Is the education industry overbuilt? With the elimination of jobs that will never be replaced

[CK_John]

will higher education be replaced by online make believe universities?
IMO, higher ed will shrink by 75-80% in the next decade, The only thing holding them together is their sports programs.

[lumberjack_jeff]

1. No. It's a growth industry.

They're the gatekeepers between a person with skills and the resume scanning software.

If your resume doesn't have their seal of approval, you don't get an interview.

[CK_John]

2. It's now a matter of volume, how many bodies vs number of jobs. nt

[nebenaube]

3. Higher education shouldn't be about getting a job...

It should be about creating your own.

[JDPriestly]

4. No. An important advantage of an on-campus university

education is social. Not only do students connect with others their ages and become socially independent of their families but in some of the better schools, they meet people who will, later, be important in their careers and family lives.

A university is among many other things, a mating ground (sounds awful but that is where a lot of people meet their future spouses) and a place where people learn social skills. In particular, the university experience is very important for the top students some of whom would live isolated lives as nerdish hermits were it not for the social experience of a college or university. This is especially true of some of the best technical schools.

Don't underestimate the importance of this for a lot of people, especially high school misfits and loners.

Speaking from experience.

On edit, we used to hear that television would kill the movie industry. That was over 50 years ago. Hasn't happened yet, although the internet may kill TV as we know it.

And -- editing again -- it is likely that on-line courses will be a means through which people continue education throughout life -- off an on -- as they wish, when they have time and for a variety of reasons.

[CK_John]

5. I agree with you as to their function, I just questin their volume. How many are really needed????

[JDPriestly]

10. Apparently we need a lot more on-campus classes in California.

I hear from students, parents and professors at all levels of post-high-school education that kids cannot get the classes they need. Again, corporations and the wealthy don't pay the taxes needed to support the good public universities and other infrastructure -- and invest in private, corporate, on-line schools and pseudo-schools for profit. It is shameful.

University education should encourage free thought, creative thought. For-profit on-line schools would have a conflict of interest and would be shunned by their investors if they really promoted free thinking.

I think on-line schools are only good for vocational-type training, not for the challenging, thought-provoking, intellectual training that students need during their college years.

If you don't study a bit of philosophy and literature and hone your English writing and research skills at a university in which you participate in late-night dorm discussions and get real, human, social interaction in your classes, you will become an intellectual stone. We don't need intellectual stones in our country. We need creative people.

Technical skills can be learned on the job, and accounting and other intellectually less creative tasks can be mastered on-line. But if you are going to be a lawyer or a doctor, you need the competition and discussion and real-life experience of the classroom not some computerized program or a taped lecture. Even internet interactive lectures cannot replace the immediacy and pressure of participating in classroom discussion or attending a live lecture. It's totally different.

I say that as one who completed a lot of required professional continuing education on-line. The courses were fine, but I got very bored. I did not get nearly as much out of those courses as I get out of attending courses with human lecturers or discussion.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

7. Bingo on continuing ed. I work in the field and our students for online classes tend to be...

...those that can't fit a regular F2F class into their schedule due to the kinds of responsibilities that come with an adult life. The average age of college students is rising, pushed in great part by the even older average age of online students.

[bighughdiehl]

6. They will keep....

propagandizing people into old-fashioned higher education.
Don't worry, the new scam online Us(Devry, Phoenix)
will serve their place alongside the old colleges
in making sure their are as many $9/hr wage slaves
with student loan debt as possible. Indebted wage slaves
are the corporate elite's wet dream.

[saras]

8. It depends completely on whether we continue down the fascist path or not

If we do, higher education for the public is unnecessary and will be discontinued entirely, while the structure will be used for corporate training. Expensive private schools and universities are sufficient for the wealthy.

Or we could turn things around, and end up with a LARGER educational system, but one that is less monolithic and more responsive to communities.

Online doesn't work. Or, to be more accurate, it works just about exactly as well as TV learning does.

[RadiationTherapy]

9. Yes, absolutely. The sharing, thinking, and teaching of information must be democratized.

I have worked for a university library for over a decade and there is much waste, bureaucracy, and ego involved that the model is collapsing on itself. There are some virtues to face to face teaching that can and ought to be available and affordable, but much can be taught using educational technology as well. And, yes, that includes critical thinking. Ed. Tech. does not preclude human to human education.