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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!
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
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.
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
Not that learning does not go on, just that most people use it to get a degree to get a job. This current trend is historically unusual, it used to be that most people who went to college would go to be cultured and educated. That was when learning resources were more difficult to acquire than they are now. Now there is a wealth of information on every subject that makes independent study as feasible as college, as projects like khan university and this show.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Okay then, I'll just go to this self-taught neurosurgeon. What could possibly go wrong?
College isn't necessarily useful in some fields of study. In others, it's damned well quite necessary. If you want to do interpretive dance for a living, then skip college. That liberal arts degree will get you minimum wage just like not having the liberal arts degree. If you want to be a doctor, then you need to go to school for it because, licenses and such aside, human lives are put pretty directly in your hands. In other fields, it's completely dependent upon how a person learns. Some people are great at learning through self-taught methods. Others do much better in a physical classrooms where they can work with the professor and classmates. The "college is not the best way to learn" argument is a very tired and ignorant blanket statement. It all depends on what you want to do and how you want to learn it. Some people do learn best in college.
It doesn't help that a lot of kids going into college are lazy dipshits and don't really go to learn. They go to get a degree because they think it'll guarantee a great job when they graduate. Then they get a hard lesson in the real world.
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?
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.
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.
The undergraduate portion of an MD's education is mostly just qualifying that person to get into medical school. It's the specialist school, the clinicals, the internship, the residency, and the board exams that make someone an doctor. It's not the premed certificate.
Can you? Yes. Will you? Almost certainly not. The percentage of the population with the intelligence, ability, and drive to learn a complex discipline on their own is extremely small- low single digits. That's if you can even figure out what to study- there's an awful lot of self taught programmers out there who learn a language but never make it to data structures, much less higher level study. Which is why there's so many shitty programmers out there- too many of them think learning the language is all there is, when that's the lowest level of competency there is. Oh, and lets not forget that you have to learn it correctly- reject the outright wrong information out there (or worse, the partially correct) without picking up sloppy habits or deeply ingrained misunderstandings. Even most intelligent people fail that.
Now try that on something truly difficult- civil engineering? Medicine? Law? Physics? No way in hell.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
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.
Maybe I'm cynical, but I think the percentage of people who are willing to enroll in a university out of desire to earn money at a career is far greater than the percentage who are interested in being intellectuals.
I have one friend who is currently enrolled in a creative writing degree at a university and who professes a desire to be a published author... and who reads about four books a year. Will he succeed? Maybe not, but if not it's hardly because he lacks opportunities to practice intellectualism. Similarly, the number of my friends who hold strong opinions on politics far outstrips the number who can honestly claim to regularly read newspapers and magazines, beyond a few things they find on the Web.
On the other hand, other friends have just recently completed their degree programs -- some of them advanced degrees -- and now, so burnt out from their academic study that they've lost all passion for their subjects, they look forward to taking a couple years off as professional bartenders. These are very smart people, but to them the thought of spending the rest of their lives pondering the finer points of some bit of classical knowledge is about as exciting as becoming a tax accountant.
The link between education and the romantic notion of "intellectualism" in modern America is tenuous at best -- but that's just what it is, a romantic notion. Real people's lives are much more dominated by real-world concerns, and I highly doubt pulling all the beer taps out of the pubs is going to change that.
Breakfast served all day!
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.
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.