What Are We Diminishing? Online Education and Elite Universities
Radical change only appears radical within a short time frame.
That must be why discussions around technology and society are so often littered with phrases such as “radical transformation”, “a tsunami of change”, or “a new world.” Technology provides the perfect tapestry on which to weave these rhetorical tropes of major change because it is – almost by definition - sensationally sensory: we can literally see, feel, and experience the change before our very eyes.
Again and again, we return to our commonly-accepted myths on technologically-determined social transformation in order to understand our current conundrums and anxieties. Just as Gutenberg’s printing press ushered in the modern culture of mass production and the steam-mill invited industrial capitalism, the Web is (has been? will be?) making way for a series of radical changes, whether good or bad: the democratization of culture, the demise of social capital, and now, the rebirth of our University.
Last Wednesday, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced a new nonprofit partnership, known as edX, to offer free online courses from both universities. Also last week, the New Yorker published an in-depth article on the implicated relationship between Stanford and Silicon Valley. And a column by David Brooks of the New York Times, followed by a series of letters, completed the job of interpreting these recent events with the standard formula: with new technology, change is coming.
David Brooks is optimistic. Online learning will give millions of students access to the world’s best teachers, could extend the influence of American universities the world, and is capable of transmitting knowledge into a commodity that is cheap and globally available. But the most promising aspect of this development, according to Brooks, is that it compels colleges to focus on the rest of the learning process beyond the transmission of information. The new online-offline university would blend online information with face-to-face discussion, tutoring, debate, writing and collaboration. Professors, now free from the burdensome task of compiling and transmitting information to their students, could focus their energies on engaging with students, Socratic dialogue, collaboration and community.
Others are not so hopeful. Like other “radical transformations”, one person’s sea change is another’s tsunami. One of most common fears is that online learning will diminish the face-to-face community that is at the heart of the college experience.
“The teacher-student relationship formed in class allows for open discussion, giving the classroom a friendly and engaging ambience,” says one letter-writer, a sophomore from Fairfield University. “Online classes would not provide this.”
Humanities scholars are especially fearful, as online classes (so far) have elevated functional, skill-based courses such as web coding or accounting, marginalizing subjects in philosophy, history, and literature, which may be more difficult to avatar in an online format.
“What online instruction will never replicate is serendipity. So much growth and learning — far more than we account for, I think — happens as a result of unplanned, ‘offline’ encounters. These are integral to the magic of an on-campus, in-person college education when it is fulfilling its enormous promise.” The writer, a Music Professor, speaks of bumping into her students in corridors and the cafeteria, where the real learning takes place.
“Brooks’s ostensible goal is ‘quality,’ but this corporate supply-chain model would diminish, not increase, knowledge,” says another prof from University of Colorado, Denver. “Because knowing is a process, not a product, it is vibrant through the variegated scholarship of many local scholars. Students are inspired to learn by seeing scholarship enacted locally; their education will be badly compromised by accelerating their association of scholarly authority with a video screen image.”
Clearly there is a diversity of view points on the promise (or degeneracy) of online learning for the American (elite) University. But what all these perspectives seem to have in common is a shared premonition that whatever is happening, it is serious and profound and irreversible. Moreover, what is radical is the technology at the base of this development, the real driver of the transformation in university as it is in society:
“The early Web radically democratized culture, but now in the media and elsewhere you’re seeing a flight to quality,” says Brooks. “The best American colleges should be able to establish a magnetic authoritative presence online.”
Radical change only appears radical within a short time frame. But slow transformation can be just as radical, and much more insidious. Is online learning really the thing responsible for diminishing the face-to-face community, the rich student-professor relationship, the dedication to learning? Or is it the rising tuition rates? The cuts in public education? The pressures on associate professors to “publish or perish” regardless of their teaching record or dedication to students? The fact that the bulk of the teaching that occurs on campus is done by graduate students – cheap labor who are professionalized into thinking that teaching is always a secondary annoyance to research?
It’s easy to blame technology for the demise of the ideal University. Its just as easy to prescribe technology as a panacea that will cure all of the University’s ills and bring it into the 21st century. But both perspectives ignore the real radical transformation taking place across the country: the political economy of the American University in a age of budget cuts, unemployment, and privatization. Indeed, the campus tsunami is already here. We just didn’t notice it trickle in.
The New Techno-University in an Age of Unemployment
For as long as we’ve had universities, it appears we’ve had crises of universities. And perhaps now more than ever, it seems that the death of the university (as we currently know it) is just around the corner. Regardless of the stated intent of universities to produce good citizens with a critical eye towards extant social relations, it now appears that universities are serving to reproduce social privilege instead of providing a level playing field. With nearly every university feeling the resource crunch – and social sciences and humanities at public institutions suffering the most –higher education is increasingly geared towards neoliberal paradigms, employability, and a functional relationship with learning. The university has come into question, both within and without.
What is to be done? – The question on everyone’s mind. It seems clear enough what kind of University we don’t want, but there has been much less elaboration about the university we are for, that which we should promote and to which we should be committed.
This challenge provides the impetus for the discussion series facilitated by the University of California Humanities Research Institute entitled “The University We Are For”. Recently, the institute took this discussion to the digital realm, asking what “The (Technological) University We Could Be For”:
There has been considerable discussion about long-distance learning, but other technological impacts have been arguably more far-reaching and profound. This distinguished panel will lead a discussion of "the university we are for," focusing especially on the impacts new technologies are having on pedagogy and institutional structure, on research and engagement in and across the academy.
The entire discussion is available online. And with so much buzz surrounding the seemingly-infinite potential of new technologies on education, it was refreshing to hear a debate over the solid possibilities and limitations that the digital era can bring to the university.
Johanna Drucker, for example, painted us a vivid picture of a “university in the age of delightenment”: where digital archives and avatars worked seamlessly with real bodies and minds to produce truly cumulative knowledge. Geof Bowker highlighted contemporary projects that were paving the way for a new model of learning. New modes of communication – such as commutable document formats or crowdsourcing collaboration - allow for interactive formats, databases and communication above and beyond the written word. Within these visions, the university doesn’t stop within the walls of the “brick and mortar” institution but continues throughout society as well as throughout the lives of the students.
For all the panelists, technology represents not simply a set of novel tools for classroom but a space in which to rethink the entire structure of the university. As Nishat Shah assertively put it, we have not yet exhausted the possibilities of different forms of the university because we continue to commit ourselves to its material structure. This structure determines everything from the established teacher/student relationship, the separation of disciplines, and the standards for university prestige. It is responsible, according to Bowker, for the pressure scholars feel to pump out as many articles as they can instead of engaging in larger and more collaborative projects that extend beyond the life of the author. It is responsible, according to Nashat, for the pernicious practice of university admissions that equates an institution’s prestige with how many people they keep out. It is responsible, according to Beth Coleman, for the unequal status between students taking online courses and those who often pay more for a face-to-face classroom experience.
“Radical” proposals involving new technology are not really radical at all because they keep within the existing structure. The most visible manifestation of this is what Christpher Newfield calls “middle-brow tech”: bad powerpoints and mediocre classroom web platforms that embrace new technologies in the most banal and complacent way possible. For all the panelists, there was a consensus that new technologies must inspire us to radically rethink the current landscape of higher education in order to build the “Innovative University.” The university of the future (a Harvard-for-the-100-percent) will continue to serve as a political space for knowledge production, dissemination, distribution, acquisition, assessment and accreditation. But it will utilize technology to provide education that is both mass and at the highest quality, a truly “open” university striving towards a democratization of capability and lifelong learning.
Something struck me in this panel: even though the tenor of these lectures were utopian in their future-oriented visions, a kind of nostalgia was present during the panel discussion. It seemed that all the panelists yearned for a time when students eschewed the functionalist motivation for learning and wanted to learn for learning’s sake. In fact, most of the discussion centered around how the new university can counteract the current consumerist model of education in which students pick and choose their subjects based on their marketed, resume-building potential. How can we get students to love learning again, and not just see it as a way to acquire skills in order to do something else?
The conversation struck me as odd, considering that there was no undergraduate student on the panel (and seemingly none in the audience). While the panel featured an in-depth discussion of the fiscal crunch faced by Universities, there was hardly any mention of how current economic pressures affect undergraduate and graduate students facing a scary and mercurial job market.
As an illustrative anecdote: When I graduated from the University of Chicago in 2008, very few of my friends enjoyed full-time employment. Most of them were jobless, or else working minimum wage as restaurant servers, coffee shops baristas, or data entry pods. According to official University data, only 55% of my class had a job a year after graduation. Another 20% went to graduate or professional school; I suspect many were enticed by the opportunity to delay the disheartening job-search process for another few years. But perhaps more telling than the numbers was the level of anxiety and unadulterated fear that settled around us like an unrelenting black fog.
It’s a national struggle, and prospects look worse for students in the humanities. According to Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, recent college graduates with bachelor’s degrees in the arts, humanities and architecture experienced significantly higher rates of joblessness. Even if the numbers of youth unemployment are going down, the feelings of job anxiety among university students will surely be far lasting.
While discussions like the one organized by UCHRI are desperately needed, we should keep the aforementioned dynamics in mind. As one panelist claimed, the new university will be guided by a concept of learning and work “as something pleasurable, enjoyable and engaging and not something to just maintain one’s lifestyle.” Fair enough. But for me, one thing is clear: the years of the “dream job” – employment that embodies one’s passion, is intensely pleasurable and puts food on the table – is over. Or at least significantly delayed until the Baby Boomers retire. The new university, grounded in new technologies and radical restructurings – should embrace a model of learning that is valued in itself but also complementary to solutions to real-life economic constraints and pressures.