Thanks Steve, I'm glad you changed the header of this one as it's THE most important discussion WE can have. This belief of being able to change a fundamentally flawed (education) system by competition is possibly the thing which retains the status quo. Your logic is that "user pays" so a better educational institution enables users to change the flawed system by voting with their feet.
Students don't have money, so can't pay, so they can't fix the flaws (or corruptions in the case of much of the developing world. E.g. A teaching job at a high school in Thailand costs around 100,000 baht if you don't have teaching credentials. (according to my informed source here). If you use the Greek experience, where public jobs are guaranteed by the constitution, you'd understand why they're now reducing retired teachers' pensions by 30%. The same lesson is coming for the rest of the world next year. Unis, as the bastions of Research and (H)Education can now be seen to be another bureaucractic arm of governments, who have short term committments. So I'd argue that it's not that one country's (H)E system is fundamentally flawed, it's that they all are to some degree. (excuse the pun) I'll use the OEF Logic Model as an illustration. The model points to "credentials" as the system's output. Logically, if the system worked correctly, these credentials would be attuned to prepare a student for a job (leaving out any appreciation of aethestics which they might gain). These days they, to an rapidly increasing degree, don't. I'm monitoring the unemployment stats of graduates; Spain, where it's close to 50%, appears to lead this down hill race. But you can see the rampant credentialism in most parts of the world. E.g. a Masters for a call centre operator in Bangalore, a PhD for their manager. You might know the number of grads at Starbucks. I think you, Jim and your progressive global peers have a fundamental role to play in all of this. Primarily as you have the technical knowledge and artistic appreciation (interface design) AND drive to understand what might be possible if the "fire-wall" didn't stop at the institutional ones. You only have to look at Internet2's communities to see the push going on, and questions like this being asked. https://blogs.internet2.edu/archives/123 I know that there is really no such thing as an Institutional "human firewall". I joked to my friend (from an NREN) who said it, "bit like you and the other National firewalls, eh?". The term is "gatekeepers" in the librarians' communities. It's a prob handling this paradigm shift. Everyone has to take a step up. Institutional>National>International, while still retaining their sense of community/identity. Thanks goodness WE have that. All the best, si. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to wikieducator@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to wikieducator-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
