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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nihil who wrote (53499)	8/30/1999 11:03:00 AM
From: jbe	Respond to of 108807

Interesting post, nihil. Of course, most English professors are stark raving mad! (I was married to an English professor, so I should know. But then I like crazy people.) More seriously: you (and Michael Cummings) may indeed be right, that in this age of the internet universities (in their present form, at least) are doomed. My sister-in-law (the sister of the crazy English professor) and her husband have spent years in the California higher education system, teaching the very thing that may doom it, ultimately: educational technology and "distance learning." They also jointly edit the major periodical in the field. It is truly amazing what their projects in "distance learning" have already managed to do, in bringing education to folks living in isolated areas (one recent example: farmers' wives in the Australian outback). I even think that in many cases, moderated (by an instructor) internet discussion groups can be superior to the classroom environments they replace. They tend to be less "authoritarian" (less dominated by the teacher), for one thing; to allow more people to speak out & ask questions; to provide more real interchange, etc. However, the internet cannot provide the hands-on training that, say, medical students need; it cannot inspire students in the same way as the really crazy but charismatic teacher can, in a face-to-face situation; it cannot duplicate that "temple of learning" community that the best universities occasionally succeed in creating, etc. So my guess is that conventional higher education and web-based higher education will subsist side by side, one hopes happily, for some time. On the question of the expense of a college/university education. Of course, I was thinking more of private institutions than of state institutions when I remarked that it is hard to work your way through college these days. One common solution to the money problem is to spend the first two years at a local community college, and then transfer to the state university for the last two. But let's face it: such degrees do not have the same "prestige" as a full four-year degree from Harvard, say. It doesn't matter where you got your undergraduate degree if you go on to a good graduate school; but if a BA (or BS) is all you have, employers DO pay a lot of attention to where you got it from. As for scholarships, they are almost all "needs-based," and there is a monopoly down in Princeton that decides whether you are "needy" or not. (We were never "poor enough" to get that computer down in Princeton to recommend any kind of scholarship for our kids.) So, you get the very rich & the very poor attending the Harvards and Princetons, and the middle-class attending the state universities. Talk about class divisions! As a matter of fact, my oldest son did go to Brown for a year, then decided it was too much like an expensive prep school (he'd already attended one of those), and transferred to a state university in Canada (Dalhousie). In those days, at least, Canada did not charge more for out-of-country students (not to speak of out-of-province students); and, furthermore, it provided academic scholarships. If your grade-point average was over a certain level, you did not have to pay any tuition! Whoopee! Hurray for Canada! Don't know whether that is still the case... Joan

To: nihil who wrote (53499)	8/30/1999 12:42:00 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

I am doubtful that the web degree will supplant a degree from a prestigious college or graduate school, for those who can afford it. The snob appeal is simply too important. Having attended both a state college (LSU) and a private school (Tulane), my opinion is that the private college isn't better than the state college (no doubt there are far better private schools than Tulane, it's not Harvard, by any means) but rubbing elbows with the upper crust is what you are paying for, and what you get. Not only does one acquire a finish at Tulane/Newcombe that one can't get at LSU, one also makes connections that can be called on for the rest of one's life. Of what value is a cyber-degree compared to that?