I have been thinking about education a lot these days. Mostly because the sharpened cleaver that is student loan debt hangs over my head at all times. I think about my experience personally as well as my younger family members and family friend’s children as many of them are graduating. I’m proud of them and most of them are actually pretty bright kids (one of them is God’s dumbest creatures but their heart is pure so they’ll be alright). I was thinking about all this technology advancement and stuff and I was just curious what would it be like if education online didn’t suck.
The hooks and fangs of the private sector are all over online education. Countless for-profit websites, applications, and services that gamify learning. Even most textbook publishers have their own online learning platforms (which are all “AI POWERED™®©” for some reason) . They vary in quality but all uniformly paywall education which could also be said of traditional higher education system but at least traditional education is built on the premise of social reproduction and social utility rather just the profit motive alone.
There also non-profits organizations that provide some education online, though to be frank the term “non-profit organizations” can be a box of vipers. Some are groups are rock solid and genuinely want to do good, others are hedge funds that help people as a side gig. I don’t know how I feel about places like Khan academy for example. I think it has probably helped a lot of students but also if that’s the goal supposedly why not just make open?
There is an existing patchwork of open/free courses universities all over the globe. all manner of courses which is of course rad as hell. There also Shadow libraries and other 🏴☠️Yarharr 🏴☠️ sites that provide substantial academic resources. There also of course tons of venerable and good hearted teachers and instructors of all fields that put their know-how on places like YouTube and share pretty freely and openly. Which is also cool and good.
I feel like online education with a more open internet type mindset would be a great way to get people to learn, or at least supplement their learning. There is so much human knowledge that is locked behind gates when it ought to just open and out there. The free exchange of information was one of the core principles of the advent of the internet and it just seems like a good fit for education. It seems like a good counter to everyone using the machine to learn for them.
I don’t know just sort of thinking out loud on the internet but what do you think? I feel like internet/online learning could be a real boon for students and people everywhere and implemented in some sort of PBS-style open not for profit way. Like a local library for everyone on the NET.
it was promised as a massive democratization of higher education specifically. the costs associated with asynchronous, online education are considerably cheaper than in person at an institution. and large in person classes are already a massive revenue generator (charge per credit hour * number of students * number of credit hours - whatever bunk overload they give the adjunct teaching it). but with online, there isn’t even the opportunity cost of the classroom space, its maintenance fee, or any of the fairly significant costs of infrastructure for a school.
not to mention, the instructors can be anywhere, so they can pull from a huge geographic pool of workers with various surplus capacity to teach an extra section or two here and there, as needed.
of course, no school I’ve heard of is offering discounts for online coursework, because ostensibly the value for the student is the same (even though it isn’t always, tbh. some instructions forms still benefit greatly from in-person).
it’s really the sort of situation where there needs to be government regulation to stop schools from taking advantage and distribute the savings (or the value) more equitably to staff and students. but for now, it seems to be the Wild West where the least scrupulous administrators are chasing the mercenary money at the expense of all of us who would benefit from more widely available, even universal formal education.