The free internet underlines the need of academic discipline, and not the obsolescence.

Wikipedia has effectively  killed off the Encyclopedia Britianica, and the futurists are now frequently breathing murmurs how BIG University is next. 


Free is the new intellectual elite.  It's broader in scope, faster updated, and more importantly, Wikipedia is found to be just as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britianica.  *Maybe*

Wikipedia is about as good a source of accurate information as Britannica, the venerable standard-bearer of facts about the world around us, according to a study published this week in the journal Nature.

Read more: 

So if the world's oldest and most respected concise repositories of knowledge can knocked off by a community of socialists, why can't them same happen to the well established knowledge factories (universities). The lesson is that the internet is a wild place that can consume long established superpowers.  This is sometimes true.  

I have been reading a few articles that argue along these lines.  I personally find myself in the "traditional education" line of thought, and not lest because I am employed by such an institution.  Yet, I am honestly not convinced that we are at the end of structured education.  In the same way that blogs (not even mine) are threatening are the established Press, so too structured education is not truly threatened the open internet.  If anything bloggers have become the tools of the press, in the same way the open internet was the subservient tool created by universities. 

For: the case for the free and open Internet.

The wisdom of the crowd. There is evidence that collectively the crowd average actually knows better then the expert. The Wikipedia vs. Britianica is a pretty strong case.  Likewise, the market and democracy are the two best examples of where we throw important decisions about social organisation out to the masses. Indeed, every Web 2.0 strategy seems to contain some sort of argument that "crowd sourcing is better and more accurate than experts". 


Diversity is good.  Bio diversity is often seen as the as a model of strength and flexibility.  Education by contrast, attempts to produce everyone who is the same. Maybe.  Perhaps Primary schooling and high school attempts to a great leveling.  Everyone graduating high school is measured by their university entrance rank (ENTER / TER / OP).  This one number supposedly says how smart you are not matter what you studied and where you are from.  Higher education however has specializations. 

We don't need no education,

Hey, Teacher!
Leave those kids alone!

We don't need no thought control. Frequently depicted is the education machine as a type factory of misery.  Rioting and fight the establishment if the answer.  Feels good when you are are young and naive.  It's nice to think that you don't have to do any work to get there. 




Viva the revolution. Fight the orthodoxy, Who needs an institution to certify what you do and don't know - surely learning is more important then the paper at the end.  Sure, not every teacher knows their stuff, and I dare say that most of them are not inspiring. Stuff 'em! Who need them when you have TED and Academic Earth


Life has moved but school hasn't.  This is a sad fact.  Suppose I show you some pictures 40 years old -  a factory,  farm,  warehouse, and an office.  You would be amazed at how much these locations have changed the point that they are hard to recognise.  Yet with all the new learning technology, the classroom it looks largely the same.  The teacher stands out front,  students sit behind crappy desks, the whole thing remains adversarial.  How pathetic it is that we haven't used technology to change the learning. 


Download to your brain. Immediate learning is a magical device dreamed of long before Neo proclaimed in the Matrix "I know kung fu!"  The quick Google search and wikipedia means you can know every thing instantly, no need to remember anything.  Again, *maybe*  The reality is that soon you may be able to plug in and learn things without all that going-to-school hassle. Unfortunately it will not be in your life time and this sort of technology never ends up the way you imagined. 


Life is the best university.  Book learning is inferior to life learning.  Why bother with the formalised books? If you need the book, you apply a JIT approach, Google search it and then find the only sentence you need when you need it.  You do not need to waste your life reading everything you wont use. Admittedly the RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning) process is the intended to address this problem.  This is somewhat shaky although because I have personally found RPL to always be more work than attending the course itself, no matter how mundane. 

Against: The case for the establishment. 

Library is not a school.  Public libraries doesn't build knowledge, schools do.  There is nothing to stop random people from walking off the street and into any municipal, university or national library and just chunking their way through a medicine degree.  If you had the discipline to do it, you could teach yourself anything.  Sure, we still have the authorities that officially recognize learning and that would keep you out of practicing medicine, but there is still other money making activities you can do with the knowledge.  The thing is, humans naturally DONT have this dicipline and most frequently learn though interaction. 


The strength of discipline. The angry  mob is no more an army then a pile of bricks is a house. Like wise, the open internet is not powerful knowledge to the user until it is absorbed and understood.  Education's ultimate output is not the memorization of facts, but the structured discipline to critically analyse new facts.  


University is a transformational  experience, not a list of facts. You will not remember most of your classes.  Yet somehow the facts fade away and the "education" remains.  It would seem that it is more efficient to teach people to hold the grace and poise of someone who is "educated" but the athlete is not fit because of sports shoes he wears. 


Doctors do not follow doctrine.  You are awarded the title of  doctor because you have developed something new. They create new doctrine, and most frequently competing doctrine. 


The best information is not found via a simple Google search.  That is because the best and most structured information is either proprietary, secret, jargon layered, or otherwise obfuscated in some way.  Most power structures and professions are built on the keeping of secret information.  As the information gatekeepers this enables rent seeking.  Education is the way to access these gates. 

Lessons:

Things are changing and education needs to adapt to remain relevant.  Does this mean that the kids will teach themselves? Probably not.  If you put the effort in, you can be good.  If you have guidance you will be even better.  Even in a world were the internet is entirely free (and it's far from that) there will always be the need for a mentor and learner, and there will always be a market for one. 

Original Sources:

http://eduvators.edublogs.org/2010/11/26/will-universities-be-destroyed/

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/adrianhon/100006017/why-free-online-lectures-will-destroy-universities-%E2%80%93%C2%A0unless-they-get-their-act-together-fast/

http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2010/11/29/will-online-lectures-destroy-universities/

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