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What Happens When the "Sharing Economy" Meets Higher Education
jyosim writes Professors now make big bucks teaching in educational marketplaces. Sites that let anyone teach courses might just change the way people think about the value of education, about the nature of expertise, and about what teaching is worth. From the article: "When Nick Walter graduated with an information-systems degree, he intended to start his own tech company to create the next big iPhone app, as so many twenty-somethings have tried in recent years. But then something dawned on him: He could make more money teaching. He set up a free account on a site called Udemy, which lets anyone teach online courses and charge for them, and then uploaded a series of lecture videos and exercises showing other people how to make apps. Walter had no experience teaching, no affiliation with a university or accredited educational institution, and—by his own admission—no particular gifts as a computer-science student. But that doesn’t matter to Udemy, or to any of a number of similar platforms that have emerged in recent years."
But then something dawned on him: He could make more money teaching.
What? You lost me there.
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
The summary (though not the article) begins on the assumption that professors make big bucks. That may have been true at one point, but it's certainly not true now. Yes, full-time tenure track faculty average close to six figures annually, but only 27% of university instructors are full-time or tenure-tracked[1]. The remaining 73% or so is made up of adjunct faculty, who typically earn somewhere between $20-25k annually[2]. So, the idea that the sharing economy is going to be able to massively bring down educational costs by putting market pressure on faculty salaries doesn't really hold up. That market pressure was already there, and faculty salaries are already in the toilet. I'm not sure salaries can go down further without those teachers exiting the market entirely.
It's probably also worth mentioning, the vast majority of traditional (and non-traditional) students don't really go to an educational institute just to learn (though, it would be nice if they were to learn too). Students usually go to those institutions for a recognized credential or degree. Even if you're obtaining excellent instruction from the Internet, you're not going to get that degree. The real scarcity isn't teachers at the university level (as demonstrated by super-low wages for adjuncts). The real thing that keeps prices up is the artificial monopoly created by accreditation systems.
And, that might not entirely be a bad thing. Four year universities usually try to create well-rounded students, who learn much more than they'd ever need in their personal career. Students often complain about having to take classes they don't care about, but being broadly educated does seem to make individuals more open minded to solutions to problems that are not necessarily within their usual field of vision. If students could pick and choose their own courses, they'd rarely get that broad-view approach.
In short: this new app might be fine, but it won't revolutionize higher education in any meaningful fashion.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01...
[2] http://www.npr.org/2013/09/22/...
Forty years ago there were people out there, sci-fi writers and others, who envisioned that this was how all education would eventually be done, from elementary school all the way through college. They seemed to sense that the television and computer and telephone would somehow be put together to create a learning environment. The entire idea sounded fantastic to me.
When I got out of high school I joined the Navy and went through avionics school. The school was computer-driven and self-paced, and I loved it. For once I didn't have to be held back in classes that had to be taught to the level of the lowest common denominator. I remember thinking that I wish all education was like this.
Now the technology is here to create these kind of learning environments for nearly everyone, and it's affordable. I think that traditional universities, and even high schools and elementary schools, will eventually go away. We're seeing the beginnings of that now.
If I live long enough, I suppose I will miss college football, but in the long run, this is the best thing for education.
Proverbs 21:19
More than half of my engineering curriculum was taught by prolific researchers who couldn't teach worth a damn. I was a tutor through most of college and found myself "reteaching" a lot of the stuff they would teach to others who came looking for help. Not because I was bright, see I struggled to understand the same topics, but I was able to break the topics down in a way that made more sense. Tying "building block" concepts progressively, until the process showed the complete picture, at which point I could teach them to myself for my own understanding, and then to others. That's when I realized good teachers require the whole package of skills; proficiency in their subject and a mind to educate by facilitating the process of connecting concepts.
Sounds like a good place for a free market to open up. What teaching is worth should lean heavily on a feedback/review framework like Amazon's such that people don't end up paying for a class that sucks, by every student's experience, because the professor can't communicate concepts, or communicate at all. Like the time I spent almost weeks trying to figure out what the foreigner in my Space Systems course meant by "papamaaa". By the way, that's "performance".
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
I have a Ph.D. and am now fully qualified to teach university courses. The funny thing about that is that in the course of getting my Ph.D., I never once had to take a course on how to teach or even teach/TA a course (I was a research assistant the whole time I was in grad school).
I'm an outlier on not having to teach/TA a course in grad school (I did TA an undergrad, though) , but I don't know of any graduate programs that require actual training for teaching.
The person cited in the summary is just as qualified as most Ph.D.s. :)
As for the big bucks, two of my good friends from grad school (both computer scientists) spent their first two years working for free waiting for tenure track positions to open up. They get decent salaries now, but over the course of their careers, it's not what I'd call big bucks.
-Chris
It's the same theory as a gold rush. The guy selling buckets and shovels is going to make more money than 99% of the people that go there to dig up gold.
Salman Khan has done rather well considering he didn't get a degree in 'education'. The ability to teach has little to do with the teaching credentials that our education system demands. It's comunication, coaching and mentoring skills. The whole certification industry only serves to maintain scarcity and keep union teachers' wages and tuitions artificially high.
Have gnu, will travel.
This.
He went to give courses in a gold rush topic at the gold rush time. Don't think you can get anywhere near his success teaching Programming in C++ or Knitting or whatever. I'm not saying you can't make a buck, but the story is about being in the right place at the right time more than about online education.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org