While I like the idea (and may have some students for you at some point), I expect the vast majority of students are going to college in no small part for four years of partying. One cynic noted that as expensive as college is, it is cheaper per hour than Coachella. To be immersed in a vast sea of hook-up opportunities with fun parties for free almost every night - while parents and government pay for it! Some may also want career skills, a few may have intellectual interests, many want the prestige and credibility they get from "going to college," but even for most of those, Arnold Kling's political economy wisdom academy can't compete with respect to dating opportunities and alcohol-lubricated social interactions.
It is not an accident that lists of "Top Party Schools" are available for students to decide where to go to get the education they really want. Music festivals and clubbing are expensive, you have to pay for it yourselves, and most of the people are strangers; but you can get federal student loans to go to college where you can walk to all the parties from your dorm room. 80% of college students drink and about half have engaged in binge drinking (5 or more drinks in two hours) in the past two weeks.
Binge drinking is higher among college students than non-college students the same age. Some observers describe college as "situational alcoholism," where students drink heavily during college then go back to more normal consumption patterns when they leave.
It always strikes me as charming when people believe students go to college to get an education.
It may already be happening from the bottom up. See for example, projects like the Millerman School. Michael Millerman is a philosopher who was chased out of academia for his heterodox interests and seems to be able to charge good money for lecture series on philosophers and philosophical works. Substack is the the journalistic analogue but there's no reason it couldn't include more focused educational products.
George Saunders, a short story writer has a substack https://georgesaunders.substack.com/ where he runs a "class" on writing short stories. I've been following it. He has a lot of interesting material and does a good bit of interaction with commenters. This isn't exactly your model but I'm curious as to how it will unfold.
This is a better model. Almost all of the administration in this model would be handled by software. So much of the cost of the current model is bound up with the facilities, the student life fluff, and administration. This would even be a better model for Continuing Legal Education (CLE), which right now is a decidedly mixed bag that tends towards paying a fee, watching a video, and checking a box.
Why isn't Coursera already a model for this? The issue is credentialism - no degree.
So far.
Texas and/or Florida should have some way of "testing" that is equivalent to a "college degree" in terms of education, similar to GED for High School.
In Slovakia, most college courses are tested by giving a set of 10-50 quite hard questions that the students are supposed to study for - and in the exam they are asked 2-5 of these questions and must respond orally. While some can luck out by studying just a few questions, most study all the questions and do reasonably well.
For every subject, there might be some 1000 questions that could be asked, and have the students take such tests and get scored. Testing and Scoring are what the colleges are supposed to do, that can't yet be replaced for "education".
Networking and friendships are what really counts, so far. Michael Strong's note on dating and partying, at tax-payer's expense (? sort of; not yet fully but that's a Dem goal), is a further reason the current college system is terrible.
He doesn't mention that along with dates goes sex - lots of peer pressure to be sexually active.
It might be true, as I believe, that high IQ folk can have MORE good marriages after being sexually promiscuous than low IQ folk. That means accepting a national norm of parties and sex is damaging, or at least very sub-optimal, for the non-college based majority, even if such sexual liberty is optimal for the college folk.
My model considers a norm that varies between "optimal for non-college folk" or "optimal for college folk". Our society seems to be choosing the college optimum but should be choosing the non-college optimal norm.
One hurdle for the Substack of Academia is how self-appointed faculty can develop reputations worthy of attracting students at reasonably remunerative rates of compensation. It can be done but getting from square 1 to a reputable position will be time consuming and costly, not dissimilar to graduate students earning their anointments / appointments from, well, their professors. How can the Substack Academy jump start itself? Perhaps people from other walks of life want to change or broaden their careers and have substantial reputations at the outset, like Peter Thiel. But that is an obstacle for newly minted tutors.
While I like the idea (and may have some students for you at some point), I expect the vast majority of students are going to college in no small part for four years of partying. One cynic noted that as expensive as college is, it is cheaper per hour than Coachella. To be immersed in a vast sea of hook-up opportunities with fun parties for free almost every night - while parents and government pay for it! Some may also want career skills, a few may have intellectual interests, many want the prestige and credibility they get from "going to college," but even for most of those, Arnold Kling's political economy wisdom academy can't compete with respect to dating opportunities and alcohol-lubricated social interactions.
It is not an accident that lists of "Top Party Schools" are available for students to decide where to go to get the education they really want. Music festivals and clubbing are expensive, you have to pay for it yourselves, and most of the people are strangers; but you can get federal student loans to go to college where you can walk to all the parties from your dorm room. 80% of college students drink and about half have engaged in binge drinking (5 or more drinks in two hours) in the past two weeks.
https://www.una.edu/manesafety/Alcohol%20Brochures/Collegefactsheet.pdf
Binge drinking is higher among college students than non-college students the same age. Some observers describe college as "situational alcoholism," where students drink heavily during college then go back to more normal consumption patterns when they leave.
It always strikes me as charming when people believe students go to college to get an education.
It may already be happening from the bottom up. See for example, projects like the Millerman School. Michael Millerman is a philosopher who was chased out of academia for his heterodox interests and seems to be able to charge good money for lecture series on philosophers and philosophical works. Substack is the the journalistic analogue but there's no reason it couldn't include more focused educational products.
George Saunders, a short story writer has a substack https://georgesaunders.substack.com/ where he runs a "class" on writing short stories. I've been following it. He has a lot of interesting material and does a good bit of interaction with commenters. This isn't exactly your model but I'm curious as to how it will unfold.
This is a better model. Almost all of the administration in this model would be handled by software. So much of the cost of the current model is bound up with the facilities, the student life fluff, and administration. This would even be a better model for Continuing Legal Education (CLE), which right now is a decidedly mixed bag that tends towards paying a fee, watching a video, and checking a box.
Why isn't Coursera already a model for this? The issue is credentialism - no degree.
So far.
Texas and/or Florida should have some way of "testing" that is equivalent to a "college degree" in terms of education, similar to GED for High School.
In Slovakia, most college courses are tested by giving a set of 10-50 quite hard questions that the students are supposed to study for - and in the exam they are asked 2-5 of these questions and must respond orally. While some can luck out by studying just a few questions, most study all the questions and do reasonably well.
For every subject, there might be some 1000 questions that could be asked, and have the students take such tests and get scored. Testing and Scoring are what the colleges are supposed to do, that can't yet be replaced for "education".
Networking and friendships are what really counts, so far. Michael Strong's note on dating and partying, at tax-payer's expense (? sort of; not yet fully but that's a Dem goal), is a further reason the current college system is terrible.
He doesn't mention that along with dates goes sex - lots of peer pressure to be sexually active.
It might be true, as I believe, that high IQ folk can have MORE good marriages after being sexually promiscuous than low IQ folk. That means accepting a national norm of parties and sex is damaging, or at least very sub-optimal, for the non-college based majority, even if such sexual liberty is optimal for the college folk.
My model considers a norm that varies between "optimal for non-college folk" or "optimal for college folk". Our society seems to be choosing the college optimum but should be choosing the non-college optimal norm.
One hurdle for the Substack of Academia is how self-appointed faculty can develop reputations worthy of attracting students at reasonably remunerative rates of compensation. It can be done but getting from square 1 to a reputable position will be time consuming and costly, not dissimilar to graduate students earning their anointments / appointments from, well, their professors. How can the Substack Academy jump start itself? Perhaps people from other walks of life want to change or broaden their careers and have substantial reputations at the outset, like Peter Thiel. But that is an obstacle for newly minted tutors.
Clarifying question - is this meant to be a complementary or substitute good to existing higher ed system?
Sign me up.
For those without degrees, would you award one?
Sounds good.