We all like to wear many hats, but I wonder whether in the future research and journalism won’t be standard skills that every person learns regardless of their profession? Today, a person can claim that they are one or the other, largely because knowledge is still locked up in ‘ivory towers’. Or at least, we still perceive this to be the case, and the perception defines the narrative.
But the Internet is rapidly altering how information works, what businesses are viable and what qualifies as a profession. I first noticed this tendency while watching Part III, Chapter 7 of the Frontline documentary News War a few years ago. The documentary discussed how the meaning of news and journalism is being challenged by new media, and how the Internet is killing old media, including a discussion of how websites like Craigslist and Monster.com were killing newspapers by drawing classified listings online. This trend has continued into the present, with a recent report for the US Congress published last year stating that between 2008-2010, eight major American newspapers went bankrupt (also due to the financial crisis) and observing that:
Vin Crosbie, a noted Syracuse University professor and consultant, has predicted that more than half of the approximately 1,400 daily newspapers in the country could be out of business by the end of the next decade.
What does this have to do with education? Simply put, what is true with newspapers is true for the entire economy of information. The Internet translates each information medium into a cheaper, more consolidated form. And it often does this for free.
So telephony moves from traditional phone lines to VOIP applications like Skype. Print encyclopaedias are virtually obsolete, and the much-maligned Wikipedia is about as accurate as Britannica, and you can see sources of information. Book publication is moving from print to e-readers and tablet PCs, and public domain books are free for download. Amazon, EBay and their like threaten the very existence of department stores, allowing shoppers to rate both merchandise and sellers, pay competitive prices and even have goods delivered to your doorstep.
The new media juggernaut is also effecting television, movies, music, magazines, travel agencies, postal services … the list goes on and on. Thus because of the Internet, a vast part of the global economy is being converged online even as the products it sold become cheaper and more diverse. I argue that this represents the slow, long-term demonetisation of all information.
Although recent research by the McKinsey Global Institute indicated that the Internet has created 2.4 jobs for every one it destroys, I find it hard to imagine how that will remain true in the years to come as newspapers, book stores, post offices the entire universe of information converts to digital or falls before it (see the recent demise of Borders Books and Music). The long-term trend seems to be that all information should and will be free (at least for the consumer) and ever more diverse. That includes a university education.
Said a blog by Adrian Hon:
We have a romantic ideal of universities being places of higher education where students absorb knowledge, skills and critical thinking…. We’re wrong. The simple fact is that university lectures never worked that well in the first place…. In fact, the success of top universities, both now and historically, is in spite of lectures, not because of it. … Anyone online can now watch thousands of world-class lectures whenever they want.
And later…
…if universities are going to cost over £7,000 a year, students should think very hard about whether they’re getting value for money.
Indeed. MIT, Harvard, and the rest of the Ivy League offer thousands of university lectures online. These lectures are not limited to the humanities and other soft sciences. There are also highly technical subjects. The Khan Academy, a non-profit website “…with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere” includes hundreds of topics, including Calculus, Chemistry, Trigonometry and Physics.
What this means, to my mind, is this: students no longer buy an education from a university. Whereas in the past a university had a monopoly on knowledge distribution (the ivory tower), today prestigious universities provide thousands of lectures for free. Why? The same reason we ask ourselves what the public is buying with the tax revenue it devotes to universities: the social contract. It’s good public relations for those educational institutions that already have money. It’s not as if the Harvard alumni network isn’t worth the tuition, so who cares if the lectures are free to the capite censi? Plus, as Mr. Hon observes later in his blog, its personal contact hours and knowledge application that actually result in learning, and which are so vital to the university experience. Remember this question of whether journalism and research won’t simply become sets of skills that EVERYONE acquires? If anyone can watch any lecture and access any set of course resources, why not?
Universities do not sell education: they certify it. Tuition buys a certified transcript of educational experiences that demonstrate a person’s pool of knowledge as witnessed by qualified academics. We call it a degree, and it represents the careful oversight of an individual’s development over a long period of time. Plus, universities are great places to grow and try new experiences between home life and career.
I’m not sure what this means for the definition of a university, but it’s most certainly good for students. What is more, just as lectures are open to the public (and does that mean we are all students now, whether we pay tuition or not?) researchers are being empowered by social networks, and not just Facebook and LinkedIn. ResearchGate is a social network for scientists that allows users to create a profile, assemble an online publication library, review other’s research, create groups, share documents and conduct semantic searches of both uploaded researcher publications and (according to Wikipedia) external research databases, “…including PubMed, CiteSeer, arXiv, NASA library and others…” There are also other social networking sites for scientists and researchers, including Academia.edu and Epernicus.
If anyone can join a social network for researchers, does that change the definition of a researcher? Really, if anyone can upload research papers and potentially have them reviewed by qualified peers, does that mean a person can become a ‘researcher’ without making their way through the rigors of a PhD and navigating the politics of a research institute? In how many ways can new media test the borders of university credentialism?
