I came to the United States to pursue my MS in Computer Science in 1995. It was a wonderful experience studying computer science at the source. I don’t believe the US has that same charm today after 18 years. Obviously, CS has evolved quite a bit over these years and access to extraordinary content, books, open source etc has made it possible to get a very high quality education in CS from anywhere in the world today.
I believe one of the key aspects that made US education what it was is the fact that there was a bit of irreverence. Irreverence to what the rest of the world thinks is right, doing it our way and doing it better. Innovation and creativity were fundamental pillars of the great educational institutions in the US. However, today I wonder with the onset of hundreds of online educational resources all the way from Khan Academy, Coursera, Udacity, Udemy to Lynda.com, Learnable even the very well established so called Ivy-league schools are feeling threatened. I strongly believe in democratizing education but I don’t understand the paranoia among these great educational institutions. Sure, only the paranoid survive but being chicken little won’t do us any good either.
MIT started offering their course content to the world with Open Course Web when I was a student there in the early 2000s. MIT pioneered the idea of open education much before, 12 years to be precise, all these edTech companies. MIT valued the interactions among students and between students and faculty, the guest lectures on campus from thought leaders and many such on-campus activities to be much more valuable than the course content in and of itself. Just physically being on campus, walking through the “infinite corridor”, bumping into a potential co-founder for your next startup, glancing at the numerous pin-boards with a ton of activities on-campus all the way from african music to Salsa dance lessons to lectures by Nobel laureates makes one completely inspired to change the world in a positive way. And some do!
Can we get that kind of inspiration from a faceless online course on Coursera? Too many VCs and Angels are chasing edTech companies with this short term thinking that somehow Coursera could replace the real-world experiences from a real University. What is even more sad is that many big Universities and the Government are falling to this short term thinking.
I agree with folks complaining that school tuitions are exorbitantly high and the market value of an Ivy-league degree may be diminishing, at least in a superficial way. However, I believe that what we need is not just a bunch of online universities (Univ. of Phoenix has been at it for a decade, nothing new there) and STEM like initiatives but to make sure we continue to encourage Arts, Music, outside the box thinking, inspiring students to do great things, not just compete with Indians or Chinese.
This notion of compete with China and India by incorporating more Math and Science into the curriculum would be fine if we work equally hard to protect and promote Arts, Music and Innovation that made US different and better. All I hear is cutting down all Right-brain activities from our K-12 schools. This kind of thinking is sure to get US doomed!
We should take the Sprinter’s hat down and put on the Marathoner’s hat to lead the world forward!
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