"Want to Save the Humanities? Make College Free"

Want to save the humanities? Make college free: It's time to shift the social contract of education away from short-term job training toward long-term development. And free college has to be part of that shift. (David M. Perry, Pacific Standard, May 9, 2019)

 

I think that you can expect this idea to come into the spotlight more frequently as the next election approaches.

https://www.ontheissues.org/Education.htm

 

And just exactly how does making college free save history?

 

from the article

"Because there are plenty of students who love history. Some pursue that love into departments like mine, but others shy away because of concerns about money. College is expensive. They want to be guaranteed a job. Both students and especially their parents believe in a literal-minded way that one's choice of major will determine all professional outcomes. Over the years, I've had hundreds of conversations with students who wanted to study history, but didn't think they could get a job if they did so. The endurance of this idea reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the function of college in educating young minds, and of how job outcomes work. It turns out that history is, in fact, a pretty practical degree, as are most of the liberal arts. Historians get excellent jobs. While some majors lead to more money for a first job, salary differentials between majors diminish over time. (There are a few exceptions, including engineering majors, whose lifetime earnings about double the median. History majors earn right around the median.) What's more, historians develop the analytical skills to carry themselves into any number of professions or advanced degree programs. But when you're saddled with tens of thousands of dollars of student debt, sometimes it's hard to play the long game and follow one's interests to a satisfying and potentially lucrative career. The immediate payoff of a higher-salary first job can feel mandatory."

 

There are plenty of free colleges and courses, but the problem that the school cannot receive proper accreditation.
- Including a number of full-time staffs and faculty, free college only able to find part-time volunteer adjunct professors who is teaching one or two courses.
- Financial stability, but this could be gained through donations.

There should be an accredited college offers degree by evaluating courses from CourseRA, Udemy, EdX, Straighterline, CLEP, DANTES, AP, Saylor Foundation, and etc.

 

These places should have pool their resources. Many of them try are trying to monetized free, So it is the same old. Saylor seems genuine. There are no exorbitant fees like some other places.

 

Another approach would be to start a new credit recommendation service, in the space ACE CREDIT and NCCRS are incumbents, but either charge smaller or no upfront evaluation fees to course providers.

The new service could charge per student receiving a recommendation. Students would pay significantly more for their recommendation transcript compared to ACE/NCCRS, but less than they would for individual portfolio evaluations, and the recommendations might be more portable than individual portfolio evaluations.

The service wouldn't have to maintain the infrastructure of an accredited college, but would have to convince a viable number of colleges to accept its recommendations.

On the other hand, for the sort of big-player course provider TEKMAN lists, maybe ACE/NCCRS upfront fees aren't onerously high. Maybe that isn't the problem. Straighterline runs everything through ACE, that's their model. edX uses individual partnerships with institutions for credit opportunities, and for only a few courses, but the reason edX doesn't run more through course credit evaluations might not be that the evaluations themselves are expensive. edX was founded with an initial $60 million from Harvard and MIT (who also, if they really wanted to, could transcript courses themselves).

If the service I've described has a niche, it might be working with a different type of course provider. Possibilities: Owner-operated bootstrapping education startups. Book and media publishers. Small to midsized professional certification bodies. Small to midsized employers that train their staff. Providers in the informal education space that run some formalized programs, like martial arts belts or wilderness first aid.

 

I think free college may be a stretch but free humanities classes would be an interesting experiment.

 

And who would foot the bill for all this free college?

 

Here's something radical...

Let's stop this nonsense thinking that a person can only be "educated" or "smart" if they have a college degree. Then let's ditch the notion that the only environment the humanities can survive is within degree programs.

There is nothing wrong with a plumber, a welder or a trucker also being well read in Keats or enjoying a lengthy and heated discussion on Nicomachean ethics. Nothing wrong at all. Nor was it unheard of in fairly recent history for a non-degreed historian to publish work that was actually well received within historian circles.

Now we've decided as a society that degrees aren't exceptional. They're the basic requirement to not be considered a dullard even by many in the working class.

I would argue that keeping the humanities contained in academia is akin to putting an endangered animal in a really terrible zoo that cannot adequately accommodate its needs.

By forcing humanities to live inside academia we've relegated it to a series of bullet points on a standardized curriculum that every student is expected to hit. Studied Romeo and Juliet in high school? Check. Paged through Agamemnon in your first year at university? OK, society now dubs thee well rounded.

We have literature that was written by non-university educated authors and intended for non-university educated audiences now being kept artificially alive within a circle of academic elites who, frankly, hide behind the circle jerk that is "peer review" to act like they are somehow contributing to the body of knowledge surrounding those works.

Free the humanities. Stop forcing undergrads to take a single philosophy course that they'll slog through. Teach that in high school. Not just a semester on Aristotle. Integrate the ideas into the curriculum. Make the learning available more outside of regular academic circles. Let's have "philosophy camp" become as common a phrase as <insert sport here> camp.

Because I guarantee you that if we relied solely on academia to keep, say, soccer alive and did it not by simply having colleges have soccer programs but just turned it over to academics to administer as an academic program, there would be volumes of new theoretical plays being released every year by PhDs who never even saw a real soccer ball. But would soccer really still be alive?

 

I think people should stop thinking that universities are places for career preparation. Universities were originally designed to teach the liberal arts, law, and medicine. In the late 19th century, junior colleges were designed to be an affordable way for the middle class to receive vocational training.

 

This is, indeed, true. I think where the problem lies is that certain university disciplines are more career prep focused than others.

Engineering emerged directly from the liberal arts, for example.

I agree that universities shouldn't be places for career preparation. However, the reality is that they are for some disciplines. Engineering, nursing (and a slew of university level allied health occupations such as PT/OT, medical technology etc) , accounting etc. Those are all university disciplines that lead to a fairly straightforward career upon graduation.

So we either need to branch off the clear cut career paths from the traditional university system or acknowledge that the concept of a university has evolved beyond the intentions of their founders.

Personally, I'd prefer the former. Liberal arts requirements for some disciplines create unnecessary bulk in courseload and don't really fulfill that mission of making people "well rounded." For students in ABET or AACSB accredited undergrad programs there is very little room for electives relative to, say, someone majoring in sociology. The result is that the engineering student cannot take courses that might help them specialize their focus while the English Lit major can tailor a highly specialized degree.

 

The difference is that Salyor Academy is a non-profit organization - they are literally free. The cost that you may incur is on whether or not you want to take your final exam locally with a proctor you've secured (free) or purchase a session from Proctor U ($25).
The "other places" are businesses selling ACE evaluated / NCCRS evaluated courses. (Straighterline, Sophia, Ed4Credit, Studycom, Onlinedegreecom, and others)

In my opinion, cost is not a barrier to education. It never has been. Cost is only a barrier when you want to pick your school.
There are LITERALLY so many ways to get an accredited college degree for free that I can't believe it's even still a question.

 

There are probably a few thread that could have handled this tack-on but this is the one I ran into first. So here's a story about Bernie Sanders new bill designed to eliminate student debt

https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2019/6/24/18715821/bernie-sanders-student-debt-bill-cancel

 

Maybe Bernie will cancel our auto loans too? Move over Obama Phone.