Comments for AfterWord

Comment on The Liberal Arts Come to China by James Allworth

James Allworth — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 15:42:00 +0000

You’ve mischaracterized what Clay says. He’s not advocating everyone being like Harvard, or that private is any better than public:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/17/christensen.colleges/index.html

And as for a flourishing academic realm, that’s great – we all benefit from the public good. But why are students – the ones who really are least able to pay – being forced to subsidize the rest of us for the benefits that we derive from your academic realm? This isn’t about profits, it’s about making education affordable for them. Research and teaching are separate and distinct.

The basis of disruption is not preserving the best of what is, it’s about replacing it with something as good or almost as good but doing so at a fraction of the cost… and if that does happen, learning is going to be opened up to a lot more people than relative lucky few that can attend college right now.

The irony of all this is that regardless of what you say, this is going to happen. It’s already starting to – the old world institutions are going to fall and they’re going to be replaced.

Comment on The Liberal Arts Come to China by knowledgenotebook

knowledgenotebook — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 21:04:00 +0000

Christensen is a genius. He’s able to see through messy educational system with clarity, not many educators possess this capability.

And in terms of learning, how many students and educators are able to crystallize it into three categories and their respective learning function:
1. Facts / key events (rote memorization)
2. Critical Concepts (comprehension) // complex reasoning at graduate and PhD level…
3. Thorem, equations, formulas etc. hard science (RM, C and tons of Practice)

Comment on The Liberal Arts Come to China by rvandeza

rvandeza — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 15:12:00 +0000

There was nothing mentioned about the increasing costs of university administration. There have a few articles in the Chronicle about this topic. It appears that this is a large part of the problem of rising costs. Our university president was just granted a 25% bonus from the Board of Trustees, over a $100,000 bonus. The universities are pushing out the purpose of academia and replacing it with managers.