A Welcome Move To Lower Cost Tuition In College

[vt]

https://www.edx.org/gfa

You'll see more of these innovative ideas in the next few years.

[shiny!]

Re: A Welcome Move To Lower Cost Tuition In College

Very interesting. I definitely want to see more decentralization education. For lower grades there's Khan Academy.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: A Welcome Move To Lower Cost Tuition In College

Very interesting. I definitely want to see more decentralization education. For lower grades there's Khan Academy.

We use Khan Academy 6 days a week on our house on top of school.

It has quantifiably enhanced our kids' school performance.

While at Stanford University a few months ago, a few senior educator/administrators seemed genuinely frightened at the prospect of traditional universities failing to make the transition to the future of education.

While at the Singularity University NZ Summit last week the education discussion was focused on "nano degrees".

Highly concentrated education programmes with extremely high specificity.

http://blog.udacity.com/2016/10/intr...e-program.html

Typically with a reasonable set of minimum requirements that are achievable to reach, but actually acting as a filter.

To me, this one looks like a self-funding recruiting/education programme.

Coursera, Webex, Khan Academy, etc......all good for the future of education.

For traditional universities, their high cost business models are being eaten alive.

What will keep the top tier Universities going is their mega brands combined with their mega endowments.

But the lower and middle tier schools are going to get slaughtered.

My guess is that the potential merge between Stanford/Harvard/MIT with the likes of Google/Amazon/Apple will look a bit like global online poker tournaments and their relentless filtering from millions of players to a handful of meritocracy apex winners.

Instead of American kids dreaming of becoming a first round draft pick for the Dallas Cowboys, global kids can dream about being a first round draft pick for Google.

The discovery of the cognitive and problem solving talent of a dirt poor girl in Lagos and boy in Dhaka will be exploited like Lotto jackpot winners and feed the educational machine for the next iteration.

More education will become more free in order to provide the raw material for high specificity education that will become cheaper, if not entirely free.

Why go $100k into debt for a questionable degree that's adds little to no genuine value creation to society with a negative return on investment?

Why not cut the price to zero for the Foundation courses and skills delivered online and purchase "nano degree" chunks for high commercial specificity matching of students with employers.

We've already been looking closely at the 100+ year old Harvard Extension School as one of the degree granting institutions of Harvard University for our kids.

As a well branded foundation program fusing online with in person school for them before they find their first of many niches in life. Just in time education is pretty much here.

But 6 years is a LONG time today.

The future of education is absolutely and totally intertwined with the future of work/employment/employability.

And yes, my post is intentionally meant to be both massively optimistic and scarily/competitively cannibalistic.

-----

One thing I can't help but think is how those who have already gone massively into debt to finance worthless degrees are going to be the Western version of Russian pensioners when the Soviet Union collapsed.

[BK]

Re: A Welcome Move To Lower Cost Tuition In College

Regarding Harvard Extension - I have a good friend and probably one of the smartest guys I know went to Harvard Extension for his Masters in computer science and now has a degree from Harvard College ( an option when you take a Masters program through Harvard Extension.

Too many kids get caught up with prestige and potential connections that the RIGHT school might give them.

[santafe2]

Re: A Welcome Move To Lower Cost Tuition In College

We use Khan Academy 6 days a week on our house on top of school.

A few years ago one of my kids struggled with mathematics and when her teachers were struggling to find a way to teach her I found Khan Academy and spent several hours understanding how they build one set of knowledge upon another to make mathematics very straight forward to learn for almost anyone interested in the subject. I wrote several lesson plans based on Khan methodology and all were very well received by both the teachers and the students. My takeaway from Khan is that most kids miss a few crucial building blocks. Like any other language, mathematics is not difficult for most kids to understand.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: A Welcome Move To Lower Cost Tuition In College

Regarding Harvard Extension - I have a good friend and probably one of the smartest guys I know went to Harvard Extension for his Masters in computer science and now has a degree from Harvard College ( an option when you take a Masters program through Harvard Extension.

Too many kids get caught up with prestige and potential connections that the RIGHT school might give them.

Cheers for that!

Harvard Extension is certainly no flash in the pan, being around since the earliest days of modern correspondence schooling.

Hopefully, it continues to adapt to the environment and offer broad spectrum value.

Surprisingly, it doesn't have as big a paying student audience as one might think.

We see it as a genuinely valid option for our kids to consider, both able to learn from home and continue learning from a distance, as well as enjoy the excitement, challenge, and value of long distance travel(onsite ed modules in Boston are required).

We are not as convinced about Stanford's model so far. Seems way too expensive for each day of summer school "leg up" compared to Harvard Extension's more egalitarian pricing and more attractive value proposition and on campus requirements.

MIT seems to be taking a healthy lead with both online courses and "nano programs/degrees" with high perceived/tangible value, and Harvard has a great online learning platform in my experience.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: A Welcome Move To Lower Cost Tuition In College

A few years ago one of my kids struggled with mathematics and when her teachers were struggling to find a way to teach her I found Khan Academy and spent several hours understanding how they build one set of knowledge upon another to make mathematics very straight forward to learn for almost anyone interested in the subject. I wrote several lesson plans based on Khan methodology and all were very well received by both the teachers and the students. My takeaway from Khan is that most kids miss a few crucial building blocks. Like any other language, mathematics is not difficult for most kids to understand.

Same!

Khan Academy, as you know, is not hands off for parents by any means(although there is still value for kids with Non engaged parents).

Our children get to learn and test independently. We as parents get accurate performance analytics to celebrate success and focus on areas in need of improvement. Making us all more productive and effective.

The biggest issue we have found is that while our children are now performing well above average in math, they are being pinged for not showing their work in school achieving answers they are able to calculate in their heads.

But our emphasis remains on communication/collaboration/observation skills for school; and practice/preparation for sport.

We are also focused on developing their problem solving skills and frameworks, and basic algorithm concepts.

I'd like my kids to understand how algorithms play into AI and machine learning.

I'm thinking a near future liberal arts education for the digital native generation. Digital Arts perhaps?

But we are not just focused on the future.

History isn't being ignored in our house, despite its seemingly rare appearance today.

And chess is played every single day, without exceptions. Occasionally poker.

Hopefully our laboratory experiments turn out ok.

[Techdread]

Re: A Welcome Move To Lower Cost Tuition In College

We use Khan Academy 6 days a week on our house on top of school.
Coursera, Webex, Khan Academy, etc......all good for the future of education.

I and my co-workers use these courses to help with our jobs. Software Engineering these days requires life long learning.

My favourite Online learning tool is https://www.duolingo.com/ the gamification of learning a language brilliant.