Do Online Educational Badges Threaten Conventional Education Models?

An anonymous reader writes "Educational badges, which seem like a playful riff on Boy Scout skill patches, pose an existential crisis for colleges and universities. If students can collect credentials from MITx and Khan Academy and other free Web sites, why go to a campus?"

Comments

Portfolios

[Deus.1.01]

Is the only badge relevant for self teaching.

the problem is profit

[lemur3]

I think the idea of models for education that have been around for a long while apparently arent meeting the peoples needs.. the popularity of khan and mitx is just but one example...

the 'threat' of people learning more stuff only exists if your business relies on selling people an education..

for everyone else its good news!

Re:the problem is profit

[Moryath]

Actually, not so much. Setting aside diploma mills like DeVry, University of Phoenix, etc, it is helpful to society to have professors in colleges who aren't just there to provide "here's the video for the lecture, here's the choose-a-guess test, here's your certificate" classes but instead provide actual interactive discussions, answer questions relevant to the topic at hand from a learned perspective, continue to do research in the subjects they are teaching, and continually update the curriculum thereby.

On the flipside, yes, there are certain areas of the economy where "college" has taken over the role previously taken by what were called "trade schools", and there's the inevitable degree-creep that's been caused by the brainless HR sector constantly requiring more and more of a checklist of "must have this, must have that" to apply for jobs that has come with the computerization era. The idea of "all jobs require a college degree", whereas 30 years ago it was a HS diploma, or the number of jobs now requiring a Master's rather than a mere Associate's or Bachelor's degree, all pushed even further by a complete refusal by companies to actually provide on-the-job training, instead insisting that all new hires should drop in like made-to-order cogs on day one.

Khan and MITx look a lot to me like the Idiocracy approach to "education" - one size fits all, just take your multiple-guess test and keep taking it till you get your cert.

Re:the problem is profit

[AK Marc]

If you haven't taken a class where you are learning Russian History in a class of 8 from a PhD in Russian literature who is "published" as a translator of 10 or so historical non-fiction works from Russian to English (and in the class, it is so informal and discussion-oriented that everyone calls everyone else by their first name), then you didn't get an education, you got a degree. And yes, that was at a university where I was also in a Chem 101 (literally) with 500+ students and IDs were checked at all test days because there's no way the lecturer would ever notice a cheater without papers checked. You just have to sometimes look hard for the actually educational classes.

Not optimistic.

[Anonymous Coward]

The usual purpose of attending college isn't to learn the material, so much as being adequately credentialed for consideration for employment. So the question is, will the people doing the hiring consider them as sufficient alternatives to a traditional degree.

I suspect they'll stay slightly less influential than industry certifications, which stand well below degrees from accredited universities.

Re:Not optimistic.

[Trepidity]

I tentatively agree, but I think the entrance of "big-name" universities into this experiment potentially changes things, if they keep standards up. Anything with the name MIT or Stanford associated with it has some amount of built-in cachet. I think that even if it's not a regular degree, but Stanford-with-an-asterisk, employers, and especially smaller and less rigid employers like we often find in technology, will be willing to consider it if Stanford does a reasonable job with it.

I can especially imagine employers with specific needs taking it seriously, e.g. someone needing a data analyst may consider certification in 2 statistics and 2 machine-learning classes from Stanford good enough for the job.

Re:Not optimistic.

[vlm]

someone needing a data analyst may consider certification in 2 statistics and 2 machine-learning classes from Stanford good enough for the job.

Yeah the problem for Mr Badge is that badge collection is all that is need to do the job, but the unemployed guy with a masters in math also applied for the same job, along with 10 new B.S. 4-year grads and 5 guys with 3 years of experience, and that "retired" EE prof with a PHD who was denied tenure. And also 20 guys who don't have the education or experience but they're good liars and know how to work the system, so one of those 20 will almost certainly be hired.

I'm not thinking the depths of the second great depression is all that great of a time to roll this idea out.

Re:Not optimistic.

[Trepidity]

In tech there seems to still be enough of a shortage of skilled people that people without degrees do get hired regularly, though not as easily as people with degrees. Silicon Valley startups seem to already consider "some cool projects on GitHub" to be the moral equivalent of a bachelor's degree...

Re:Not optimistic.

[Trepidity]

For large employers, there's also the meta-skill of showing some amount of self-discipline and aptitude for following rules and navigating bureaucracies. A degree is in part a certification that you've successfully followed a series of requirements and tasks for four years. That's harder to replicate in these DIY educational approaches, because not being huge and bureaucratic is sort of the whole point of the alternative approaches.

Getting a degree

[AG the other]

The most important thing in getting a degree is getting that ticket punched. There are jobs that just won't even talk to a person that doesn't have a degree.
My degree is in music but in interviews I've never been asked what my degree was in. I've often been asked if I have a degree.

Would you be comfortable getting surgery ...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

... from someone who says, "I don't actually have an MD, but I do have a 'Great Listener' badge!"?

Re:IT's time to rework colleges and universities

[betterunixthanunix]

Why in CS is there a BIG GAP from what you learn in college and the real job? tech schools have alot more real job skills.

This is the way it is supposed to be. Universities are not vocational schools, and a degree in computer science is not a professional certification. People forgot that a long time ago...

Illegal to experiment without a licenes

[tepples]

Published, peer-reviewed papers generally result from some sort of experiment. But I'm under the impression that some subjects are so tightly regulated that just doing experiments by themselves is illegal without a license. Only people who already have a degree from an incumbent accredited institution can get a license to supervise experiments in person. Case in point: the decline of chemistry sets after the strengthening of toy safety standards and the public awareness of the illicit manufacture of stimulant drugs.

Re:Safe for a while

[Janek Kozicki]

short version for tl;dr:

- let's allow online universities
- so we have fewer lazy students at the universities
- students who actually come to study are served much better, and really have interaction with teachers, who suddenly have more time

Education vs professional qualification

[Colin Smith]

The professions typically have a couple of years of professional qualifications to pass before going into practice. This is over and above a good education.

Education is not and should never be, professional qualification. They are entirely different things.

The problem seems to be that many professions, and HR "professionals" don't seem to realise they should be providing "badges and certificates" for professional qualifications.

A degree is not a professional qualification, it is and should be for education. MIT Online and Khan Academy are educational tools, again, not professional qualifications.

Some things cannot be taught by video

[msobkow]

There is no substitute for classroom discussion refereed by a Professor of Philosophy when you're learning how to construct an argument.

There is no substitute for classroom discussion about history and literature, or any other subject where the course is about forming and expressing opinions, not learning what the "right" answer is.

As those two items are the most critical things I felt I got out of my 4 year BScAdv in Computer Science, I definitely do not feel online education is a threat to the universities, though it is a game-changing supplement to the traditional university or college environment.

Re:DeVry is a tech / trade school not a diploma mi

[blackraven14250]

I've also had a far different experience with professors at DeVry. They're far more available than the local county college professors IME, and have largely been willing to help with problems outside of the set curriculum they're given to actually teach (for most of the full time faculty and the more passionate part timers). In fact, most of the professors are kinda bummed that they have to follow such a strict set of topics for class lectures due to the limited time and top-down curriculum structuring, but love being asked the kinds of questions that aren't quite directly related to what they're supposed to teach.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Gamification Fanboyism

[dwarfking]

Colleges and Universities (at least in the US) exist to support colleges, universities and professors. And I have heard former professors say the same thing, not just people like me.

The university system does not prepare students for work in the real world, it simply teaches them some basic theory. It isn't until a person gets out of school and goes into an apprenticeship model (depending on the career path) that students learn anything useful. The college system did a great job convincing HR managers that they should require college degrees when many times it isn't needed. All the degree shows is the candidate is willing to waste 4-5 years in a classroom.

I hit a glass ceiling 10 years ago, the company I worked at (where I was considered one of, if not the top, technical leader) said I could not get promoted without a degree, so I went and got a BS in Compute Science. I took classes with graduate students who (literally) did not know how to open a file stream in C++ and read individual words out of the file. I had to show them during labs. And these were the same people that would apply for jobs I had posted claiming they had Master Degrees and were deserving of higher salaries. The head of the Computer Science department asked if I would consider coming back and teaching after I graduated.

What we need in this country is to go back to the guild/apprenticeship model for people that plan to work. If you want to teach, want to do research, then let the universities focus on that. But if a person wants to implement, let OJT be the way to go. Stop requiring 4 year college degrees and stop penalizing highly skilled practitioners who learned their trade instead of sitting in classroom.