The End of College

Our College and University system in America grew up in opposition to the old European model. Americans didn’t want to be locked in to specific training or apprenticeships. We believed that the goal of education was to engage the mind in the realities of the world and so liberal arts education grew up. It emphasized writing and speaking and creative endeavors in the pursuit of interests beyond the classroom.

Out of this came our great research Universities and things like the California Master Plan for education became the model.

Today, that process is about tests and admissions and loans and student aid and transfers and an insanely complex and arcane process that benefits the Sherpas that have to navigate us through it, but do little for the value of that education.

Just has technology has disrupted so much else, it is now reaching deep into higher education. What it means is an open question, which we are now coming to grips with.

Kevin Carey looks deeply into this moment, in his new book The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere.
My conversation with Kevin Carey:

Higher Education under siege

Public Higher education is under siege. Just as private colleges and universities have had to deal with their shrinking endowment, public universities now have to face their grim reality. Two corollary views of where all this might be going. First, a group of bloggers from the World Bank looks at the financial crises facing public universities. Money quote:

With policies of limiting enrollment places and tuition fees, market pressure to add capacity, and government funding unlikely to increase, Moody’s expects unprecedented pressure on the current financial model of public universities.

On the other side an Internet entrepreneur named Burck Smith is tying to use the creative destruction of the Internet to bring the cost of college down to $99 per month. It's an amazing plan with profound implications if it could work.