of university research. Also because of that, because of the nature of the JPEG2000 format's development, the core of it is free to the world.
That is a tangible, somewhat recent, thing that has come out of universities. From basic research to useful file format (which they are still researching ways to improve).
Arguably, universities are already run like Wikipedia, in many ways:
* On highly politicized topics, the level of meta debate beneath the surface (article/curriculum) is quite heated.
* If you disagree with the party line of someone in charge (moderator, professor), you can often be banned/given a bad grade simply due to an opinion/difference in belief despite the absence of fact from either side of the argument.
* They have highly entrenched cultures which are hostile to the outside world.
* The highly established paragons of the institution are there not because of merit but because of someone they know or tenure. This usually results in the previous instance.
* There are a few at the top of the organizations which gain massive amounts of wealth - to little effort on their part - due to the efforts of the masses.
* The food is horrible.
Now, there are some good universities and colleges - and I'd argue the smaller private schools are probably better than the common university by a long stretch. I went to a little school called Juniata College in PA. You picked your own major - not from a list, but completely piecemeal. It was supervised for cohesion and comprehension by a faculty member. The school was small enough that you actually did get to have some decent interactions with those in your major, and there was a fair amount of cross-discipline intellectual pollination.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
What a silly idea. Seriously. Who do they think writes most of the good Wikipedia articles now? Try "University professors" (and grad students, and particularly bright undergrads). Who pays them? Not "the (internet) community" but the REAL community in REAL dollars. Otherwise I, and other people like myself (yes, I suckle at the ivory teat myself), couldn't afford to write online textbooks or suggest to random strangers who think that they've managed to solve the problem of unifying the field by drawing pictures of strange crystalline projections or by claiming that everything is determined by Mach's principle and the electron that they should think about getting psychiatric help.
As many people have noted, the University system provides a number of invaluable functions for society as a whole. Perhaps its most important one is that it serves as a crap-filter. According to the APA, something like one person in seven meets the diagnostic criteria for a personality disorder. One in thirteen or thereabouts are sufficiently neurotic that they drive anyone who has to work with them mildly crazy. One in thirty or forty has a more serious condition -- bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, serious (as opposed to mild) OC. Ballpark of one person in ten is an alcohol abuser, one in twenty five an overt alcoholic. 50% of the population has an IQ under 100, and 100% of that 50% think that they are just as smart as anybody else in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Any or all of these conditions in combination -- overt stupidity, borderline personality, drug or alcohol abuse -- suffice to make people too dysfunctional to finish college and/or graduate school.
So the ones that do, especially the ones that get advanced degrees and are qualified to teach at the University level, really are filtered out a bit. They probably are in the top five percent in intelligence (whatever that means), they may be crazy but they are usually not TOO crazy to get along with their advisor, their committee, the other students in their group, and if they are substance abusers they are smart enough that they can compensate, at least for now, and still get things done. Good schools -- ones with actual standards and serious classes that students can screw up and fail -- extend the filter down through the undergrad ranks, so that graduates in almost any major are more likely than not to be functional enough to hold down a real job and make real contributions to any endeavor -- certainly a better bet than pulling names out of the phone book.
And a wiki-University is going to perform this filtration service exactly how? And who is going to pay to liberate the time of the people who are smart enough to actually learn the material well enough to teach others? Do they have to sell pop-up ads on their personal bullshit blogs where they expound upon whatever it is that they are supposedly teaching? Oh, wait, I know! They can put a little "contribute" button on their webspace and hope that they make enough in a month to actually buy their starving dog a bone...
And then there is the research support and the fact that our University system is largely responsible for our high standard of living in our highly technical culture and the fact that college is the best time most college students ever have and a place they learn lots of SOCIAL things and have great experiences while they are NOT yet in the workforce and...
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
If I had funding, I'd be changing education now. First step is getting the Intellectual Property to create your own books(they say the same as other books, but not exactly the same to avoid plagurism). Once you have your own books, you do cyber courses. These are video lectures. You have many and redundant videos in case someone learns from different angles. Then people wanting to learn can just read your books and watch lectures. Throw in some people to field live questions if people have them, and you have courses. If you want to get really high-tech, add in software that teaches you too.
Right now the way things stands, education is expensive. If you can lower the barriers to entry to getting an education, you'll have a smarter world.
God spoke to me.
Some fields, the "hard sciences" mostly require you to have a degree in the field. You tend to need an engineering degree to be an engineer (all the ones I know who don't have it are much older, and some of them get sent back for degrees). You need a degree in architecture to be an architect. You need a pharmacy degree to be a pharmacist (this is the law actually). Of course you also need a degree in a specific field if you want to be a researcher, particularly in academia but even outside it. If you want to get a job in Intel's antenna design lab, you'd better have a relevant PhD (or many years experience).
However for most jobs, no, any degree will do. Lots of people get humanities degrees for this reason. It is interesting, broad, and not too challenging. It is, as you say, a "certificate of cleverness." It just takes a certain level of intelligence and drive to get a university degree, more than it takes to get a high school diploma. Companies want this. The specifics don't concern them, the degree does.
Nah, we decided not to hire him. At first he sounded like he knew a lot, but in the end we realized he simply rambled a lot, presented a bunch of irrelevant details, and he had a hard time sticking to the subject.
But, he certainly could go on and on about Dune...
It would give the theory that sword-wielding skeletons were involved in the Peloponnesian War a fair chance.
Is the author knowingly ignoring all of history pre 1900's? Seriously newton maxwell etc were all rich bastards who did since because they figured it was cool.
professors' longevity 'would be determined by the community
In many places in the world, tenure doesn't exist anymore and "professors' longevity" is already determined by the community, through student evaluations and publication records. The result? Professors simplify subjects so that students are happy and conferences get flooded with bad submissions that overwhelm reviewers. That is not a good way of attracting good teachers or good researchers.
In addition, the curriculum of the 'Wiki-ized University' would be intellectually fluid, and instead of tenure, professors' longevity 'would be determined by the community.
So forget about this 'Wiki-ized University' ever producing any sensible research because if your research disagreed with what the community readily believed you'd be out on your ear. Communities need to hear the truth no matter how uncomfortable or unhappy it makes them and that means making sure researchers are free to choose what they research as well as publish the results, whatever they are, of that research, no matter how unpopular those results might be.
requirement? That would be awesome for me. (Since I'm apparently one of those extremely rare, almost non-existent individuals that had problems with it. At least that's what the uni seemed to claim.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
It seems to me that Wikipedia is representative of our first steps into significantly digitalising our intelligence. Wikipedia is becoming a part of our brain, external to our body, but powerfully linked by fingers and eyes (for now).
Arguably, using Wikipedia makes us less intelligent, as we don't need to learn the things we can search for. But the average intelligence of a 'linked human' increases.
Wikiversity is simply a furthering of the concept. It is not a question of whether we do it...
Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to the Wiki.
Ivan Illich proposed very similar ideas back in the 1960s, and wrote a book titled "Deschooling Society" - which proposed a volunteer teaching organization of very similar fashion. An inverse funnel of education where knowledge seekers would employ natural human organization to learn, rather than formal curriculum and institutional learning.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
To anyone who is any anyway involved in education or has even received one (I mean an education, not just a piece of paper) the thought of all universities being run by U of Phoenix types leaves me even more frightened for the future than normal. Watch PBS's Frontline or just work with someone with a University of Phoenix degree and you'll see what I mean. I have a much better idea: how about we make all universities the opposite of the University of Phoenix. How about all schools have actually competent people get paid to actually teach people who actually give a shit about learning something instead of just adding a few extra letters to their resumes (or in the case of the U of Phoenix teachers, just getting stock options in the University and an extra paycheck)?
Kinda reminds me of the higher educational system described (briefly) in Cory Doctorow's Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom , which is an excellent free read from the days before he started to believe his own hype.
The medieval model of university would have a chance to work at the university level as most of those people truly want to learn. I teach CS at a community college and it's more like babysitting than teaching, most days. And since I have lab classes and unpredictable (crappy) equipment, I put in more hours than is reasonable and no way would I teach for a "nominal" compensation.
Thou shalt not use tools thou does not understand, lest they rise up and smite thee
Seriously though, how do they manage to keep a day job, a teaching job, do research (if their field is appropriate) and keep time for their family and personal life? Well, they don't if you ask me, it's more like jack of all trades master of none.
Can you say "naive" and "idealistic"?
Sure, Wikipedia is a great resource for basic information on a lot of topics. However, behind the scenes, the "volunteer politics" get pretty ugly. The kind of people who would put up with this on a Wiki-University scale are not the kidn of people you want as professors.
Professors "longevity would be determined by the community"? Even tenured professors dare not say politically incorrect things - else their tenure is suddenly meaningless. Imagine if professors held their positions on the whim of the students!
Universities should be non-profit? Why exactly? Non-profit organizations do good work in some fields, but they are just as driven as corporations - just towards different goals.
Professors should "move back and forth between the 'real world' and the university? Sure, that sounds like the kind of career that lets you do long term planning, raise a family, etc.
To the credit of the author, TFA ends with: Mr. Staley "clearly understands Wikipedia about as well as he understands universities. That is, not very well."
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Do YOU want to learn from a professor that's sat in a lab for 20 years (but worked for Nasa launching the Moon rocket) or do you want to learn from a Sales guy that teaches in between meetings with customers right now? Or how about learning business from a guy that actually started his own business and uses it to feed his family?
Easy! Is that supposed to be a trick question?
I am sorry, but haven't anyone in U.S heard that other countries has open universities among universities?
In open university, you can just come in by signing yourself as a student. You can leave when ever you want and come back when ever you want.
You can even start a own classes if wanted and there is enough people to join for that (usually 10-15 persons). Outsiders can come to keep speeches and other classes if there just is enough students for those classes.
And you get official papers from those as well, but not degree from un-official lessons, just a mentioning about such officially.
Open University idea is that if you did not get to university, you can always go to open university. There you can have exactly the same classes as in university. Even many times the same teachers teach there. And you can get the classes what you passed in open university in universities as well. So if you get success in open university, you can even join to university. You can even just study in open university and then graduate from the university with honors.
Only thing what does not "meet" from this "wikipedia" idea, is that there are secretaries and other teachers as well. And you pay only about the class and the material. Like 50 euros + 20-30 euros for material (books) what you need to get yourself.
That is very flexible way, but actually it is not so different from the universities what in europe are, as you only dont need to have grades and tents to get in.
Hint - use hammers for nails and screwdrivers for screws
Whats the university equivalent of wikipedia's deletionist morons?
Seriously, without the ability to ruin and disrespect other peoples work, a significant fraction of wikipedians will not participate in a wiki-university.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
oh yes, that'a great idea for a country. amateur teachers and part-time hobbyists researchers.
you know what, USA ? you go first and show us how that works out for you.
in the meantime we'll stick to what more or less works.
Adhocracy. Cory Doctorow. Whuffie. Been there, described that.
What would a business or government look like if it were more like a wiki. One constraint being that only citizens or employees would be able to contribute. Either would be an interesting experiment to conduct.
As others note, dealing with BS, forms, and directives is a great deal of "real world ability". If you can't manage to get a degree in the subject, you probably can't manage everything which comes with the subject.
Better summary is: having a degree is simply stating "I can commit to a 4-10 year goal, and do whatever it takes to achieve it."
Best summary is: "I am wise enough to expend good money & time to listen to what 30-60 experts tell me what I need to know, instead of re-inventing the wheel with little guidance." In my 20 years in industry, I've observed that while having a degree is not a guarantee of competence, not having a degree is a good predictor of incompetence. Those lacking formal training all too often do not see the gaping holes in their knowledge and skills. We as an industry have paid a high price (in time & $$$) to learn some very difficult lessons; those who are not humble enough to ask "what must I know?" of the experienced are doomed to retrace the long-beaten path of mistakes, failures, and waste - and all too often never to learn there is, in fact, a better way if only they took time to ask.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
My wife & I have 5 degrees between us.
One thing we've learned: if you're paying for an education, you're doing it wrong.
Work hard, shop around, get creative, leverage, relocate.
Done right, they'll pay you to learn.
And yes, a degree is worthwhile (whatever you paid): it ensures you have learned what you need to.
Without it, you don't know what it is you should know but don't. You may think you're doing well, while others better trained quietly shake their heads watching you make the same mistakes others learned the hard way not to - and they can't explain this to you because you don't have the framework to recognize that there is a better way.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
...seem to involve somebody else with valuable skills working for free?
Then the population of elephants with degrees would triple in the next six months.
The only positive for me from my non-CS classes is some of the young, female TAs are attractive and pleasant, although often also incompetent as teachers.
Maybe you were distracted.
I am a college professor, so let me point out the obvious.
1) Good teaching requires experience and talent: just because you're a professional engineer or doctor or whatever doesn't mean you can teach your subject well.
2) Good teaching is a full-time job. When I talk to people who are going to teach for the first time, even if it's a single course, I tell them not to expect to get anything else done during that semester, because it will take over your life. It gets easier, but it's not something to do in your spare time. (Maybe he's imagining a larger number of teachers teaching fewer courses, but then see point #1.)
Trying to relegate teaching to hobby or avocation status is ridiculous, unless you're imagining a future where everybody works for free, a la Asimov or communism or something. If anything, universities already have too many classes taught by researchers who have no talent for teaching.
They say the idea is "not unlike the original idea for the university, in the Middle Ages."
I believe the result would be as useful as any Middle Ages endeavour... Some ideas are simply too old to return to. Modern culture (science, technology, art etc.) is simply too complex for such an ad-hoc "academic" gathering to be viable in any way. And the "feedback from the community" will only lead to one thing: a very popular, mediocre curricula. TV (OK, Internet) education for unsuspecting masses.
..are good for you. Some examples of things that you may have no interest in like State or US Govt. courses if you don't know how your system works you are doomed to be a victim of it. I could easily see religion courses getting the ax if it is community based. I've said this before in a different thread and I will say it here: just because you don't believe in a faith doesn't mean there is no value in learning about the many faiths that shape many people's philosophical views. Learn about the faith and you have an advantage business wise in the non-official business interactions which can influence a deal quite a bit.
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.