Universities Under Siege

With all those smiling freshman returning to campus you might not know it, but there is something afoot that indicates that the traditional university model is about to give way.

Take for example the course given on artificial intelligence at Stanford by two heavyweights from Google. There are 200 students enrolled who will attend the lectures in person, and, at the time of writing, there are more than 100,000 people who will take the same course at the same time on line.

Imagine if you will a professor lecturing 200 students sitting on folding chairs at centre field of the Rose Bowl and over 100,000 sitting in the stands each with a laptop or smart phone following the same lecture.

Those sitting at centre field have each paid $40,000 to have the privilege of being there while those in the stands are receiving the same information for free.

To say the least, this is a remarkable turn of events. As well, it raises important questions about the future of post secondary education.

Those enrolled at Stanford will upon successful completion of the course get credit towards a degree from a prestigious university while those taking the course on line will receive a teacher's certificate saying that they have completed the course.

How is it that the value of the information transmitted is so much higher when it is in analog (live, face-to-face) than in digital format? The information is the same but the context in which the information is completely different.

Moreover, if the information is ostensibly similar why is the entry price so high to have the opportunity to receive it in person? In other words, if we have the technology to disseminate the information at a next-to-nothing cost why are students being charged exorbitant fees to get a higher education? Whose interests are being served? The society at large or those who have the means of sending their progeny to expensive finishing schools?

Have we not turned our universities into modern day debtor prisons by first filling our youth with images of conspicuous consumption, telling them that the way to participate in such a culture is by obtaining a post-secondary education, requiring them to take on a huge debt load to complete their studies, and then upon graduation offering them low-paying, precarious employment at best?

This scenario is just another version of the company store in a one industry town:

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store.

As traditional post-secondary education is becoming less and less affordable, it is becoming more and more an issue of class and intergenerational social justice. Either state-funded universities move to embrace the economies that Information and Communications Technologies provide so to ensure that there is democratic access to higher education or, as we have seen recently in England, there will be riots in the streets.