As the academic year draws closer, I am getting antsy to start the semester. Not too antsy, since I haven’t yet hit the beach nor completed all my lectures for the upcoming semester, but I’m excited to meet the new class of graduate students, my new advisees, and get started on my second year of building my research group. All these thoughts revolve around the question “What is education?”
This time just before the academic year is also good for reflection on the role of education in students’ lives, and my role in the education system. To me, “education” includes not just instruction and student advising, but also and especially research direction. It just so happens that in the last couple of days, many articles have been coming to my attention about education and intellectual influence. Consider these:
“To Justify Every ‘A’ Some Professors Hand Over Grading Power to Outsiders”
“The Coming Education Revolution”
The question is, “What do we really want students to come away with?,” and “How do we as instructors evaluate ourselves and each other?” I don’t have good answers to either of these. The other question I’m deeply interested in is: “How do students learn?” [I can’t wait until I have time to address this one more systematically…]
I don’t think the Stanford/Google approach is the immediate solution, but I also don’t think outsourcing my grading is going to be helpful either. It will solve the grade inflation problem, but if evaluation is for me to also learn about and from my students, outsourcing is certainly not optimal. [But in an adversarial arrangement, it just may be…]
I think that everything I’ve read recently suggests that students are frustrated with what they see as the commodification of education. It’s not necessarily that students see education as a product; it’s more that often classroom instruction is not marked by any quality that could not be obtained anywhere else with little difference. Students perceive neither added value on the part of the instructor, nor added value in the individualization of content delivery. In other words, classroom education is now viewed as a generic good. Most importantly, students view education as a generic good with brand name pricing.
If education is a generic good, why shouldn’t all content be delivered online and all evaluation outsourced? If education is not a generic good, what is it that makes online and brick-and-mortar delivery complementary?
You may have noticed that I have not defended or rejected either point of view other than the ‘outsourced’ grading. This whole discussion has been more questions than answers for me. I think C. John Somerville has gone quite some ways in uncovering the underlying reason these questions exist, but I defer discussion of his thesis for another time.