I would love to start by talking about learning and teaching (you know, pedagogy) and everything else that inspires me, but there is something rather inescapable that I must considered first.
Higher education, by definition and tradition an exclusive type of education, is not free. Free as in free beer, and free as in freely accessible.
No person shall be denied the right to education
... claimed in 1952 the European Convention on Human Rights (notice the negative framing).
In 1966 the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) stated
Higher education shall be made equally accessible to all on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means, and in particular by the progressive introduction of free education.
The UK government ratified this in 1976.
A few decades later, there is no sign of progression. Rather, a regression to an expensive and exclusive higher education system.
While education budgets are shrank and tuition fees are increased, for a generation adulthood starts by plunging into a financial debt that will dictate many of their future choices.
It is no surprise that a value-for-money rhetoric has become a common way of measuring educational offer. To many prospective students (and their families) the leading question becomes
Is a degree worth the debt?
... rather than, say, What fuels me? or What would I like to become?
Universities responded by adopting (more or less subtly) a student-as-customer model. The UK consumer rights bill, which applies to universities, is scheduled to become law by 2015.
Higher education institutions are meant to be places of ideas, ideals and academic excellence, but as businesses competing in the edu marketplace they also need to attract young people willing and able to pay up to £9k per year, plus accommodation and living expenses.
What happens when we frame students as paying customers, and they see themselves as consumers?
Let's imagine. (I'm making this thought experiment because it starts to become hard to envision a different system and talk about alternative metaphors.)
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As a business, a university is primarily concerned with recruiting paying customers. That is the point of sale.
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As a customer, a university student subscribes to a 3 years plan, to be renewed annually.
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At the end of the contract, the customer will be awarded by the institution a certificate of attendance and achievement. This degree certificate is no guarantee of future employment, however it is highly valued by many customers, their families and their future employers.
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Degree certificates are only awarded upon completion of the 3 years contract.
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As they approach the end of the contract, customers may be less likely to stop their yearly subscription, even if they are overall not satisfied with the service they are receiving.
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As a customer, a student needs money to spend. Given that (most of) her time is contractually devoted to the university subscription, her spending must be on credit. This is usually provided by bank loans specifically designed for students: easy credit (or, from the other perspective, debt accumulation) for the duration of the university subscription, which must be repaid after the contract ends, regardless of the acquisition of a degree certificate.
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As a customer, a student uses private loans to advance and sustain the costs of their years at university, effectively turning their subscription into a financial investment.
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As a customer, a prospective student will consider the risks of subscribing to degrees that may not pay off in the future. By this she means that certain unpractical degrees may not allow them to land jobs that enable their future selves to repay the loans.
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As a customer, a student (and her family) may consider her university subscription as a status symbol. I go to university because I can afford it [tension between aspirations and reality]
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As a customer, a struggling student is a business problem
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As a customer, a student can expect to receive a service (education as a commodity)
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As a customer, a student can demand her money back in case she's not satisfied with the education she purchased. What kind of model of the learner does a money-back guarantee imply?
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As a customer, a student would logically want to select the courses and teachers she's going to be taught, rather than be given a "package" (if students had the right to select the best teachers, that would be truly empowering.. and I agree with that outside of this thought experiment)
Remember the university degree as canned food in supermarket campaign that I designed in 2003? What was I thinking?
accreditation: interesting word, seems to be derived from the language of the market
Should the market decide who goes to university?
According to the government, the short answer is yes. It's interesting to notice how the name for the department responsible for funding higher education has shifted from Department of Education and Science (1964) to Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (2009)
Universities and research have come more and more under the aegis of bodies whose primary concerns are business, trade and employment... universities are treated primarily as contributors to economic growth.
Under the pressure of reduced budgets and of private competition (see MOOCs and bootcamps), many institutions respond by adopting a student as customer model.
Should universities consider students as paying customers? If yes, what do such customers value? What does a university sell? What is the role of teachers, if their employer becomes a supermarket of knowledge of sorts?
Learning is not a commodity you can trade, and it clearly is not something you can do on behalf of someone else.
To me, the student as customer is an ill-fitted model, which can only bring universities to lose the race with other players in the edu market.
But this is not a rhetoric dissertation, the fact is students (and their families) are getting into huge debt by choosing university. Whilst our long-term goal should be to provide accessible (possibly free) education to everyone who deserves it, what should we do in the current situation?
Compared to most other university subjects, the Web is like a young and immature child. A rapidly evolving field.
Presents opportunities (lots of free resources, communities of learners and practitioners) and risks (isolating people, intangible results)
Web literacy: it's not just about code. Learning how to (re)search and evaluate information, how to contribute to open knowledge, how to communicate..
Computing is not just a science, it's a way of solving problems. Computational thinking is about people first.
I am a teacher and communicator, no wait, I'm an educational technologist.
I work with learners of all ages and walks of life, from primary school kids to adults, from university students to corporate leaders.
I train learners to use technology (in particular, Web technologies) creatively, to become makers rather than consumers.
I am a coach, not a lecturer (but my job role sez..?).
- I'm not in the business of "learning XYZ for you".
- Help you understand how you can solve your own problems (Tony Robbins: help you find the weeds, but it's your job to pull them out)
- Expand their creative toolbox
- Inspire confidence
- Help them discover their potential and craft their ideas.
- Help them overcome fears of learning
- Unpack complex concepts into edible chunks
- Help them plan and manage their time
- Create a professional work ethic
- Help them want to do better, to believe that they can
I am a technologist, not a technician. I'm not in the business of "doing XYZ for you". I'm in the business of defining your problem, designing a solution together and
I don't want to use the word "help", instead: push, motivate, encourage, empower, enable
critical thinking, professional disruptors
Teaching often feels like designing a computer program: you have to create solid systems and then set up situations for other people to engage with those systems in meaningful and creative ways. It's like writing software for those highly interactive and unpredictable hardware known as students. Much more fun that testing your stuff on computers.
- My teaching approach: open-source, practice-based, challenge-based, lots of tutorials, pair programming, metacognition, constructivist learning.
Teaching is where I start to develop my thoughts, conceptual tools, and methodologies and is the arena where I verify my findings.
Develop personal trust with the learners, be genuinely interested in their learning goals and more broadly in them as people. They're seeking your approval. Seek opportunities to find out who they are.
Imagine for a minute you're an alien who just landed in the UK and wish to find out how human beings learn the most complex skills.
My problem with this way of seeing education as a product, is that it reduces learning to a commodity. It also devalues the role of collaboration, reframing the student - teacher relationship as customer - shop assistant.
Why exactly do people (still) go to university, if it's such a risky choice?
This question is particularly relevant for design universities, which don't offer the legal weight of other degree certificates (compare that with a medicine degree, for instance).
How effective is it to spread your learning over such a long period, often with little "real-world" feedback and at a de-facto part-time pace (many students work shifts to pay their fees)? Can you learn the same skills by taking a bootcamp, making work experience and/or following online courses (MOOCs)?
With a general push towards STEM subjects, what's the role of a design course?
Many universities may appear as conservative institutions resting on historical laurels, reluctant to innovate and struggling to keep the pace of the industries which they supposedly serve as educational gatekeepers.
So what's the role of a university teacher in this scenario?
Whilst in an ideal world merit (intelligence, academic achievement etc.) may be the criteria to define who gets into higher education, increasingly the deciding factor is money.
If you look at the figures, higher education is an expensive long-term investment.
Who can afford and is willing to spend ten grand a year over three or more years to obtain a degree certificate that is not guarantee of employment?
A teacher is a guide, able to point learners in different directions and refocus their attention.