Will college survive? For many, it never existed
For several years now, we've been told that the imminent revolution in online learning will displace the college experience every bit we know it. But for all the scenic predictions deployed of late, the education futurists insist that online learning holds the primal to solving our country's education problems without critically examining who will be left behind in its wake.
They are, in effect, enamored with a soapbox about higher education that neglects the experiences of the overwhelming majority of Americans.
If we are truly interested in solving the inequities of our land's pedagogy organization, our policy solution can't but exist turning to a handful of rock star professors at the tiptop universities and directing our needy students to tune into their video lectures.
The latest instance of the online-learning mantra comes from Kevin Carey, whose new volume, The End of College, borrows heavily from this discourse on higher teaching's future. Nosotros can forgive him the title — presumably, to sell a book nigh teaching policy these days, you accept to marshal the kind of stirring, paradigm-shattering language of "disruption" and "unbundling" that has then absorbed the education futurists of our time.
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In Carey's and others' world, American higher educational activity is neck-deep in crisis. Tuition is soaring, students aren't learning enough, and the institutions themselves appear more and more like dinosaurs stumbling under unsustainable business organisation models. On these points, one cannot notice much ground for disagreement. Educational activity researchers accept been documenting these phenomena for a long time — from the Pell grant's steady erosion in value to the frightening retreat of public support for college instruction.
The futurists merits that the ascendancy of "unbundled" college services, such equally the like offered by Coursera, edX, and others, pose a fundamental challenge to the old way of doing things, both financially and pedagogically.
The and then-chosen "end of college," then, will relegate many smaller, less prestigious institutions to the dustbin while facilitating the emergence of a more convenient marketplace for credentials — potentially upending the current structure of institutional stratification.
In such a dauntless new world, we are made to believe that all students will necessarily benefit from the rise of the digital marketplace, because they volition exist more empowered to tailor their educational experiences gratuitous from the straightjacketing of institutional policies and graduation requirements. The futurists believe that students both rich and poor, with their newly unbundled curricula, volition be able to streamline their college experiences and march correct into the job marketplace without the illusory badge of a degree granting those candidates from more prestigious institutions an unfair advantage; they'll demand only indicate to the compendium of micro-credentials they've amassed every bit proof that they're prepared for success in the workplace.
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For sure, such a scenario is likely to depict the experience of a certain kind of pupil (such every bit, say, Carey himself, who offers his credentials attained in an online MIT genetics grade as proof that this system is durable and equitable). But there is a pernicious pick bias at piece of work hither when information technology comes to who is likely to excel within the kind of cocky-paced, competency-based learning environments offered past massive open online courses (MOOCs). Unfortunately, it'southward a way of thinking almost education that has plagued reform efforts for years, co-opting the same narrow vision for who stands to benefit from advances in engineering — and which populations should be targeted by education policies.
… nosotros have to focus on how to fortify resource allocations and meliorate teaching at the centre- and lower-tier postsecondary institutions, where some 86 percent of our nation's students attend.
The assumption etched deep in all the prognoses coming from the "end of college" futurists is that institutional inertia, non a lack of pedagogical back up or the tyranny of poverty, is what's holding students dorsum from the next keen innovation in American life. Just every bit Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, and other Cyberspace platforms democratized advice and publishing, the futurists would have u.s. believe that all our disadvantaged students need is a computer and a comfortable chair to break through the deep institutional inequities of our postsecondary organisation.
The failure to account for our most needy students should be of grave business to all who desire equality from our education organisation, and indeed from our order. The "end of college" futurists presuppose that all students will every bit benefit from increased admission to online learning nodes and the cocky-paced credentialing they promise. I doubtable the opposite will occur: if this globe comes to exist, those atmospheric condition will end upwardly exacerbating rather than mitigating inequality, equally the almost well-off and the near advantaged students — the ones who have had years of encouragement and support, years of positive reinforcement to buffer their motivation, and yes, the interested manus of a parent to help work through that online module — distance themselves further from those who need the most support. To engagement, nosotros don't have whatsoever reason to believe that the kind of circumspect teaching that correlates with student achievement gains can be replicated in a virtual setting, to say cipher of the gaping disparities in Internet admission observable along lines of race and class.
If we have learned anything from the decades of research in both M-12 and college education, it'southward that student success depends in a higher place all else on the support of great educators and mentors. Nosotros know, for example, that it is not class-taking, class size, or a item curriculum that has the biggest touch on on pupil achievement, but rather one's exposure to an effective instructor.
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The "end of higher" futurists' predictions beguile a provincial view of higher education that in one case again looks to the top institutions (the kinds paraded on Coursera) as the salve for all of America's educational woes. This over-attending to the superlative schools diverts policy energy away from reckoning with the diversity of postsecondary experiences in America. If we are truly interested in solving the inequities of our country's didactics system, our policy solution can't simply be turning to a handful of rock star professors at the height universities and directing our needy students to tune into their video lectures. Instead, nosotros have to focus on how to fortify resource allocations and better teaching at the heart- and lower-tier postsecondary institutions, where some 86 percent of our nation'southward students attend.
Moreover, MOOCs don't solve the quality problem in higher ed. As information technology stands, there exists no definitive testify that virtual pedagogy, even by a rock star teacher (which isn't the aforementioned as a groovy teacher), is better than face-to-face delivery — for any kind of learner. Every bit online credentialing positions itself to be the confusing force it'due south predicted to exist, we simply don't know yet whether that will be a good thing for improving the overall excellence of the American instruction arrangement. And once we commencement talking nigh excellence in instruction, we must invariably return to the topic of equity, because the pathway to accessing our most "excellent" institutions is riddled with locks, jams, and walled-offed null codes all throughout the leaky pipeline of our (pre) kindergarten-to-postsecondary organisation. It is therefore disingenuous to talk about how online instruction volition improve this system without talking nigh how to solve the structures of inequality that predispose some to succeed in an online MIT course while others struggle to secure an Internet connection.
The fact is that the vast majority of our nation's would-be college graduates are funneled into under-resourced technical schools, customs colleges, and lower-tier public universities where they languish, unsupported and unlikely to graduate. Depending on the institution, upward to threescore pct of these students entering for the first time do not graduate inside half dozen years. Will a freer, more open marketplace for digital credentials change those odds? Volition it dissolve the vicious fate of geography and its stratifying effects on those built-in into impoverished zip codes, where too many public schools, despite their efforts, tin can but offer a glace ladder with which to clamber into the heart class?
I believe that the futurists are on to something almost the imminent shakeup in higher education. Exactly what that will await like, and how prominent a role online learning volition play in that revolution, remains to be seen. But unless we devise policies intended to support all learners, inequality volition reign at the expense of the students who need American higher education to lift them up the most.
Thomas Gibney is the Program Director for Student Success at the Tennessee Department of Education, Partition of College & Career Readiness.
Source: https://hechingerreport.org/will-college-survive-for-many-it-never-existed/
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