I have been reading about an educational alternative to spending four years at a $60,000-per-year university that spends little time actually educating students and more time trying to mollify those student crybabies who feel “unsafe,” or “victimized,” because the school didn’t protect them from opinions different from their own.
The educational alternative is called Massive Online Open Courses, or MOOCs, which are affordable (sometimes free) online courses ranging from liberal arts, to science, mathematics, engineering and technology. Most of these courses are taught by accredited university professors, and the head of one MOOC, Coursera, is Rick Levin, the former president of Yale University (where, last October, a Yale faculty member resigned rather than apologize to students upset that she thinks they should decide for themselves how to dress up on Halloween).
Of course, MOOCs are in the early stages of development. They are beginning to award certificates attesting to a student’s mastery of a field of study, but presently anyone with a college diploma seeking a job has a better chance of getting one if that diploma comes from an established university such as Yale, MIT, or Harvard, rather than MOOC schools such as Coursera, Udacity, or edX.
But that could change, and if I am a parent looking at spending $50 to $60 grand a year to put junior or my baby girl through college — over four years that’s $200 – $240 grand — I’d research MOOCs, not only because they are more affordable, but also because they provide an education that gives my kids a marketable skill. Today’s college curriculum is replete with women’s studies, black studies, Asian studies, Native-American studies, etc., all of which may be fun to master, but not many companies are hiring workers with that expertise, which is one reason why so many college graduates are back living with mom and dad.
Ditto if I have to take out student loans to pay for college. Today total student debt in America is $1.3 trillion dollars, and 15- 20 percent of college students have defaulted on their loans. So if I am saddled with thousands of dollars of student-loan debt, I damn well want a degree that prospective employers are interested in.
Together with medical care, higher education is now the most inflationary field in America, in part because those $50 – $60 grand tuitions are paying for high salaries and perks for college administrators (including country club memberships), plus an army of new staffers charged with protecting the tender sensibilities and fragile psyches of the school’s student body. Two examples are the staff of Columbia University’s “Multicultural Affairs Advisory Board” and at Tennessee University’s “Office for Diversity and Inclusion.”
You won’t find either at any MOOC.
