Sep 2 2012: I have taught college English, Public Speaking, Sociology, and Economics.
The average public high school graduate has a problem speaking academic English and doing basic mathematics. That being the case, they are far from being equipped for dealing with the intellectual rigors of philosophy.
Every online course requires an instructor to lead, grade and administer the course. That teacher commonly does not donate his/her time. They expect to be paid for their work.
If the student does not have to pay for that particular course then the money to offer the course must come from another source such as higher tuition or higher taxes.
Sep 2 2012: Technology will cause the collapse or contraction of some sectors of the economy which are being automated. The workers who are displaced by machines will feel the collapse and experience the chaos of a world which changed when they were unable to change with it.
Out of the chaos will come a new normalcy which will prevail until the next revolution of technology. Then the world will change again; people will be left bewildered and scrambling to re-invent themselves and to cope with the changing world.
And the cycle will continue at an ever increasing pace.
Perhaps one of the adaptations than man will make will be the realization that it will be necessary to predict what changes will come and to prepare society for them in order to avoid riots and revolutions by those displaced and impoverished by the latest wave of technology.
We haven't done too well at predicting those changes. The "coming catastrophe" of the year 2000 fell far short of a yawn. Visionaries, such as the people at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, were regularly ignored for creating such useless devices as personal computers capable of networking with other computers. At the turn of the 19th to 20th century, the head of the US patent office announced that the patent office should be closed since everything that could be invented had been invented.
It will be the individual visionary-entrepreneur who will see the path of the future. Unfortunately, he/she will too often be drowned out by the strident voices of the prophets of doom peddling their dime-novel, global warming grade road apples on NPR.
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A comment on Conversation: Do you think there is a benefit in providing a percentage of courses within every college free and online?
And you're right, the student doesn't get his/her ticket punched as having attended MIT or wherever.
A comment on Conversation: What are the arguments for and against philosophy in high school?
The average public high school graduate has a problem speaking academic English and doing basic mathematics. That being the case, they are far from being equipped for dealing with the intellectual rigors of philosophy.
A voucher system might address that shortfall.
jim
A comment on Conversation: Do you think there is a benefit in providing a percentage of courses within every college free and online?
Every online course requires an instructor to lead, grade and administer the course. That teacher commonly does not donate his/her time. They expect to be paid for their work.
If the student does not have to pay for that particular course then the money to offer the course must come from another source such as higher tuition or higher taxes.
SOMEbody's "gotta" pay.
A comment on Conversation: Will Automation Lead to Economic Collapse?
Out of the chaos will come a new normalcy which will prevail until the next revolution of technology. Then the world will change again; people will be left bewildered and scrambling to re-invent themselves and to cope with the changing world.
And the cycle will continue at an ever increasing pace.
Perhaps one of the adaptations than man will make will be the realization that it will be necessary to predict what changes will come and to prepare society for them in order to avoid riots and revolutions by those displaced and impoverished by the latest wave of technology.
We haven't done too well at predicting those changes. The "coming catastrophe" of the year 2000 fell far short of a yawn. Visionaries, such as the people at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, were regularly ignored for creating such useless devices as personal computers capable of networking with other computers. At the turn of the 19th to 20th century, the head of the US patent office announced that the patent office should be closed since everything that could be invented had been invented.
It will be the individual visionary-entrepreneur who will see the path of the future. Unfortunately, he/she will too often be drowned out by the strident voices of the prophets of doom peddling their dime-novel, global warming grade road apples on NPR.