Not going to one college, but many, at the same time
In the last few months, I have been focused on uncovering the nature of life in the future and the role of education in it. I was reading a series of articles by Erwin Lazlo, Howard Gardner one day when I came to the conclusion that higher education in the future would not be limited to place-based institutions. As major universities like Standford, Harvard and MIT put out some of their best lectures online, one begins to wonder how this might evolve into the future. It seems plausible that the best lectures, talks and even whole courses might be available online in the next few years.
A late spring afternoon earlier this year, my partner/husband, Vamshi came home and asked me what I thought of investing in a federal scheme for Vehd's college education. His question came to me in the midst of my research on the future of education. After a brief pause, I turned and asked him to consider my research and together we began to imagine a future in which, children like Vehd might never go to college. Instead, they would create their own college education online, choosing from the best lectures and courses from leading institutions not just in the United States but from all over the world. The completion of each course would be marked by a test of competence of some kind, the result of which would be an endorsement of the mastery earned by completing the chosen course of study. After collecting enough endorsements, if they so chose, they could go to a certification authority who would examine the transcript they had created for themselves and grant them a "degree". The entire experience would be self-motivated, self-designed, self-paced and contextualized to the specific interests of the learner.
Our brainstorming exercise convinced us enough that Vamshi and I have actively chosen to not save money for Vehd's college education. If the above scenario doesn't exist by the time he seeks higher education, we will be shocked and might offer him an equivalent experience.
This week, Bill Gates spoke of the very scenario at Techcrunch calling out that, “Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the
best lectures in the world,” Gates said at the Techonomy conference in Lake
Tahoe, CA today. “It will be better than any single university,”
he continued.
Its exciting to consider such a future. It makes me think of all the tech geeks that created the Internet as we know it. When they created it, it didn't exist, not even the faintest idea of it. They couldn't have been trained to create it. And yet they did. Imagine what might happen when higher education is let lose and learners combine the most unimaginable bodies of knowledge. A whole new array of inventions and ways of living might emerge. Its thrilling just considering such a liberation of education and that of human creativity through it.