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Can Information on the internet be both reliable and accessible?

Can the Internet's huge store of accurate information, including PubMed, Wikipedia and many other quality sources, substitute for a university curriculum?

  • The goal of Higher Ed is independent learning, where the motivated student can acquire and distill knowledge directly from a variety of sources.  By comparison, in k thru12 subjects are taught to students using designed curricula.  In graduate school the goal is even more advance than undergrad work - independent research. In this model, the skilled and inspiring university lecturer, admired by the student body at Stanford or Harvard, is highly purposed  “entertainment”  as motivated students will find their way without the superstar professor.  They can sleep thru class taught by “Dr. Glamorous.”    With all the online information available, including high quality tutorials, has the Universities’s role been upstaged?  Certainly Steve Jobs did not need it to learn computer science, Albert Einstein with physics, nor Bob Dillon with music.  Is it practical for a student to just formulate his or her own study path, pay no tuition, and seek to pass the GRE, or list study successes on a resume?  For the university experience the student could move to Palo Alto and hang out in coffee houses. Many students have 1 or 2 parents with doctorates, and they can provide guidance, if any is needed.  So can an appointed educator at a high school who can guide these students for years after high school graduation. More thoughts: The goals of a university experience are: o The degree itself o Class credits o High test scores on a GRE or similar test o Certifications that are required in some fields o A social network of students and faculty o Information gained outside of the formal curriculum that is unpublished - quite important o Success strategies upon graduation o the liberal arts program, or science for lib arts students. o The ability to perform self directed study and communication - research papers. o Non class activities such as intramural sports, college newspaper, etc. o Entertainment - this should not be minimized! College is exciting. o Other intangibles like the many inspirational faculty, students, and ideas Put together this is an amazing experience at a high ranked university, to be sure.  What are the costs? o $100,000 in student loans, or more o 4 years of work experience not obtained o 4 years of earnings not obtained o 4 years of time Is the university cost effective? There are no ability adjusted studies that I have seen that show universities to be cost effective.  The key idea - ability adjusted. What can be gained for free outside of a University? o High test scores on a GRE or similar test o Accomplished studies o Achievements - if you build an App, then you have achievement o Credits for knowledge gained elsewhere, this can accumulate towards a degree if that seems important o The ability to perform self directed study and communication o Focus on what is important to the student, without required classes.  This is a big deal if the university is requiring unimportant classes.  Physics once required Russian, and many schools required Latin. What can be gained ONLY outside of a University? o work experience from age 18 to 22. o An income advantage that the University degree might never pay back, studies to the contrary.  This might be especially true for Lib Art grads o Achievement during ones absolute prime years of 18 to 22 - think athletics, music performance, or the fashion industry o Studies that are not molded or structured by a university, which may have self deluding biases. See Einstein for that one. o Establishing a new industry while your mates are sitting in classes.  Apple and Microsoft.  What can not be gained outside a University? o Certifications - that is about it.  Summary With creativity and talent, nearly all of the aspects of the university can be gained without actual enrollment.  Hang with students and profs, follow the goings-on, etc, get the inside information. Many will think you are a student not currently enrolled.  But is this practical? Are you better off just enrolling? Its hard to duplicate the university experience without doing it for a while. A kid from a university town with two profs for parents might pull it off.  But will this be practical for everyone?

  • Answer:

    Personally I think it depends on how you learn best and what you are looking to accomplish. Are you good at teaching yourself things or do you learn better in a classroom environment? Do you have the ability to force yourself to sit down and learn things and do projects on your own or do you need someone to force you via assignments? What are you trying to get out of going to a university? Are you going just to learn stuff or are you going for the social experience? Does the field you're seeking to get a career in accept applicants that don't have degrees? You can learn all you want about the human body and medicine but you aren't going to become a doctor without school. The moral of the story is: I don't think it's a complete replacement for everybody, in every case, but I do see it as an alternative.

Terrence Keane at Quora Visit the source

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I think this a false dichotomy. It is certainly possible to educate oneself through a combination of the internet and a university library card, or a public library with interlibrary loan privileges. For example, this site: http://www-01.sil.org/pacific/png/ If you read every pdf paper attached there (warning, this will take years!) you will learn vastly more about Papuan languages than you would from any university curriculum at any level of instruction. PubMed is outside my field of expertise, but Wikipedia – well, the problem isn't that it's on the internet (see sil.png above,) that's actually a huge advantage, but that it's neither written from a scholarly perspective, nor is it reliable. Certainly I disgree with the phrase, "the internet's huge store of accurate information, including Wikipedia." If our only choice is between Wikipedia and a university curriculum, then the answer is an obvious "no." But it's also true that the possibilities of self-education are far greater than they were in the past. It boils down to access to books, self-descipline and interest. Maybe you're more likely to do the reading (and the right reading) if you pay someone to tell you to do it? But this is not medieval Europe where one needed to be at a university to have access to the books and to communicate with other scholars. Tim

Timothy Usher

No. It absolutely cannot. A degree is more than being exposed to knowledge. You are evaluated, guided, interact with peers, stressed beyond your comfort, etc.. I hate when people try to say that their at home or on the internet education is as good as they would have gotten at a university. It's delusional. Plus, the internet, MOOCs, forums, and especially Wikipedia, is not the goldmine of information people seem to think it is. There is a ton of important stuff you won't learn on the internet. If you want to learn a lot, pick up a book and read it. Better yet read it with a group of other people. Even better is if you can find an expert that will help you understand what you don't get, tell you what's most important, give you feedback on your progress, and give you good problems to think about oh your own. You won't get that on the internet. Einstein definitely went to university. Jobs sucked at computer science, and Bob Dylan started out playing with people he interacted with at college. Even if going to school were a less effective way to learn(it's not), meeting and interacting with other people is important. You don't get that as easily elsewhere.

Ryan Kinnear

Learning is the process to form a tool in your mind to approach things (event or activities). There are three type of final products of learning, namely, a meaning, a model and a method. A model is the general idea how the stuff works, why it exists and what you are going to with it is its meaning for you. A method is a chain, bunch or cluster of operations you can perform on (with - via ...) the subject. So there is an array of actions, which are diverse. And bunch of methods, models and meanings to perform them. Entire learning process, be it hands-on or theoretic depends on what action you want, ought or will to do ... Its a very very very complicated thing ... Finding truth about yourself as a modern citizen, societal forms of learning would be a good start. You can find the truth about what is attributed to learning nowadays through the lenses of modern world history. In my humble opinion, online - book - academic information is nowhere near to the knowledge of real skills and crafts of trade. They are theoreticians photo shoot of crafting trade materials  ( I am supposed to wink wink here ! )

Gediz Gursu

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