Education has to go digital, and this will involve a lot more than just on-lining brick-and-mortar classes. Also, the process of doing this will be real epistemology, as in, it will involve people doing epistemology, instead of just impotently and unoriginally talking about it

Kuczynski, John-Michael

English

PhilPapers

Parasites with parasites The corona virus and the end of non-virtual education  I was a professor for many years and a student for many years before that.  my so-called professors at UCLA and UCSB, where I received my bachelors and doctoral degrees, were poser parasites, who had pretty much nothing on the ball.  They had positions, but that’s about it. I learned a lot in grad school, but I didn’t learn it from my professors. I learned it by working around them.    They did not teach. they obstructed. And those who learned did so despite them.  But they were there. They had the positions they had and other people didn’t. and that was that.  Plus, they had prestige. But that started to change in around 2010. That’s when the internet really came into its own and became a real-time information exchange. When that happened, it all came out in the open; and these so-called professors turned out to be wood. Before then, their work had been inaccessible and shrouded in mystery. But then all of a sudden, it was all right there. Just a click away. And there was nothing there. All these articles and books turned out to be recycle-jobs.  And now, thanks to the corona virus, these bureaucrat parasites themselves have parasites.  And that’s the last straw. People were willing to put up with college up to a point. First of all, there were no viable alternatives—and there still aren’t, although I’m working on that. second, being young, college students bought into the hype.  But it’s getting a little expensive, and the returns are getting a little lean. And the worthlessness of the product being paid for is getting harder and harder to turn a blind eye to.  But before any of that leads to anything, there has to be some kind of spark. A precipitating cause.  An epidemic will certainly do the trick.  Is the corona virus going to be this spark?  probably not.  But we’re seeing the first cracks.  The way forward is virtual education. There are many reasons for this, the obvious ones being that automation and digitization are cheap, effective, and convenient. but we’re not just talking about purely quantitative improvements. We’re talking about structural optimizations. College curricula are antiques. They make blockbuster video look cutting edge.   Virtual education can be customized to fit the student’s objective’s and learning-style.  Courses can be created in real-time and synched to market-trends.  This would be done by eliminating tenure and conditionalizing instructor-payment on instructor-success-rate. The details are explained in my book ‘the economics of higher education in the 21st century.’  This is not a pie in the sky. This is already being done. But the people doing it—and I’m one of them—haven’t yet jumped through the requisite accreditation-related hoops.  But it’s just a matter of time. Around two years in the case of my school.  Existing online schools are terrible, but that’s because they are not attempts to replace brick-and-mortar schools. They are attempts to extend the existing college scam into cyber space.  What I’m talking about is actual, non-fraudulent cyber-education. Which is what I’m working on. And thanks to this new outbreak, it’ll be a little easier for me to get it rolling.   

Parasites with parasites: The corona virus and the end of non-virtual education

https://philpapers.org/archive/KUCPWP.pdf

Parasites with parasites: The corona virus and the end of non-virtual education

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

PhilPapers