-Caveat Lector- >From http://www.nytimes.com/partners/aol/mag/article4.html Crashing the Academy The Internet could destroy college as we know it. Or, just possibly, save it. By MARK EDMUNDSON THE EDUCATION MARKET: DATA Jones International University, an Internet-based school that was recently accredited to award college diplomas, can't yet compete with established institutions on resources and prestige. But on price, it's already far ahead. Harvard Jones Tuition: $21,342 $3,750 Books: $650 $625 Undergraduates: 6,609 12 Undergrad courses: 3,000 20 Faculty Members: 828 44 Financial Aid: (pct. of students) 70% 1% Curriculum: Harvard: 43 majors, plus required studies in moral reasoning, social analysis, literature, arts and sciences. Jones: Majors in applied telecommunications and communications management. Photograph by The United States Navy ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- hen it comes to mechanics and technology, I have always fit the cliched bill of the longtime professor of English, the sort of person capable of fracturing a light bulb's innocent neck during installation. But there has been one exception to my losing war against all tech, high and low: computers, which, through word processing and info-tracking, place the powers of Prospero at one's fingertips. And I'm not alone: purportedly technophobic humanities teachers, English professors in particular, have led the way in bringing computers into class. Amazon.com, course Web sites and on-line student discussion groups are now mainstays of humanities teaching. But it seems the tables are turning. Prospero's Ariel seems to be morphing into Caliban: as technological and market pressures outpace our humble efforts to digitize, it becomes increasingly possible that our precious computers will consign us to early retirement. It's a very real threat, both to the foundations of higher learning and to the professors who dedicate their life to the cause. It's also the best thin g to happen to us in ages. The auguries are hard to miss. An entity called Jones International University has just become the first accredited college to offer courses exclusively over the Internet. Its 12 undergraduates and 64 master's students (more are sure to follow) can choose from 37 communications courses -- all for about $4,000 a year. At more traditional universities, by contrast, the rate of increase for tuitions this year was more than twice that of inflation. Legitimate students might well begin to wonder, Why blow all that money on a private, campus-bound university when a credible education is available for a fraction of the cost on line? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Mark Edmundson is a professor of English at the University of Virginia. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- In turn, even first-rank schools will soon be positioning themselves to compete with Jones U. U.C.L.A. already recommends to its faculty that every course in the College of Letters and Science have a Web site. The next big step will probably be posting course material on the Net. And after that, universities could sell courses on the open market, delivering the product at reduced rates to anyone with a modem. Once that happens, they might as well sell off the campuses and replace the professors with Web-maintenance crews. It's not so hard to make a case for that plan, actually. The move to on-line higher education would seem on the face of it to be highly democratizing. Regardless of where they live or what their life circumstances are, students could have access to the best courses, call forth lectures by the best professors and do what all students need eventually learn to do: educate themselves. And my colleagues in almost every discipline are already turning away from subjective, messy interpretation and speculative theory, instead focusing on quantitative, fact-based research. In other words, professors themselves are teaching precisely the kind of material that computers are made to deliver. So why not let the computers run the show altogether? Nevertheless, on-line education's greatest contribution to the academy won't be its efficiency or its accessibility. More important by far, if all goes well, it will provoke the crisis that we humanities professors have been waiting for -- and which we desperately need. It will force us to decide whether we are going to continue our current evolution into mere conveyors of knowledge, or become seekers after something akin to wisdom. For if students come to us in the future cyber-dominated world, it will be not because we know things (the machines will know more), but for precisely those qualities that computers can never have: our ability to pose crucial questions, and also to venture answers to them. I see it in my own work. The presence of computers has pushed me to be interested not only in facts and interpretations, but also in truth. I ask students now not just what Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" means (difficult question though that surely is), but if it conveys a knowledge that they can use. The poem, which is about deep despondency -- a condition not unknown to my students in the age of Prozac -- prescribes a highly disciplined, subtle form of recollection as a way to spiritual equanimity. Should you do it, follow Wordsworth's path in times of trial? Can it work? If not for everyone in the room, then for some? What I'm describing may sound like standard old-hat humanism. But in fact, it's a radical project that has never really got under way. Critics like Leslie Fiedler and Northrop Frye (in their very different ways the descendants of the now unfashionable Matthew Arnold, who predicted that literature would replace religious faith as a source of spiritual sustenance) came closest. In the 1950's and 1960's, they uncovered complexes of myth, culled from a wide span of literature, and forcefully argued that those myths provided a key to general human desires, hopes, hatreds and anxieties. But their stunningly complex (and flawed) project died, cut off by the rise of skeptical theory and the knee-jerk reaction against all hopes for literary knowledge. The advent of computers, and the rise of places like Jones University, have put higher education at a crossroads. Professors can become more interested in knowledge without regard to wisdom, becoming more computerlike, and thus irrelevant, or we can take a few more steps down the road that Frye and Fiedler -- and Socrates -- opened up for us. If we do that with conviction and due modesty, we'll have no trouble keeping up with the Joneses, and achieving a good deal more besides. PREVIOUS ARTICLE | NEXT ARTICLE Sunday, April 4, 1999 Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company ~~~~~~~~~~~~ A<>E<>R The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority. -Thomas Huxley + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
