Teacher Union Tries To Block Online Courses

itwbennett writes "Facing budget problems, University of California officials and state analysts say that expanding online courses could help them 'innovate out of the current crisis.' But the lecturers whose jobs are at stake see it differently. Now the UC chapter of the American Federation of Teachers is fighting to block online courses."

Comments

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[Cryacin]

It is interesting to think that education by vending machine is turning out to be so successful. I can understand how degrees by coursework can benefit from this. It will be interesting if universities with real brands will ever allow master or doctorates to be via online study. When I did my post grad degree, I saw my supervisor for an hour every week, and I know I was lucky at that. I had a friend who was doing his PhD which saw his supervisor for a grand total of 20 hours during his entire research project. He basically just was included as a name in the research papers, and copied in on any and all email correspondence. Even thought is becoming ever more automated these days.

The link is a tiny little blog post.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Here is some actual coverage.

Anyway. There's no doubt that a lot of courses can be taught effectively online. There's also no doubt, for anyone who's ever done any real teaching, that once the subject matter gets the least bit advanced, there's a sharp limit to how much you can learn in an online course. Introductory "101" courses, which are mostly taught in giant lecture halls anyway, can probably go online with no ill effect on the students. Once you get beyond that level, most people need face-to-face interaction to really understand the subject.

Re:Unions College educated people

[schwnj]

Community colleges are subsidized by property taxes, which is why the course fees don't add up. The idea of community colleges is that the bulk of the education is subsidized with only a nominal fee/tuition attached so as to encourage people to gain job skills.

Re:its not 'unions'.

[MightyYar]

My solution is to give each student a voucher, and to employ free market regarding education. Not public schools, only public funding of education.

I definitely like the idea of vouchers, but it is not a universal solution. It really only works in areas with dense populations. Everywhere else, issues start to crop up.

For instance, transportation becomes a huge problem... my district "solves" it by busing all of the charter kids to the central high school and then busing to the charters from the central high school, but it really racks up the total trip time and makes the main buses very dependent on a late feeder bus. Our district spends more on the special ed, charter, and private school busing than on the main public schools, despite fewer children.

Another problem is class size. Some areas have such a low population that they can barely justify even a single public high school. Below a certain size, it becomes impractical to support many programs.

So I think there still is a place for government-run schools.

Re:lying sacks of excrement

[jjohnson]

You're right, we only want teachers who do it for the love of the job, the children, the teaching. And, pace Kant, the only way to be sure of that is to not pay them. After all, if you don't love teaching enough to work a second job at night to pay the bills, you obviously don't love children.

Seriously, why the fuck shouldn't they care about job security?

My wife is a high school teacher involved in a job action right now, and the sticking point of negotiations isn't money, it's class sizes. They're contractually capped at 30 students per classroom, but somehow she always has 35, and the government is looking to increase that actual cap. Remind me again how useless and self-interested unions are when your kid is sitting with 34 peers, wondering why the teacher never has time to answer his questions.