<p>No, I’m not talking about books or self-studying. I’m talking about the internet, videos, webcasts, etc. If you think sitting in the back of a lecture hall is better than watching a video of the same lecture, you’re delusional. MIT’s already got a huge directory of online educational supplements to their courses.</p>
<p>Again, whether people will do it or not isn’t the point. If educational costs continue to skyrocket, I assure you, less people will be willing to pay $3000 for an art history class, especially when they can learn the same information via an online course for a 10th of the cost.</p>
<p>Of course not. And forcing people who aren’t interested won’t do much good either. </p>
<p>Look. Let’s just accept the fact that there are more people who would rather “listen” to Justin Bieber or Ke$ha than appreciate or be enthralled by Beethoven. I have little faith the the preservation and continued advancement of high culture…</p>
<p>It’s not marketable, it’s for snobs, it’s not practical, it has no future in the US etc. etc. </p>
<p>You’re all missing the point. The barriers to information and technology are going down. The reclusive walls to academia are falling. This is a good thing. Yes, some won’t care, and will ignore it. But for those who are intellectually curious and aren’t rich, it’s never been a better time to be alive. Can you even fathom that 100 years ago the average person didn’t have access to the wealth of information available on the internet? Now it’s everywhere. </p>
<p>This goes much further beyond information available on the internet and essentially reaches every part of society. Look up rapid prototyping and fab labs to see what I mean about manufacturing. In the near future, you will be able to manufacture a customizable good in your home or at the local Fed Ex. It’s the same reasoning with education, except replace the factory with the university.</p>
<p>That was a tangent, but I hope you get the point. Learning isn’t confined to some classroom at the cost of $100 an hour.</p>
<p>I have a liberal arts core that I have to fulfill anyways, so I might as well take the class. It’s no extra cost, and I can’t get exempted from it by showing the dean that I can log onto the internet and find similar (albeit less cohesive) answers. Plus, if the internet is so all-knowing and infallible, why have college attendance rates risen instead of fallen? It’s all online, after all.</p>
<p>The rise of college attendance is an unrelated issue that has different causes. The notion that “college attendance has risen, so the internet must not be good enough” is extremely weak logic, and surely I don’t need to point that out.</p>
<p>You aren’t sitting in the back of a lecture hall though. I’ve taken two humanities courses (okay okay i don’t have that much experience) at a large (40k students) public university, and neither was a 200 person lecture. Both classes had a lot of discussion. The readings & such were structured. I got more out of those classes than I would have by self study.</p>
<p>the internet may be a cheaper alternative to attending college lectures, but I don’t think it is as good as them.</p>
<p>Humanities courses are never popular enough for that to happen outside of say Western art history or Western music appreciation for distribution purposes. </p>
<p>Usually, the large lecture hall courses are things like psyc 101, Intro to Macro Econ and basic accounting and so on. And perhaps an intro physics or calc courses here and there. Even once you get to the multivariable calc/econometrics-mid level department courses, the numbers should drop substantially.</p>
<p>Yeah. Some how we’ve collectively shifted directions in definitions. I think someone wanted to define the hard sciences and math as “technical” and obviously, those majors/concentrations are not vocational, any more or less than anthropology or art history. You can argue they teach skills that are more marketable, though I’m not sure what profession outside of mathematician requires theoretically topology or something like that.</p>
<p>I’ve taken a couple of online classes, and I think you can learn plenty. That doesn’t mean you always will, but a well-run online class offers just as much interaction as a traditional class. Sometimes you even get more interaction because there is a degree of anonymity that allows students to feel more comfortable asking questions and stating opinions. </p>
<p>It all depends on how the instructor runs the course. Some instructors treat it like a correspondent course, where you just submit your work and get a grade. You don’t learn anything that way. A good online instructor, however, will provide discussion forums and a structured program. There are plenty of opportunities beyond exams to receive feedback.</p>
<p>That being said, I don’t think core art history classes really foster that much discussion anymore. I took an art history class (in the classroom) and it covered proto-Renaissance through modern art in one semester. There was zero time for discussion in class. It was just four a week in a dimly lit room looking at a procession of slides and trying to catch the right buzz words.</p>
<p>Yeah, I think large lecture classes are detrimental for the humanities, even at the lower levels. Less of a problem with quant/sci courses. OTOH, you really can’t do anything advanced in any field with large classes…</p>
<p>and that would imply that academia has no value. The reality is that improvements in technology are impossible without sustained progress in Engineering, which is impossible without sustained progress in hard science, which is impossible without people studying non-vocational areas.</p>
<p>“or just read online about western architecture and learn just as much about the subject.”
I don’t know how else to argue with this than to say it’s wrong. Wrong, wrong wrong, wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong wrong. You’re wrong. You’re wrong. You’re wrong.</p>
<p>Sure, it clarifies your position. But you have yet to actually justify your position. For the average student, why is paying $4000 to sit in a classroom worth it over the same knowledge available via an online course or on the internet?</p>
<p>Well, academia and academic publishers have done a pretty good job of setting up high barriers to access to academic writing, journals, the latest research etc, many of which are actually not readily available in public libraries or online…unless you want to pay hefty fee. At least by paying tuition, you get a credential (at the bare minimum). </p>
<p>Of course, you can also ask your professor friend to download those articles from JSTOR for you…or make copies if it’s in the latest edition…</p>
<p>Oh the academic arrogance. Get off your high horse already. I don’t need to get spoonfed by a professor to learn anything. Some of the smartest people on the planet are self-taught. </p>
<p>But, according to you, they’re morons, because they didn’t pay their dues ($4000 per class) to sit in a classroom.</p>
<p>Some of the smartest people on the planet are self-taught. Most of the smartest people on the planet are not self-taught, and most of the people who are self-taught are not smart.</p>