Dickinson State U. President Is Asked to Resign Over Enrollment Padding

Management in Higher Education is outmoded and out-of-step with our changing world and this is a typical example. It is because higher education was built for “perpetuation” and not “innovation.”  Higher Education’s management has been perpetuating the same dysfunctions over the last 100 years which is leading to its own demise. Higher Education is far too valuable to allow itself to die a corrupt death. Higher Education needs people with the “courage and character,” i.e. the leadership to stand up and challenge the perpetual status quo.  Higher Education has created a workforce of unimaginative, timid, co-dependents whose wasted energy on their own self-serving careers has lead us to this corrupt and dysfunctional state of affairs. I visualize a future workplace environment that is more ethical and less mercenary, more brave and less fearful, a climate where contributions count more than credentials, where every idea has a chance to be realized on equal footing regardless of position or title, an environment that is more energizing and less stultifying! I believe this change will not come from central administration or from one individual but from a group of individuals from the courageous worker fringe who are willing stand up to the status quo and provide solutions that are more democratic, more ethical, and most of all, serve the greater good more effectively quided by principles of transparency and accountability.  It’s time we all become more responsible for our culture and its future.  We need to build higher education organizations, as Gary hamel says, that are “built for the future and built for human beings!”

Is it merely a rip-off of Anne-Wil Harzing’s Publish or Perish?

Very empowering.

It has many more indexes than the usual h-index.  Best of all, it’s free.  I use it all the time.

Online is not teaching, it is presentation and recitation.

excellent platform to share with the whole world! 

We live in exciting times, having the opportunity to lead and design what the future looks
like. We are members of a digital citizenry and social media is the future of Higher Education. Please design responsibly.

Yes, teaching has not changed much because new “technologies of learning” have only been around for decades or less. Of course, there is always going to be a place for traditional teaching and learning but brick and mortar institutions simply won’t exist or function in the same way. Distance or location is becoming more and more irrelevant and the synergies and collaborations that can come about through distance-insenstive instruction have a big upside. Sure, we can find plenty of negatives if we try but we can find those at present as well. I believe traditional education is about to roll off a 2,500 year long table.

I have no problem with taking education in modern technology, computers, etc. into these new realms, it seems natural; but as a Humanities professor I worry that administrators will try to emulate this in fields where direct discussion and personal feedback is the only meaningful avenue of instruction.  I can give a great lecture to 100,000 people through electronic media (just as one can make a great documentary for the Discovery Channel), but how do you grade 100,000 papers?  And maybe the technical people out there could comment on just how a computer program is evaluated…I took a few semesters of programming back in the 80s, and the professors did more than just see if the program would run, they evaluated things like efficiency, elegance of design, clever modularization–are these things going to be addressed?

Final concern for Prof. Thrun: how many times can you give a course to 500,000 students before you run out of students?

It depends on the university and their explicit policies as to who “owns” course materials for online courses. I have taught several online courses for the past 15+ years and my university owns the materials that I use online unless they have been previously copyrighted by me.     

There are those who believe grades from tests and homework are worthless as an intelligence/compentency indicator and you should only be judged on your demonstrated abilities.  It is one thing to say I took a class on creating a search engine and got an A, but it is another to say to an employer, ’here is my search engine and here is how it works’.  The employer will then get to judge if it “works” or not as well as if you actually created the work yourself by asking you questions about it.

The work world seems to be slowly moving away from obessing on grades and transcripts and putting focus on exactly what can you do for me an prove it by showing me and answering my questions. 

To better phrase your concern, the question that deserves to be asked is ‘How do you mentor and give help to a million students at one time?’  Or are they just going to be left to their own devices?  If left to their own devices, then it is no different than going to a library and reading a book on the subject, which is not a bad thing.  Then there is no need to worry about evaluating student work, test scores, nor does it matter about confirming identity.  You will solely be judged on demonstrating your abilities.

Ben Franklin was a strong advocate of self-taught education but also included that you needed learned mentors to help guide you in your studies and to keep you grounded in reality.

A faculty member at Stanford does research, and gets grants, or s/he does not get tenure.  There is no such thing as a “tenured teaching position” at a major university. Teaching is not a major activity of STEM faculty at big universities, getting grant money is what is important.    Do you mean that he is now paid on a grant, and doesn’t have to teach anymore?

 Get your facts straight, people!  How can you provide useful advice, or interesting news items, if you don’t even know how universities are organized?  

Also, if the guy is/was/ kind of still is/ a Stanford faculty member, he has the terminal degree in his field, which would mean that he is not a “Mr.”