Statement from Provost Scott Scarborough to the faculty senate in September about the future of Ohio universities.
The regional excellence is the minimum threshold that we need to hold ourselves to, especially in an environment where we don’t even know how many state universities are going to survive in the next ten or twenty years. We have to prepare for the possibility that eventually there will be fewer numbers of state universities, and if there’s only going to be one in the region I will prefer to be that one.
I think at one time, there would have been a significant faction that would prefer NOT to be that one. Now with the Medical school part of the University, I'm not sure that choice would remain. I'm fairly positive the University doesn't have the endowment to not be a state university.
If the implication is that other state universities would go away, think again. Lourdes, is thriving. So would I imagine a larger liberal arts school with the relatively low overhead a liberal arts college entails, compared to an Engineering school.
Damn scary outlook for our collective future! Taking a slow train to second rate and below.
Hopefully someone will be changing their name to: THE University of Ohio
The statement made by the Provost is essentially about online learning and how it will effect colleges. When you can take a free course from MIT taught by a Nobel Prize winner, why pay an increasing amount of money to attend a state school in Ohio? Google is building an online school, and there are many others. Some are totally at no cost.
I read an article about ten years ago by a former U of M president where he predicted that most of today's universities either would not exist in 30 years or they would be considerably smaller, specializing in areas like research, medicine and the sciences.
(11-24-2012 09:43 AM)DetroitRocket Wrote: [ -> ]The statement made by the Provost is essentially about online learning and how it will effect colleges. When you can take a free course from MIT taught by a Nobel Prize winner, why pay an increasing amount of money to attend a state school in Ohio? Google is building an online school, and there are many others. Some are totally at no cost.
I read an article about ten years ago by a former U of M president where he predicted that most of today's universities either would not exist in 30 years or they would be considerably smaller, specializing in areas like research, medicine and the sciences.
For one thing, that free course doesn't (yet?) deliver credits let alone responsive evaluation.
On-line has a long way to go in the way of teaching IMO. I've watched several of those videos and the Professors do not often exactly bring it to the audience and often the personality, which is what normally makes a course interesting, doesn't translate.
The for profit on-line systems are a long way from user friendly but they do out-source the expenses away from the Universities. Education will change but it unfortunately will not be the Universities that drive it. It will be the poorly designed private products that are already driving state mandates on "core curriculum," with the exception of one lone hold-out, Texas. The high road will not be taken here.
The Universities are being driven by a need to lower costs, even if quality goes with it. They need numbers in the classroom without added expense and on-line will accomplish that even if it means there is no longer such thing as a "University of ...." education.
On the other hand, there is a market developing here, something I would expect that Management Prof mentioned on another thread, to realize. On-line, free or for profit personalities are generally DULL and poorly produced. I expect there to be development of educational "personalities" much like the hucksters on cable tv. Maybe there will even be an annual red-carpet awards show specifically designed for them.
UT Communications/Business school can develop a curriculum around it and produce people designed to deliver educational product with personality. I don't think Education needs to be involved in it. They'd only get in the way.