Waking up from the OER realized dream

I got into a long conversation yesterday with a friend about Open Education, its opportunities and some of its pitfalls. Started around whether it was fair that you need to have a Bachelor's degree to get so many jobs in America. I feel it is, as a bachelor's is an indication you have completed a substantial amount of work in a given field of study and you have a degree of expertise in said field. Next question then, is the cost of that BA fair?

Should add a disclaimer here that I know life isn't fair, and that, IMHO, no societally wide building block like education will ever be "fair" but certainly that's the goal all of us working in the education field should be working towards. Also I loved my undergrad experience and while American colleges may be forced to adapt to 21st century learning realities, it doesn't mean they haven't been doing a fantastic job for hundreds of years (put another way, I'm not interested in any "revolution" nor do I have problems with the system as is, I'm just trying to explore what is happening now and how it may evolve).

Back to the cost, I would say in the current reality of America, no it isn't fair. Wish I had numbers to back me up, but I assume there are few new grads who are getting jobs where they can honestly say, from a financial perspective, that their investment paid off, i.e. $120,000 was paid for my education and within 2-3 months have a job making $35,000 with sincere room for growth, that justifies the huge financial investment.

Obviously, college is about more than just earning a salary big enough to justify the sunk cost of tuition. So, what is college about? Is it about becoming a contributing citizen to our democracy, i.e. one who can think critically about how the government whose salaries they're paying with taxes is performing as it should? And the ability to succeed within bureaucratic systems (i.e. doing the monotony of filling out forms, calling senators, etc.,) so that if they feel the government should be behaving differently they can make their voice heard? Is it, as my friend suggested, about having people "learn how to work together"? Or, could it be, that the most important thing college does is give 18 year-olds 4 years to grow up before they are forced to face the realities of life for 21st century American adults? Put another way, college is there not for school but to organize young people in a way so they can mature outside of class, but still inside school, coming out of it with a societally respected degree?

I'm not sure what the answer to that question is, and its obviously different for each individual.

In any event, something that is happening and will quite likely continue to snowball are Open Educational Resources (OER). OER are a way for students outside of school to learn freely and for students inside to have another way of learning what they are taught in class. The progress over the past 10 years has been incredible, and now we've come to a point where there probably is enough content online for someone to self-study for any course they could take as an undergrad. There's also organizations like the Peer 2 Peer University developing OER that students can use to learn specific skills like web design.

The big question is accreditation and/or a way to demonstrate learning with OER that employers will respect enough to hire an OER peer learner over someone with a college degree, because the OER peer learner has more specific skills for the job that employer needs done. A good example of this is P2PU's school of webcraft, where students can complete challenges to earn badges from Mozilla. One thing they're studying is HTML5 a nascent language that probably isn't offered yet by too many schools in undergrad classes. Conceivably someone cold complete all the webcraft challenges, demonstrating command of HTML5 and backed up with earned badges. Would an employer hire them to take their company to the next level of HTML over someone with a BS in Computer Science? I don't know, but for OER to be a sustainable, legitimate success that has to happen.

In this context OER are sort of a middle ground, not a replacement for traditional colleges, but a complement. Students can go to them for specific skills they need for the workplace, and still realize a traditional liberal arts education will serve them well in their life. Especially because one of the most imporant things you get if you finish a BA is a massive network of bright people to grow with as you all advance in your careers. Maybe that frat buddy becomes your co-owner 20 years down the line. Is this sort of networking possible online? Maybe, but I have a hard time seeing the connections being as strong as students who spent 4 years studying, partying and questioning together. If the network is actually one of the key reasons for going to college, OER can't replace that, I think.

An example we discussed of how OER could disrupt the current educational marketplace is Wikileaks and journalism. In a matter of a few years Wikileaks broke more news stories than major newspapers had in like 20 years combined (that quote is from somewhere, maybe Clay Shirky, that I need to follow-up on). They did this because new technologies allowed them to more efficiently let whistle-blowers blow their whistles. Those individuals trusted their story more to Assange and his team than they did the NY Times.

How could this play out in Education? If OER were improved to a point that students knew they could study them and have skills that'd be relevant in the working world, that'd be akin to Wikileaks.

There is more to waking up from the dream, but here are 3 important ideas I think will be crucial.

1 An education is a hard thing to earn, and even if you are studying outside school with OER it'll still take a lot of work. Maybe its just me, but I feel there's an opinion that OER are not only ethically superior, but somehow they make learning faster or easier. Ideally they'll make it more efficient, but it'll still be a 10,000 mile journey.

2 Peer and students need to ask themselves before starting "What am I learning this for?" an honest answer to that question, even if its just "I wanna stay in school for 4 years so I can party." is important and will make their efforts less likely to be in vain.

3 It is not the state nor the school's responsibility to educate you. It is your responsibility, just because it doesn't work out doesn't mean there needs to be systemic change or a "revolution". You need to take ownership over your own learning at as young an age as you can and realize with libraries and the internet (we'll see how open it stays) you can teach yourself or find peers to study almost anything you could learn from ages 0 to 22 in schools. Don't focus on changing the system, just learn what you need to learn, and if OER are the best way to do that for lots of people the system will be forced to adjust.