Gates: $2000 Tuition Soon
#1
Quote:Bill Gates: Technology can lower college tuition to $2,000
By Sara Jerome - 08/09/10 09:00 AM ET
  
Online learning can shrink the cost of higher education by eroding the need for place-based instruction, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said during a presentation at the Technonomy conference in San Francisco last week.

"College, except for the parties, needs to be less place-based," he said.

Moving more learning activities online can bring down the soaring cost of a college degree.

"Only technology can bring [college tuition] down, not just to $20,000, but to $2,000," he said, citing price tags as high as $50,000 for a year of college.

Gates predicted that technology could soon make place-based learning five times less important for college and university students.

But for students in elementary and high school, Gates said he did not foresee online education shaking up the traditional framework anytime soon.

"I do not predict some radical change in that," he said. "K to 12 is partly about babysitting the kids so the parents can do other things."

Still, he said, technology would allow half the students in a class to be occupied with one activity while others are learning something entirely different.

He also hailed charter schools for looking for ways to use technology to enhance their offerings.

"Thank God for charters," he said. "There's no room for innovation in the standard system."

Gates pointed to "full-immersion" schools as an example. In these schools, he said, students work toward their learning goals during at least 80 percent of their waking hours.

They have a longer school day, attend school on some weekends and go to school for several weeks in the summer.
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#2
Quote:"K to 12 is partly about babysitting the kids so the parents can do other things."

Unlike college, which is totally about babysitting the kids.  And the overpaid tenured faculty and admins as well.

Quote:Moving more learning activities online can bring down the soaring cost of a college degree.

But what about places like the fancy Dumbass Factories, that like the soaring costs?  You don't suppose that's why the DFs are resisting online learning?

Are online courses making inroads at elite institutions?

Quote:Taylor Walsh, 08.11.10, 06:00 PM EDT

Last year one in four American college students took a course online. The market for online education is booming, and institutions of higher learning are reinventing themselves to accommodate student demand, offering online-only degree programs or opportunities to earn individual credits on the Web. For the average student working toward a college degree, online is an increasingly familiar format for educational delivery.

But while Web-based college courses have become mainstream across much of higher education, this trend has largely bypassed the most elite institutions, where taking undergraduate courses online for credit is practically unheard of. Rather than offering full-fledged distance education, some of the country’s best universities have instead opted to share free digital versions of course materials online, through a set of efforts collectively dubbed “open courseware.”

Originating with the launch of MIT’s landmark OpenCourseWare initiative in 2001, open courseware is a means of sharing select aspects of the university classroom experience (syllabi, reading lists, even recordings of professors’ lectures) with the public--but without many of the teaching and learning elements that typically accompany raw content. For the OCW user, there is no interaction with faculty members, no grading or feedback, no course credit and no degree. Dozens of similar or related projects have sprung up around the country--at Yale, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Rice and elsewhere--each with a different approach to presenting high-quality content to a mass audience. But none of these initiatives fundamentally expands the number of students receiving credits or degrees from these prestigious institutions--or, for that matter, how they instruct their own students.

Through the webcast.berkeley initiative, for example, the University of California flagship records dozens of lectures every semester and posts them online the very next day, but Cal students can’t just register for an online version of the course. Last year Yale’s Open Yale Courses offered more than 20 lecture courses for free download by anyone in the world, including Yale undergrads, yet credit can be earned only by enrolled students in New Haven, and class attendance is still expected. In these cases and numerous others, digital versions of courses are a nice add-on to what elite universities are already doing--and certainly provide a valuable resource for the rest of the world--but they remain marginal to these institutions’ core teaching and learning models.

The highly selective universities pursuing open courseware have demonstrated the ability to translate their curricula into online format--so why have they stopped short of offering full online education for undergraduates? The answer may lie in concerns about diluting their brands or damaging perceptions of their quality. Daniel Greenstein, a vice provost at the University of California, asks if online education will continue to be viewed “as suspect--the provenance of bottom-feeding for-profits?” In his view, online education will not make inroads into the most selective tier “unless and until some leading universities integrate [it] into their traditional undergraduate curricula ... as fully distance learning options.”

There are, indeed, signs of change afoot in the elite tier, with first movers coming from the cash-strapped public university sector. UNC Chapel Hill made news last year with its decision to convert its Spanish 101 course to online-only format, freeing up valuable space and conserving resources in response to budget cuts. More dramatically, the University of California system recently announced a pilot for a large slate of online introductory courses across its 10 campuses. If they pass muster at the culmination of the pilot, these Web courses could eventually be used to teach the universities’ own undergraduates or expand the UC student body by appealing to new audiences, easing bottlenecks in crowded campuses or providing a desperately needed revenue stream.

As the most selective universities enter the already crowded online education market, success is by no means guaranteed; it remains to be seen if their historic advantages will continue to differentiate them from more agile competitors, and if they will be able to retain the prestige associated with their offline teaching.

But if the elites were to make transformative use of online education, it would be a highly visible vote of confidence in the medium itself, potentially breaking down the demographic barriers between who learns online and who doesn’t. If the UC pilot is successful and Berkeley students eventually find themselves taking much of their introductory program online, will Yale and MIT and the rest feel compelled to engage in experiments of their own? Over the next few years this is the space to watch to see whether online learning will become a legitimate, accepted element of higher education--even at the most prestigious levels.
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#3
   
And you expect these motherf@cking frauds to buy that?
Hellooo?! Anybody home?!
They are not designed and appointed to babysit young Quran, Jamal and Pedro, no matter how touching their last, elated speech about diversity was.
They are there in order to brown-nose and write sensational, plagiarized mumbo jumbo to please their shady bankrollers and (moreless) occult cynosures.
Oh, yes...now and then a name emerges...Angela Davis, the African radical and admittedly Marcuse's best student...or a Barry Soetoro...
[Image: 126100.jpg]

Marcuse...the guru of the radical left-wing 1960s and -divine surprise!- a member of the Frankfurt School, whose talents published the fantastic, AJC-sponsored STUDIES IN PREJUDICE...

By the way, if you have to read down that alley of the spectrum, Ham urges everybody to actually read the seminal STUDIES IN PREJUDICE, instead of the poorly digested, fourth-hand versions circulated today in academia...

THAT is what they are there for...
No wonder distance education either leaves them indifferent, or scares them...
If DL makes big inroads, goodbye colossal endowments, contracts, chairs and so forth...I could count on the fingers of one hand B&M academics not deeply involved in shady politics.
A.A Mole University
B.A London Institute of Applied Research
B.Sc Millard Fillmore
M.A International Institute for Advanced Studies
Ph.D London Institute of Applied Research
Ph.D Millard Fillmore
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#4
Belford already has Gates beat by $1500.
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#5
...and if all the best courses are online, will we be saying goodbye to Professor Dunsel?

Quote:Will We Have the Best Courses Online in Five Years?

By Paul E. Peterson 08/13/2010

Within 10 years, half of all high school courses will be taken online, say Clay Christensen and Michael Horn.  Bill Gates has now trumped that prediction with an even stronger one: within five years the best higher education will be available on the internet.

I will make a further prediction: Within five years Bill Gates will recommend that high school courses be taken online, something he has so far failed to forecast or encourage.  Instead, Microsoft’s top executive drew a distinction between K-12 and higher education, encouraging online learning only for higher education, as if young adults at the age of 15 and 16 are drastically different from those at age 18 and 19.

If any of these predictions are going to be fulfilled, a policy framework must be created that encourages transparency, accountability, and competition in exchange for government compensation given to the provider of online courses the student selects.  If the government is going to continue to subsidize secondary and higher education, then the government must compensate Microsoft, Google, MIT, Middlebury College or anyone else who designs high-quality online courses.  The provider must be paid for each and every student who takes a course in the same way they are paid for any iPad purchased or college course taken today. Only in that way will high-quality producers have the incentive to create the best possible courses.  And for students to select those courses, the course must carry credit that counts toward the high school diploma or the appropriate college degree.

We are closer to getting the incentives right in higher education, as it is mainly regulated by private accrediting agencies rather than by state policy.  As a result, colleges and universities are now offering many courses online, and nothing prevents any of them from offering all of their courses on line.  According to a recent Babson College survey, 25 percent of all students are taking at least one course online.  Nothing prevents the online learning experience from becoming the dominant form of instruction, if Bill Gates is right in saying those courses will be both the best available and the least expensive to take.

To achieve a similar breakthrough at the high school level, states must require districts to grant credit to any appropriate, quality course taken online, regardless of the provider. In Florida and Idaho, high school students today can choose between online and brick-and-mortar courses, taking as many of each as suits them.  The state issues its money to the course provider the student selects.  If other states also allow students to blend together a curriculum that combines on-site with online learning, and encourages competition among providers while checking to make sure that only quality courses are provided, secondary schools will move as quickly toward online learning as does the higher education sector.

The case for online learning at the high school level may be even more powerful than the case Gates has made for higher education.  The institutions in the United States that are most in need of repair are not colleges and universities, despite their steeply rising costs and rapidly falling expectations for students.  Even worse are high schools, where teachers and students have struck a political bargain that exchanges passing grades for passive seat-seating.

Virtual education has a chance to change all that by holding students accountable for successfully completing exciting, transparent courses that reach each student at his or her particular level of accomplishment.
Quote:Comment on this article
Jaime L. Manzano says:
08/16/2010 at 10:44 am
Once education services enters the internet, it will be “pirated” and become “free.” If it starts here, English will become even more dominant as a “world” language. Credentials and quality control will respond to market forces. Government control will be pursued to defend the interests of resident institutions, and to “protect” the consumer to the extent that the public is willing to surrender “choice” to “authority.”
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#6
Forgive the Gollinesque self-reply.  More support for Gates' comments.  The old guard is hanging on to their obsolete, expensive power structure.  Your ballroom days are over baby.

Quote:The cyber university
By Paul Balles,  Posted on » Saturday, September 04, 2010

In the 1960s, Canadian media guru Marshall McLuhan identified a disconnect between how we live and learn outside of school vs inside. Since then, the disconnect has only grown.

McLuhan wrote: "Our entire educational system is reactionary, oriented to past values and past technologies and will likely continue so until the old generation relinquishes power."

The old generation only began to relinquish power within the last 10 years. Many academics are still hanging on for dear life.

What are they hanging on to? They're hanging onto classrooms, sitting at uncomfortable desks at inconvenient hours, surrounded by bare walls and smelly students.

They're hanging onto classes at badly scheduled hours and libraries with limited opening times, mildewed stacks with missing books and periodicals with pages torn out.

Academics are hanging on to their offices and classrooms in obsolete and costly campuses and school grounds. The soaring costs have made formal education hopelessly expensive for many.

More than anything, they're holding on to dull lectures by boring professors. Some still dictate to students from outdated notes they took when they were students.

With a strong belief that McLuhan's observations about media had even greater importance eight years ago, in an article on "Today's learning" I wrote: "The learning revolution isn't going fast enough! It's started, but proceeds slowly. My fascination with information technology (IT) comes from my vision that that's where learning is happening dynamically."

Since then, both the technology and the subject matter have grown and expanded almost beyond comprehension.

Eight years ago, when I groused about the slow development of IT as a learning tool, using a half dozen search tools occasionally provided useful information, if the request was worded correctly.

Today, with information on anything and everything, you don't need to be a wordsmith to get it. Google, Yahoo and others fill in the gaps and make suggestions.

Your education can now take place in home comfort. Stop for coffee when you feel like it. Do your learning at times suitable to you - in the middle of the night if that suits you.

Free courses aplenty are available online, along with extensive libraries full of books, news sources and magazines at any time 24/7, whenever you decide to connect.

Videotapes of the greatest lecturers in the world on any subject can be imported to your PC, saved and played as many times as you need.

No subject matter will be beyond your reach. Gone are the days of travelling to distant countries to access a research facility.

Forums and chat rooms for topical discussions are readily available. Experts, mentors and archives of Frequently Asked Questions provide answers to your most difficult queries.

It must have been this capacity that prompted Microsoft founder Bill Gates to make an important prediction at a technology conference early in August.

"Five years from now, on the web for free you'll be able to find the best lectures in the world.

"It will be better than any single university. College, except for the parties, need to be less place-based."

He also stated that online learning could bring down the cost of a college education.

This may, in fact, be the determining factor about the future of education.

The old guard will hang onto the costly campus until there are no more students.

One of the old guard, commenting on Gates' remarks, wrote: "It would be a shame if Bill Gates is right and that the days of the college campus are numbered.

"Online learning works for many people, but so does the traditional university setting."

What's he holding on to?
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#7
As said

Quote:Personally I find that I learn a lot more when I can study in an environment of my own choosing and creation, get up and take a whiz when I need to, go get a sandwich when I'm hungry, turn on the radio and/or the stereo when the mood strikes, or just blow it off and go work out when I've had enough.

I don't see that my learning experience would be improved at all if I first had to fight traffic, try to find a parking place, wonder if thieves or vandals will select my vehicle for their attention today, dodge proselytes and perverts on the way to class, involuntarily listen to some deviant's political indoctrination disguised as part of the class, sit at a desk designed for a midget, rub elbows and make small talk with people to whom I wouldn't give the time of day otherwise, etc. etc.


Quote:What's he holding on to?

Believe it or not, the OU played a distinct part in providing knowledge for the Titanus probe (although those billion-a-coffee bunkum physicists couldn't try it first, so they ended up with a botched apparatus )...I may be wrong, but I can't recall any DL university with a thriving genocide, chicano, black, women, diversity, GLBT etc studies watering hole...or any at all...sounds familiar?

It's ok if Quran joins, too...one has not to worry about confronting him when he's in the dorm with a baseball bat in a bad mood...
It's ok if Shlomo joins, too...one has not to listen to his 5h54m43s dribble about Israel going off the map if we (notice...they...but we) don't nuke Iran by next week...
It's ok if Farooq joins, too...one has not to listen to his possible problems with Jews, and the university won't be closed because he and Shlomo met in the toilet lounge...
It's ok if Muffy joins, too...one has not to listen to her 5h54m43s dribble about oppressed women in a school with 68% girl student body, while she collects welfare for her 3 children out of wedlock...


And let's NOT forget those tasty contracts for new swimming pools (I thought the athlete's foot was a sport variety of the green thumb...), buildings, varsity sports etc...

If one wants to see a bunch of people of color chasing a ball, he may just hide his wallet inside it and throw it on a crowded street...
A.A Mole University
B.A London Institute of Applied Research
B.Sc Millard Fillmore
M.A International Institute for Advanced Studies
Ph.D London Institute of Applied Research
Ph.D Millard Fillmore
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