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2020-04-08 Home Front: Culture Wars

Higher Education Will Never Be the Same‐And That's Not All Bad

James G. Martin center via Instapundit

The coronavirus, combined with the public and private reactions to it, has affected every aspect of Americans’ lives, including the ways they learn. From pre-K to graduate seminars, many classes are moving online for the duration of the pandemic and perhaps beyond. That may spur pedagogical reforms that will lead to the creation of more Emersonian independent thinkers, people who can quickly find, analyze, and synthesize available data to come to reasoned conclusions on important matters‐a resource that seemed in mighty short supply when the coronavirus hit the proverbial fan in mid-March.

Many colleges and universities will evidently have to tighten their belts for some time. Counterintuitively, it would be the lack of resources rather than a surfeit of them that could spur positive change among our very costly but not very effective schools.

...Tight budgets can be a good thing because they force leaders to make difficult decisions and to focus on what is most important. A big federal bailout would forestall such a reckoning by allowing universities to continue spending recklessly on projects not closely connected to pedagogy and student learning.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-04-08 14:37|| || Front Page|| [11131 views ] Top

#1 Just think of all those videos waiting to be released on the internet. See what your tax money pays for. Ah, transparency.

Posted by Procopius2k 2020-04-08 16:23|| 2020-04-08 16:23|| Front Page Top

#2 There will be a supercut of professors maundering about political stuff that's not part of their course material. It won't be pretty.

Posted by M. Murcek 2020-04-08 16:49|| 2020-04-08 16:49|| Front Page Top

#3 Some professors will be videotaped doing what they do, and will be revealed as underrated gems, superstar teachers who are worth their weight in gold.

Like math Prof Gilbert Strang of MIT.. Here's the best way to learn Linear Algebra - and it won't cost you a penny.

How many other Gilbert Strang caliber lecturers are there out there, waiting to be discovered. Thousands, no doubt.

Posted by Lex 2020-04-08 16:59|| 2020-04-08 16:59|| Front Page Top

#4 ^I'd rather use his books. I didn't know he was underrated

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-04-08 17:05|| 2020-04-08 17:05|| Front Page Top

#5 Most students lack your horsepower, G. They learn better through videos, and Strang's videos are amazingly clear, with no BS effort to either dumb down the material or lame efforts to make math jokey and "fun."

There's a formula in here somewhere about how to make complex subjects clear and understandable to an audience of tens or even hundreds of thousands. Simon Schama's Art History videos have cracked this code as well.

At some point I can see half or more of the colleges in this country either slimming down to a few profs plus some technical staff or else going out of business altogether, replaced by a few hundred successors of Strang and Schama.

Posted by Lex 2020-04-08 17:38|| 2020-04-08 17:38|| Front Page Top

#6 How many lectures would be better presented by video? Remember that the videos are recorded and the best ones will be used in the future.

Posted by magpie 2020-04-08 18:25|| 2020-04-08 18:25|| Front Page Top

Lex, Lex, Lex !

Posted by Besoeker 2020-04-08 18:31|| 2020-04-08 18:31|| Front Page Top

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