Ezra Klein: Classes Without Degrees

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February 15, 2007

Classes Without Degrees

I'm rather taken with the trend towards offering college courses for free online. There's no enrollment, no grades, no pressure, and no diploma. They're simply there for the personal education of interested parties. Indeed, one nice effect of this is to further clarify how little of the contemporary college experience is about learning, rather than about obtaining the economic and social benefits of a degree. Learning, of course, is hoped to be a byproduct of earning that degree, though I'm a bit skeptical as to the strength of the correlation. Nevertheless, it's the degree which students are paying for, and so there isn't now and never really has been a reason to close off the number of folks who can derive personal benefit from auditing the classes.

February 15, 2007 | Permalink

Comments

I'm not sure how the above post makes any sense at all. How do online courses themselves show that the actual college experience is not about learning? Klein doesn't even discuss how much is actually learned via online courses. It's possible that without the discipline provided by grades and a diploma people don't really dedicate themselves to their online courses and learn much less than they would or could in an actual classroom. Students in online courses do not get the same level of mentoring from professors at actual colleges and they also lack the intense peer interaction of college, which can really help to reinforce what is learned in lectures and seminars. You can certainly learn online, and I don't oppose the phenomenon. It's just that Klein has no evidence that normal college is not centered around learning. (Though I do agree that attending an elite college is in part about social networking.) And how does the whole issue of auditing come into play? I think auditing is wonderful, and I don't think it should be restricted except in seminar settings where student enrollment is kept low enough that the professor can work individually with each student throughout the semester. I guess if you think professors don't teach their students anything then that's not an issue but there's no evidence to back up that view.

Posted by: Alyson | Feb 15, 2007 3:05:58 PM

Essentially, if what the colleges thought the value they were offering was in the actual learning, there's no way they'd givei t away for free. That's not how you run a business. What they offer is their own diplomas, which, so long as they remain relatively scarce, can be valuable even as the learning that apparently goes into them is free.

Posted by: Ezra | Feb 15, 2007 3:08:33 PM

I can't read the WSJ piece, but I completely agree with what you're saying. I think the main "learning" benefit of going to an elite school is constantly being surrounded by intellectually-engaged people. But I don't see why that couldn't be replicated in a basement in North Dakota with 10 friends and internet connections pointed to MIT's OCW. Or by a solitary figure in South Boston with a library pass.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txV_RdA6Sd8

Posted by: jerry | Feb 15, 2007 3:24:45 PM

Exactly. When you pay all those 10s of thousands of dollars to attend a university, what you are paying for in the long run is the diploma and access to food, housing, and resources such as the library and computer labs. You are not paying for the knowledge. I'm sure most of your readers will recall that most classes involve paying $150 for a textbook and spending the quarter slowly reading that textbook and then being quizzed on it to make sure you read it. In other words, the knowledge was worth roughly $150, which is in itself a supremely inflated value when you take into account the textbook racket. Equivalent knowledge is available in non-approved texts for probably around $40, or $30 on Amazon.

I'm proud to say I bailed on a university education halfway through my Junior year, because even at a state school it was easy to see that I wasn't getting anything for my money. Ten thousand dollars a year for a foreign language class, the opportunity to slowly co-read 10 other texts under a grad student's supervision, and access to the archery range? Not even close to worth it.

That being said, certain disciplines like med school and law school require the sort of unique immersion and access to resources that a university offers, and an undergrad degree is a sort of unavoidable and absurdly wasteful down payment on it. But if you're interested in a field where a degree is not an absolute requirement, and you're capable at all of learning on your own, I'd honestly advise you to find better ways to spend your money.

Posted by: sidereal | Feb 15, 2007 3:31:00 PM

"I think the main "learning" benefit of going to an elite school is constantly being surrounded by intellectually-engaged people."

But a better way of doing that (or what used to be a better way decades ago) was simply to hang out in the cafes of Central Europe, or in Paris, or in Greenwich Village.

My point is the rather pedestrian one that culture (or Kultur, if we want to be parodic) moved from bohemia to the university in the post-WWII period. In the USA, actually, before WWII, since many universities then weren't really research universities perse at all, the education you'd get in Greenwich Village or North Beach was probably superior.

Posted by: burritoboy | Feb 15, 2007 3:58:52 PM

I don't subscribe to the WSJ, so I can't read the article.

How do I audit classes at Yale? What's the homepage link?

Posted by: Petey | Feb 15, 2007 4:10:50 PM

As much as I approve of making course materials and auditing available, for the interested and motivated people out there, I'm not sure that I think that enough learning will result, for several reasons:

* Even in larger lecture classes, being able to ask questions during the lecture, or asking the professor or TA afterwards is often very important to understanding.

* In math, science, and engineering classes, getting feedback when you were wrong is important; you need to find out that the way you've learned something is wrong so that you can correct it. Even for classes that go all-out and provide, say, solution keys to their problem sets and exams, I don't know if it's really possible to grade yourself and apply the necessary correctives.

* In humanities classes, even if the non-student forces themselves to write papers, they similarly won't get feedback or discussion of their papers in class. Since there's even less of a concept of "the right answer" in such a class, the ability to self-grade is even less than in the math and science classes.

* In smaller classes, participation is what it's all about. I'm unclear if anyone is trying to "offer online" any form of the smaller classes (say, fewer than 20 people) that are less lecture-focused (whether a humanities class or not); I'm not sure how that would work, whether the participants would be as open to participating in the discussion if it were being, say, recorded and put online, and the non-participant viewer would have a drastically reduced experience.

* Lab classes are, for most purposes, right out.

Posted by: Nathan Williams | Feb 15, 2007 4:11:48 PM

your logic is off Ezra, colleges think that the interaction and deadlines, tests etc. of a regular college course are the actual learning and that is what is valuable. As a prof i think 1 or 2 percent of students are motivated to learn the material without the incentives a graded course provides, so if you are in that one percent you can do fine auditing. Otherwise you won't get a lot.

Posted by: CalDem | Feb 15, 2007 4:47:38 PM

I tried to learn Japanese on my own one summer. I failed miserably. I took classes in school and did okay for the 2 years I took them (I would've minored but had to wrap up my degree). I think we are paying for the structure in the end, with the added ability of easy access to a TA and 24 hour study rooms.

Is the structure worth it? I think so, really. I have been studying for actuarial exams for a year now and would very much love to have a place I can go all hours of the night to study, along with a schedule I can easily customize to match those study habits. Alas, the work world is not such a place. It's a lot harder to do and going to college is effectively paying for that learning environment.

Posted by: JF | Feb 15, 2007 5:08:09 PM

Learning means nothing to employers and clients unless it is accompanied by some sort of independent confirmation. Degrees may not be perfect ways of confirming knowledge, but note "the sheepskin effect:" the huge jump in earnings between the holder of an almost completed degree and a graduate.

I am skeptical about the correlation between learning and elite degrees: early decision gives a huge priority to children of the well-to-do. Unfortunately, the children of the not so well-to-do languish at public schools with underachieving peers. Those who go to private schools have underachieving peers of a different class. I welcome Harvard and Princeton's move to end early decision. I think we will see a lot of bright people thriving in a hothouse environment.

Posted by: Steve | Feb 15, 2007 5:28:42 PM

Seriously. How do I audit Yale college courses for free online?

Is there a link in the WSJ article?

Posted by: Petey | Feb 15, 2007 5:45:53 PM

Petey, I can't answer that question 'cause I don't have the link either. But here's one you might like: UC Berkeley has literally dozens of courses available here: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses.php?semesterid=22

Check the downloads for previous semesters, too.

A few more course download links you might also like (though not as spectacular as Berkeley's):

McGill University: http://courseware.mcgill.ca/lectures/?Semester=200701

UCLA (unfortunately most are for registered students only, but not all): http://www.oid.ucla.edu/webcasts/courses/2006-2007/2007winter/

Purdue used to have a ton of courses available, but they're now locked down for students only...

Posted by: Bill Camarda | Feb 15, 2007 8:00:45 PM

re: Berkeley, if lectures are being recorded and notes/materials distributed on the web as a matter of efficiency, there's the option of keeping them password-protected or IP-restricted. Being Berkeley, they've made the choice to open them up.

The faculty also consider the seminars with graduate assistants more important to courses than lectures. They're not supplying that online.

I've learned things -- or at very least, picked up a few interesting concepts and made some new connections -- from the Berkeley lecture podcasts. That said, ten years in higher education probably marks me out as the kind of person who does this for fun.

Posted by: pseudonymous in nc | Feb 15, 2007 9:27:02 PM

I agree with an old friend of mine that "grades are the
enemy of learning". I wish there were an alternative (confession - I'm in the ed biz), but I don't know what it is. It isn't clear what learning actually happens in our schools, but I suspect that it boils down to this:

Students learn how to negotiate a system in which they aren't in charge. They learn how to deal with a crazy boss (like me) and how to get the pieces of paper that may allow them to advance in life (even if these pieces of paper have no intrinsic meaning beyond the money and effort expended to acquire them).

All in all, these are useful skills to have in a dying empire. Perhaps I have underestimated the value of organized education.

Posted by: tonara | Feb 15, 2007 10:58:41 PM

What about privacy concerns? Shouldn't a student have the opportunity to ask questions or make comments during a lecture without worrying about having them posted on YouTube?

Posted by: Anonymous Coward | Feb 16, 2007 12:02:28 AM

AC -

First, a lecture hall with a hundred students or more, isn't very private to begin with. Second, if there is even video, it is almost always fixed on the front. While those wathing it, might, hear the question, they wouldn't see the person asking or commenting. Typicaly, if something might be embarrasing or otherwise confidential, there are office hours.

Posted by: DuWayne | Feb 16, 2007 12:56:28 AM

Coursework per se is only a small part of the educational experience that any decent college offers. When you look at the schools that have a significant online presence such as UC-Berkeley and MIT, that is especially the case. In most cases, students manage to sandwich significant amount of time in various laboratory and group projects between classes and studying. Its this hands on work that often provides the most signficant educational experiences that students have during their college career. Its amazing how such an intrinsic aspect of a good college experience, namely the work outside of the standard coursework, is so often overlooked. Furthermore, as someone noted above, simply being around other students, particularly in a laboratory setting, is an amazing inducement to intellectual development.

Posted by: Glockenspieler | Feb 16, 2007 11:30:42 AM

Tonara,

Re: different grading methods. I found Benjamin Zander's approach interesting. Not sure if it's naive, stupid, or genius. I couldn't find an in-depth article, here's an excerpt: http://www.odemagazine.com/article.php?aID=4124

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