by grey matters 12 Replies latest jw friends
In a move to "democratize education" many top universities are now publishing class information online. Content can range from lecture notes to audio and video of lectures, assignments, and practice exams. The article I read was called "Yale for $0 a Day" and originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal. See the link below for the article. I think this is awesome!
http://articles.news.aol.com/business/_a/yale-on-0-a-day/20070215092809990008
Is it ever too late for college? I think that every day life consumes all of my time. Besides Armageddon is coming very soon.
Governments nowadays seem to favour adult learning which means no one should find it strange if people study at university at an age that is outside the traditional one (18 - 25). It's part of an overall policy of promoting learning because nowadays knowledge in society is perceived as being more useful for a country's economy than (money) capital. It's a knowledge based economy. And such prestigious universities are taking the lead!
Grey Matters:
This is a very appropriate link for this discussion group. Unfortunately most here will not click on your link.
The thing that strikes me is that the universities don't have to do that. Of course you can basically take the courses on line and get 0 certification but it also doesn't cost you anything. The point is the "knowledge is free". If a person WANTS knowledge - even an Ivy league level of education- they can get it.
Contrast this with the paranoid way the Watchtower makes their information available to the public. Jesus said "you receive free - give free". The Watchtower could put ALL their information on the internet. They could put the current Watchtower on the internet. Even though they are cutting the Awake down to a monthly they could easily put a Weekly "Awake" on the internet. They could put their entire CD rom on the internet. They could put Videos of the annual meeting on the internet. They could put videos of their public talks on the internet delivered by their best speakers. They could transcribe the discussion of the daily text at Bethel breakfast . They could...they could...they could... but they won't.
grey matters
This gets my vote for one of the most useful links I've ever seen posted. I am currently taking a couple of college courses at night. I have two boys in college and I wanted to see what they were teaching in the Computer Engineering and Networking classes that both boys were taking. I have quietly just enjoyed the hell out of it. The technology makes taking courses a lot more fun and easier than 25 years ago when I got my degree. I've got the bug, it's just fun to learn for learnings sake. This link is awesome. My son who loves Physics can hear theory from the mouth of an MIT professor. Awesome! Thanks! grey matters....you should change your name to brains matter
r's hubby
r's hubby (MIL, as I recall ),
Thanks, I appreciate that. I'm glad you share my entusiasm for this. Our local university does some distance learning on a couple of cable channels. I have enjoyed watching the lectures on math and economics, just purely out of interest in the subjects. But when I saw this I thought - are you kidding me? I can just browse to an Ivy League school and pull lectures down? That's just amazing to me. I was blown away.
back attcha,
I've been looking through the MIT link http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/index.htm
They have over 1500 courses available including Graduate courses. This is absolutely unbelievable to me. What appeals to me most, is that you can try any of them out for size until you find one that interests you. Every subject under the sun is available. Many lectures are on line via video, so you get a little interaction as well. Awesome!
r's hubby
ok. i think i might be saying something maybe provocative...
the real "college" experience is a one time shot.....
It is certainly true that a person can always go to college, full or pt; and one can always obtain the content in a number of other ways, including sefl-study.
But as my high-school lit teacher, Miss Allen, told us seniors as we were looking forward to going off to college...(this was back in 1989 for me)
"Remember kids not everything you are going to learn is in the books"
what she was obviously referring to is the whole "gestalt" of the college experience.
I submit that it is a three-part perfect storm of
1) the learning opportunity itself
2) the "environment" of college
3) this particular juncture in one's life.
1 & 2 could be elaborated upon, but they are not unobtainable by the "non-traditional" student. a non-trad in case you don't know is someone who doesn't proceed directly from high school to college but has some intervening time period. (sometimes due to jobs, military, life, pregnancy, money, whatever the reason)
It is the lack of #3 that is unobtainable by most (but perhaps not all) non-trads. what this refers to is this magical time period when a young person is finally out of the complete control of their previous home environment, they are, probably for the first time, encountering persons who are very different from them and what they were used to, they are also being exposed to different philosophies - and more impotantly, feel a sense of freedom to explore those different bodies of knowledge, perspective and meaning. A person at this age 18-24 roughly is still at the twighlight between teen and adult..not as frivolous perhaps as the past but not yet weighted by the concerns of the working world. (and yeah these are generalizations, every person's college experience is probably different, i am certain that it is, but i think at a larger perspective the above three prongs can be applied generally to the college experience)...and i could elaborate further but you take the meaning...
the above is not to say that a person, a non-trad, can't get their money's worth out of higher education or have an amazing time. I hugely advocate a lifetime of learning and going to college if you can.
This is only to say that there is something truly unique about being a certain age and being in college with peers who are also mostly of the same age and the transition boundary that all are experiencing at the same time between adolescence and adulthood. That experience is not replaceable and that's why it is all the more tragic when persons (such as JWs of the past) forgo the opportunity.
-eduardo
ok. i think i might be saying something maybe provocative...
the real "college" experience is a one time shot.....
I don't think the statement is provacative, I think that it is stereotypical. It certainly speaks to one specific experience, yours. I think the last thing that you want to implant in peoples minds (especially here) is that they have missed their chance. Thats just BS. When you are between 18-25 most any setting that contains freedom and an equal amount of the opposite sex, or the same if that is your thing, or both in the case of some, will be appealing whether it is a college setting or your 1st apartment etc...This is not neccessarily the college as it is the "life" experience.
Another real "college" experience could be presented this way. A lot of kids who go straight from HS to a University take their new found freedom and spend it, chasing women, partying their tails off and just getting by in school. As a result they graduate with a low GPA and have not done as well as they could have.
Then you take the kid, like my oldest, who screwed around for a couple of years after HS, then got serious about college. With a couple more years of maturity he now takes it far more seriously and is doing well. A case can be made for the older student being more serious than the kid straight from HS.
As far as my own experience, having experienced going to college at 21 and again at 48, is that I am more interested in the courses than the girls two rows ahead of me. Older people in this setting are not rare at all.
Greendawn quietly made a brilliant post. Please re-read, he is spot on.
This is the wave of the future. The IT field is changing as we speak. That field alone will require a lifetime of learning and taking courses. If you start at 40, you will be better in 4 years than a lot of the kids coming out of college because of life experience and stability.
It is a myth to imply that it is ever too late for college. It's never too late.
r's hubby
the real "college" experience is a one time shot.....
Considering that very few of the earths population will ever experience it, there's not much point thinking that you've missed out on much from a developmental perspective. The social benefits seems to be the most valuable thing (outside of the education itself). You connect with people in the "network".
I work at a University and see how the families who have been there awhile make it easier for their young ones through the network. Just because you have a traditional degree doesn't mean anything unless you are related to or are friends with the right people. I also see the faculty who are all PhD's. They aren't really smarter than the average H.S. grad but they certainly think they know it all!
Magical experience? Don't believe what you see in the movies. It implies that anyone who does not experience trad. college somehow doesn't grow up right. Simple snobbery.
B.S. Bull^^^^
M.S. More of the Same
PhD Piled Higher and Deeper
