[p2p-research] George Siemens Blogs On Future of Universities

[Kevin Carson]

On 4/25/09, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:
> He claims (contra my assertion) that uni's not dying but starting to reform.
>  States problem is vision of the future.
>
> http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2009/04/25/rough-week-for-higher-education/

The main problem with the university IMO is that the only things
really needed for learning are the learner and teacher, and access to
the information.  It's frequently unnecessary for the learner and
teacher to occupy the same physical space--and when it is necessary in
most cases just about any space close to a library and Internet access
will probably do, unless some sort of specialized and
capital-intensive lab facility is required.  (cf. Franz Nahrada, with
"public school" functions carried out in storefront rooms and other ad
hoc spaces all over the village).  So the absolutely enormous amount
of money spent on plant and equipment, enormous stone and brick
buildings (and especially monumental architecture), on getting
teachers and learners and information together at a centrally located
site, and on the gigantic administrative bureaucracy for providing
services and keeping track of them, is absolutely wasted.

It's about as unnecessary to assemble people at some giant, central
"learning factory" as it is to do the same for physical goods.  The
ability to move information cheaply and easily, which provide a
technical basis for Illich's decentralized learning nets several
orders of magnitude more efficient than Illich himself envisioned,
makes Albert Jay Nock's educational model of "Mark Hopkins on one end
of a log and a student on the other end" more technically feasible
than ever before.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
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