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

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.

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]

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.

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.