Is the Web the Future of Education?

Posted At : September 27, 2010 3:55 PM | Posted By : AnyCollege.com
Related Categories: advice for college students, assumptions, admissions, college experience, new ideas, web posts, choosing colleges

According to Bill Gates it is. Don't discount this college drop-out, he makes some really logical points in this article. He believes that you should get credit for the knowledge you gain no matter where you obtained it from.

“Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world,” Gates said at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA. “It will be better than any single university.”

Gates is a visionary, but I have a hard time believing that a Fortune 500 company is going to hire you because you have watched 100 online lectures in your free time from Harvard's web site. I also believe, for right or wrong, that it is going to be longer than 5 years before hiring managers view the knowledge you obtained from Wikipedia to be equal to a degree you could have earned elsewhere. But, the knowledge on the Internet seems nearly limitless, so I can see where Gates is coming from on this. Perhaps gates should put his thoughts into action and start Bill Gates Online University. He certainly has the means to do so.

This is a really good article and well worth the read. The full article can be found at TechCrunch. To find a school where you can obtain all the knowledge your heart desires, visit AnyCollege.com.

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I would would certainly hire a web educated employee if there was a proper way to document and quantify the education. They would certainly come at a much cheaper price than an IVY league grad.

# Posted By Chris | 10/7/10 3:48 PM

I do agree that information will be free on the internet. This is part of the reason that universities and university instructors need to become, even more than they already are, facilitators of processes. Service learning engagements provide a way to combine the needs of the student, the institution and the community to provide educational engagements that can not be matched by an online lecture.

# Posted By Lonny | 10/7/10 5:23 PM

Ten years out of grad school now, and I can tell you I would bet against this, heavily. The key thing that the dropout is missing is that a huge and invaluable chunk of the learning you do in college is not in the classroom. I'm not talking about the boozed-up "college experience" that parents drone on about, I'm talking about personal growth.

You learn how to live with people, away from your parents. You learn how to manage time and money. You learn how to socialize and make new friends. You learn how to communicate, how to speak and write. You learn WHY you have spent so much time learning. and most importantly, you learn how to learn.

# Posted By Collegeguy | 10/7/10 6:56 PM

But look at the trend of business, it too is becoming less and less personal. More and more jobs are being done remotely, less traveling, less office space. There's something to be said for the people who have this "virtual life" experience...for many people it's easier to express themselves behind an LCD.

# Posted By Chris | 10/8/10 4:49 PM

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