At 16:19 26/12/2012, Pete Vincent wrote:
On Tue, 25 Dec 2012, Keith Hudson wrote:
> At 19:14 24/12/2012, you wrote:
> > (AC) Longish article but interesting.
> > Subject: Quadrant Online - Can Universities Survive the Digital
Revolution?
> >
http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2012/12/can-universities-survive-t
> > he-digital-revolution
>
> (KH) Martin Davies compares the future of higher education with that of
> newspapers so far. His long (and pretty thorough) article leads
him to write
> these two sentences towards the end:
> "It is no exaggeration to say that we might be witnessing the
death of print
> media. We may also be witnessing the beginning of the end of the
universities
> as we know them."
>> We won't see the death of print media (and possibly not of some
newspapers).
> Symbols written on cave walls or on paper are the only way of accurately
> describing past operations or, in the case of scientific papers,
of being the
> means by which someone else can precisely repeat an experiment in order to
> possibly disprove a new finding.
(PV) That's an odd thing to say.
I'm sure it is -- from your point of view as a practising
scientist. But then I haven't been in the world of career scientists
for over 30 years and, as is obviously the case, I am oblivious as to
the state of printed science journals. I occasionally read a paper
but only if it's freely available online. But this doesn't alter my
main point. The fact is that it has to be written in words, and
carefully, too, or else it might be thrown out by referees.
Keith
Surely you're aware that most folks these
days pass their stuff about using arxiv links, cuz it takes too long
to wait for the journals to get the material published, and that even
then, universities are dropping print subscriptions to scores of
journals, cuz they're too expensive, and too much trouble to store,
so they make do quite well with online electronic subscriptions,
which cost much less and take up no space to speak of, as well as
being site licenced so no one is deprived of access due to the
copy being in use. I don't think I've seen anyone looking at a
contemporary print journal for at least a decade.
For instance, the T2K collaboration and assocoated projects have
25 papers on arxiv:
http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+AND+T2K+experiment/0/1/0/all/0/1
and students who used to pack around books now pack around a
laptop, and all their course material is posted on webpages,
making a much lighter and more convenient package. Plus the
online material can include video lectures, as mentioned in the
article, plus explanatory animations, and other interactive
features. I presume there must still be some hardcopy textbooks
required to be purchased, but I don't keep up with these things,
and I certainly don't see any being toted around here.
Now if you want to talk about hand written logbooks, there are
some people who still use them, mostly for small projects, but
for big collaboration stuff like T2K, paper logbooks have been
replaced by "elog" software, that is much more flexible, and
convenient, as I can log in from anywhere and read about problems
and developments, as can any other member of the collaboration.
-Pete
>
> As for universities, I think they'll fall away steeply anyway
because all jobs
> of what I call the 80-class are gradually disappearing due to
automation or or
> being dumbed-down. (And, if Europe's birth rate is any guide, the
numbers of
> children and young people will start declining substantially in about a
> decade.) Young people will not continue to be conned -- as they have been
> until recently -- that if they get a degree then they'll have a
job for life,
> or even get a job at all. As for those who learn via a website,
their numbers
> will decline for the same reason.
>
> However, the very brightest, innovative scientists, on whom the future
> depends, don't go to university to qualify for a job -- as 99% of
students do
> at present -- but because they are individuals with a huge need
to discover.
> Strangely, they are usually no more intelligent than the "ordinary" bright
> when measured on bog-standard IQ tests. Usually what happens in the case of
> the highly creative young scientist is that he is recognized as such by an
> older gifted scientist, and will then be fast-tracked by one
means or another
> into suitable areas of research and suitable personal supervision. This is
> what universities are really about and what they were originally about in
> Bologna, Paris and Oxford in the 11th century. So I think
universities will
> survive -- maybe to a tenth or twentieth the number they are now.
>
> Keith
>
>
>
>
>
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>
>
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