College

“More Clicks, Fewer Bricks: The Lecture Hall is Obsolete”

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

That was the proposition being debated on the Intelligence Squared podcast.

Moderated by ABC News’ John Donvan, the debate featured Anant Agarwa ( edX CEO & MIT Professor) and Ben Nelson (Founder and CEO of the Minerva Project) who argued for the motion; and Jonathan Cole (Provost and Dean Emeritus, Columbia University) and Rebecca Schuman (Columnist for Slate and Chronicle of Higher Education), who argued against the motion.

Here is description of the debate:

Is the college of the future online? With the popularity of MOOCs (massive open online courses) and the availability of online degree programs at a fraction of their on-campus price, we are experiencing an exciting experiment in higher education. Does the traditional classroom stand a chance? Will online education be the great equalizer, or is a campus-based college experience still necessary?

Brought to you in partnership with the Richard Paul Richman Center for Business, Law, and Public Policy, a joint venture of Columbia Business School and Columbia Law School. The Richman Center fosters dialogue and debate on emerging policy questions where business and markets intersect with the law.

“More Clicks, Fewer Bricks: The Lecture Hall is Obsolete”

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

That was the proposition being debated on the Intelligence Squared podcast.

Moderated by ABC News’ John Donvan, the debate featured Anant Agarwa ( edX CEO & MIT Professor) and Ben Nelson (Founder and CEO of the Minerva Project) who argued for the motion; and Jonathan Cole (Provost and Dean Emeritus, Columbia University) and Rebecca Schuman (Columnist for Slate and Chronicle of Higher Education), who argued against the motion.

Here is description of the debate:

Is the college of the future online? With the popularity of MOOCs (massive open online courses) and the availability of online degree programs at a fraction of their on-campus price, we are experiencing an exciting experiment in higher education. Does the traditional classroom stand a chance? Will online education be the great equalizer, or is a campus-based college experience still necessary?

Brought to you in partnership with the Richard Paul Richman Center for Business, Law, and Public Policy, a joint venture of Columbia Business School and Columbia Law School. The Richman Center fosters dialogue and debate on emerging policy questions where business and markets intersect with the law.

Freakonomics on College Part 2: Costs and Benefits

/ Matthew Clemente / 1 Comment

Freakonomics on College Part 2: Costs and Benefits

Last week, we featured Part I on the Freakonomics episode on the economics of college.  This week Freakonomics discussed the costs and benefits of college education with students, economics, professors and recent grads.  

Here is a sampling of some of those guests interviewed: 

This episode looks at tuition costs and also tries to figure out exactly how the college experience makes people so much better off. . . . 

 

While there are a lot of different voices in this episode, including current and recent college grads, the episode is also a bit heavy on economists (d’oh!), including:

+ David Card at Berkeley, whose education papers are here;

+ Ronald Ehrenberg at Cornell, whose recent paper “American Higher Education in Transition” discusses tuition inflation;

+ Betsey Stevenson; her blog contributions are here, and she tweets too;

+ Justin Wolfers, whose blog writing is here; he too tweets; additionally, he and Stevenson are a matched pair — heading for the University of Michigan, by the way — who also appeared in our “Economist’s Guide to Parenting” podcast, along with daughter Matilda, whom they discuss again in this episode; and:

+ Steve Levitt, 

Freakonomics on College, Fake Diplomas, and the Value of Real Ones

/ Matthew Clemente / 1 Comment

Freakonomics on College, Fake Diplomas, and the Value of Real Ones

The Freakonomics Radio Podcast, recently re-ran an episode titled, “Freakonomics Goes to College: Part 1.”  Here is description of the podcast:

The gist: what is the true value these days of a college education?

(You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen via the media player above, or read the transcript below.)

As you can tell from the title, this is the first episode of a two-parter. There is so much to say about college that we could have done ten episodes on the topic, but we held ourselves back to two.

The key guests in this first episode are, in order of appearance:

+ Allen Ezell, a former FBI agent who co-authored the book Degree Mills: The Billion-dollar Industry That Has Sold over a Million Fake Diplomas.

+ Karl Rove, the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff for President George W. Bush. Rove, it turns out, is not a college graduate. He is, however, a published author — of Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight.

+ David Card, an economist at Berkeley who has done a lot of research and writing on the value of education.

Malcolm Gladwell: College Football Should Be Banned

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-HNvZUIFU4]

Sunday on Fareed Zakaria GPS, Fareed interviewed author Malcolm Gladwell about his campaign to ban college football.

Here is an excerpt from the interview:

You compare football to dog fighting. Why?
Yes, I did a piece for The New Yorker a couple of years ago where I said it. This was at the time when, remember, Michael Vick, was convicted of dog fighting. And to me, that was such a kind of, and the whole world got up in arms about this. How could he use dogs in a violent manner, in a way that compromised their health and integrity?
And I was just struck at the time by the unbelievable hypocrisy of people in football, for goodness sake, getting up in arms about someone who chose to fight dogs, to pit one dog against each other.
In what way is dog fighting any different from football on a certain level, right? I mean you take a young, vulnerable dog who was made vulnerable because of his allegiance to the owner and you ask him to engage in serious sustained physical combat with another dog under the control of another owner, right?
Well, what’s football? We take young boys, essentially, and we have them repeatedly, over the course of the season, smash each other in the head, with known neurological consequences.
And why do they do that? Out of an allegiance to their owners and their coaches and a feeling they’re participating in some grand American spectacle.
They’re the same thing. And the idea that as a culture we would be absolutely quick and sure about coming to the moral boiling point over the notion that you would do this to dogs and yet completely blind to the notion you would do this to young men is, to my mind, astonishing.
I mean there’s a certain point where I just said, you know, we have to say enough is enough.