[p2p-research] Universities Irrelevant by 2020?

[Dante-Gabryell Monson]

Interesting thread.

I will also speak from my own experience.

First, I ll quote Michel

" but an institutional setting for learning, where people congregate and
people specialize in learning, transmitting knowledge, augmented or not by
p2p learning, that's a different matter for me "

and I ask - what is a University ?

I feel its possible to have the same elements outside of current university
institutions,
or while having access to infrastructures currently related to Universities,
while not being enrolled.

-----

One of the big issues for a lot of people that depend on access to money for
their living through such institutions, is that what they provide does not
necessarily need to be monetized - as it can be freely available through the
internet - unless they start hoarding knowledge.

----

My current conclusion :

My perception is that certain faculties ( such as the humanities ) in a
number of universities are already obsolete,
or to be more precise - they do not have added value compared to what I have
access to without being a student, and without having money, on the european
subcontinent.

When asking some student friends why they officially enrol in university
courses instead of learning by themselves and with others,
some of the answers are :

- because they did not get/take the opportunity to find out what they where
passionate about, and need an environment that sets extrinsic motivation /
pressure on them to "study".

- because they see no alternative.

- because of the piece of paper you get from it / credentials.

- because of pressure from family and society.

The same may apply for mainstream high schools.

----

The connectivist reference has already been cited.

http://p2pfoundation.net/Connectivist_Learning_Theory_-_Siemens

I d like to add another reference :

http://ecolecon.missouri.edu/globalresearch/

----

I believe that as we develop alternatives to some pillars of the current
university system,
such as in the field of credentials, university as we may know it today will
not be as important.

I heard the following argument from different people :
why wait several years before having some credential of what you learned ?

And why should such evaluation be done by university teachers ?

---

some more thoughs, including some of my own background in case you are
interested ...


I m a 26 year young man ( http://hitchwiki.org/en/dante ) that choose to
drop out of school at the age of 15 because of boredom and lack of meaning -
lack of intrinsic motivation,

and since then developed what one may call a connectivist approach to
learning.

I decided not to enter university officially, but I still spend a lot of my
time on various university campuses and libraries in various cities across
europe. ( possibly more time then many of the enrolled students )

What I find useful at universities is that... they often have nice big
libraries, sometimes have free internet access, and converge young people
that, in some cases, make some time available and can be open to discuss or
learn things together.

So its ideal as a free "coworking space" , and as a socializing space.

----

I tend to spend more and more time on the internet,
which leads to an approach to learning which constantly needs to create
links between pieces of information, and between people.

Often I feel that studies limit the potential to question and learn, as many
students, especially in the first years of university where classes are
overpopulated, simply reproduce what is expected from teachers who, in many
cases here / continental europe, can not give any personal attention to
students.  And anyway, many of the teachers seem to be boring, reciting year
after year the same lectures.  Its more interesting to watch a video
presentation or a slideshow via the internet.  All teachers can set their
materials online, and suggest structures, and ideally I could make my own
mix, engage in finding solutions collaboratively with others,
and be evaluated gradually through a network of individuals, which can also,
eventually, include some notable professor.

----

When I was 18, I was not officially at university, but I gathered the
schedules of many of the courses available in the humanities department of a
university in Brussels, and attended the courses which I thought might be
more interesting, in various fields and different years.

Except for a few rare cases, I concluded that it was more interesting to ask
questions freely and search on the net and in books.

What I do lack is access to an environment to interact with others that
share common interests.  I lack access to sharing quality time with people
and build with them.

It took time, but such environments / communities of practice are
progressively becoming available to me, especially through online ecologies,
such as this one.

The problem is - few students seem to have the time to find out what they
are interested in.
I do not feel that entering university solves this lack of access to
interaction.

I really crave face to face interaction with passionate individuals, and am
creating such networks myself - but it takes time, as most young people seem
to be too busy... studying,

or have a negative perception on learning,

as many I met confuse the notion of "learning" with a more narrow "studying
/ reproducing information".

I look forward to create "learning houses" / "co-playing houses",
converging individuals that share common intentions, and can mutually
empower and motivate each other into getting deeper into knowledge

This is what I lack - some reference points related to objectives on which
one can work on together with other people one can choose to work with.
Spending time with other people I can develop close friendships with and
that have experience to provide.

----

This is probably what I would like to expect from " a university " - to have
access to passionate individuals "with" which I can learn.

I do not feel it is the case in current universities.

----

My approach to learning has become much more intuitive and non-linear over
time.
I realize that I do not seem to express my thoughts in the same kind of
"language" as people that attended university.

My capacity of expressing myself linearly in "proper" french, or english,
has declined over time, as I ended up creating my own way of expressing
certain ideas.

Yet I realize that when I can spend enough time interacting within a certain
environment, I can quickly pick up their "language" / way of expressing and
constructing concepts,

and I seem to have a certain ease in understanding people from all kinds of
different backgrounds.


On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 10:04 PM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I believe the boundaries of the university are fracturing as are most
> institutions confronted with p2p.  I agree with Andy that the more
> structural an institution is, the harder and longer it is to get
> transformation.  Universities are pretty darn medieval in many respects from
> my experiences at 5 of them as student, employee and sometimes teacher.  And
> those sorts of entities also lack a certain resiliance.  They cannot change
> well when confronted with crisis.
>
> If there is a persistent financial downturn, if the rates of e-learning
> uptake continue, then the boundaries of universities as concepts will
> continue to erode--perhaps sharply.  "Irrelevant" is a heat word.  It is
> meant to spur just what we are doing--trying to gauge a spectrum of data to
> come to some revised interim conclusions.
>
> Trends are not saturation, but relevance does entail maintaining a certain
> dominance.  Will universities be the dominant venue of higher education in
> 11 years is answered as yes, no or not a good question.  Wiley seems to say
> no.  I must admit 11 years seems a bold guess--but I can't disagree with the
> trend.  It would be easy to say it is not a good question.  I really wonder
> more what will surplant their relevance however much is lost.  It is hard to
> imagine their relevance will increase (at least for me.)
>
> Budgets for the next few years in places like California and Florida are
> going to be horrific.  Endowment losses at some of the big privates have
> been considerable and cuts have been in the press.  I'm not sure
> conventional education and degrees will hold their staying power as means to
> acquire increased economic and social status.  The erosion will take time.
> But as a new owner of a Kindle, I look at my bookcases as something loved
> but as obsolete as a record turntable.  It is easy for me to love books and
> to hope they continue, but frankly, I can't see the trend changing course,
> so the discussion is about timing.  I feel the same about university
> budgets, power, presence and relevance.  The trends suggest and continued
> move down.
>
> Ryan Lanham
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 10:37 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> The car industry is different, dependent as it is on cheap oil, but
>> outside of the US it is in difficulty, but not yet dying, the middle class
>> dream of owning a car is alive and well in Asia
>>
>> but an institutional setting for learning, where people congregate and
>> people specialize in learning, transmitting knowledge, augmented or not by
>> p2p learning, that's a different matter for me
>>
>> I follow downes and siemens, and never heard them say universities would
>> disappear in 11 years, rather, I see them patiently working on constructing
>> alternatives
>>
>> It would be of interest to have their view on the future of universities
>> as well as a timescale, so I've cc'ed them just in case,
>>
>> Libraries by the way, are also experiencing a revival, even in the U.S.;
>> again, their function will change and they will adapt, but I see few signs
>> of their disappearance, they still have very important social roles to play;
>> remember that only 1 billion or so people are wired for the moment,
>>
>> Michel
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 9:22 AM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Well, Michel, I think you know or know of George Siemens.  He and Stephen
>>> Downes and others aren't saying things all that far from what this guy Wiley
>>> is saying.  If you had asked me in 1990 whether GM could be on the verge of
>>> bankruptcy and irrelevance, I'd have said you were delusional.  I'm sure the
>>> horse shoe-ers on Main St. in Palo Alto in 1905 thought they had work for
>>> life.
>>>
>>> Acceleration is real.  In labs now they are move terabytes a second
>>> through wireless.  IBM has said Moore's law can go on for at least 2 more
>>> decades....extrapolating (looking at what Microsoft is planning for in their
>>> labs) you are talking about enormously fast machines with incredible data
>>> absorbing capabilities...no use in building them if they can't be built at
>>> prices people can afford.
>>>
>>> Something's got to give?  Who needs a library?  Who needs a lecture
>>> hall?  Who needs a dorm? It might all become an exercise in "those were the
>>> days" type sentimentalism for the past.  Are universities become Disneyland?
>>>
>>> Ryan
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 9:14 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com
>>> > wrote:
>>>
>>>> In 11 years? Ryan, that is delusional ...
>>>>
>>>> It takes generations for this type of change to occur
>>>>
>>>> we're barely starting to talk about peer and self accreditation, there
>>>> are no sedimented practices yet
>>>>
>>>> of course, more and more people, like us, will learn more and more
>>>> outside channels, finding universities irrelevant for learning (which is why
>>>> I'm hesitating so much to do a phd, the only benefit being social
>>>> recognition, not learning per se), but for the mass of the population, and
>>>> the mainstream institutional world, there will be a long mutual adaptation,
>>>> until new trust forms are sufficiently developed for general acceptance of
>>>> learning.
>>>>
>>>> one should never confuse one's own situation, with the general reality;
>>>> things will change, and sometimes non-linearly, but I think it's a very safe
>>>> bet to say universities will be there in 2020; not only that, seeing from
>>>> Asia, there growing like hell, (just as newspapers by the way, there's no
>>>> crisis here, on the contrary)
>>>>
>>>> Michel
>>>>
>>>>   On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 7:16 AM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>  I'm not the only lunatic....
>>>>>
>>>>> This from Kurzweil's group...
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> *************************
>>>>> Universities will be 'irrelevant'
>>>>> by 2020
>>>>> Deseret News April 20, 2009
>>>>> *************************
>>>>> Universities will be irrelevant by
>>>>> 2020 in a world where students
>>>>> listen to free online lectures on
>>>>> iPods, course materials are shared
>>>>> between universities, science labs
>>>>> are virtual, and digital textbooks
>>>>> are free, says Brigham Young
>>>>> University professor of psychology
>>>>> and instructional technology David
>>>>> Wiley....
>>>>> http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=10454&m=44482
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Ryan Lanham
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
>>>> http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
>>>> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>>>
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>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
>> http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
>> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>
>> Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
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>>
>> Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
>>
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>>
>
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