The important thing is not so much the technological details, but the synergy between professor and student.
Professor: Grading is outsourced.
Student: What’s being graded is outsourced.
Almost all of it’s going to India. An emerging tertiary education sector in India is made up of people learning lucrative new things by way of playing the parts of American and Australian students and professors.
Expect stories to come out pretty soon featuring American professors who have outsourced their entire online teaching classes to Indian graduate students and professors.
November 13th, 2010 at 2:44PM
yes, and it all circles back around to– English, ha!
check out the first two columns here for specific numbers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population
November 13th, 2010 at 4:25PM
With regard to this post and the earlier one on online “education” (yeah, yeah, quotation marks), where is the faculty outrage at the prostitution that is eating away at their profession? There isn’t much, since, at research universities at least, faculty members benefit in various ways from these travesties (more time, and thus more reward, for *my* work).
The contempt for undergraduate students is palpable, online and in too many classrooms.
Barring a major upheaval, the game is up, I fear.
November 13th, 2010 at 5:22PM
francofou: It’s basically pure vocationalism – and credentialism – taking over many once-legitimate universities. I think the trend will continue as long as the economy is weak. There will continue to be a core of legitimate liberal arts colleges, with diligent professors and serious students; and these places will, I predict, take on more and more symbolic and cultural power as people begin to realize what we signed away. I don’t think the game is up.
November 14th, 2010 at 6:17AM
Yes, there are pockets of real professionalism here and there, even in terrible institutions.
I’m not sure that the economy has all that much to do with it: the severe decline in education — and in other aspects of our culture — began long before the current recession. One could argue that the causal relationship can be reversed: it is the erosion of values that exacerbated the recession by, for instance, replacing substance with credentials.
November 14th, 2010 at 9:10AM
francofou…”One could argue that the causal relationship can be reversed: it is the erosion of values that exacerbated the recession by, for instance, replacing substance with credentials.” I think there is truth in this…not so much that credentialism directly *caused* the recession (although it played a role, as in the excessive reverence given to PhDs who developed mathematical models demonstrating that collateralized mortgage obligations were safe and to MBA who took these models seriously) but in slowing down recovery and future productivity growth by wasting and misdirecting human talents.
November 14th, 2010 at 9:44AM
The explosive growth of credentialism and vocationalism is higher education’s tragedy of the commons. The numbers of presidents, provosts, deans and professors with fake credentials – with diploma mill credentials, with credentials earned quickly and on the cheap – is rising and not yet crested. We’ve created a role model for our students within higher education, a model focused on getting one’s meal ticket punched.
November 14th, 2010 at 10:10AM
I’d argue that “credentialism” and “vocationalism” are not the same thing. Learning stuff you *really need* to pursue a given career, whether statistics or chemistry or welding, is very different from getting a credential just because the credential is required or is viewed as a magical value-enhancer. Most people do not have trust funds and realistically need to have a certain amount of vocationalism in their educations. The blind worship of credentials, with increasingly little focus on what the credential really means, is OTOH totally destructive.
November 14th, 2010 at 10:38AM
David’s right. I’m wrong to lump them so close together.
November 14th, 2010 at 10:39AM
David Foster, I agree: I used “exacerbated” rather than “caused” for that reason. I was thinking of financial industry people who came out of business schools with credentials, but without the substance (historical/economic/ethical understanding) that might have tempered their rush to profits. Credentials serve me; substance serves others (clients, students, patients).
I also agree that there is a place for vocational training within a university setting, as long as it is part of a university education and not just an autonomous unit within the institution. The accreditation/credential demands of some guilds (business, chemistry, fine arts, education training), to use UD’s term, are self-serving and destructive of education (as opposed to training).