I debated jumping into the comments section of that Slate story I mentioned last week, but thought the better of it.
Partly, I knew how much trouble I have keeping track of multiple online discussion points at the same time (an issue I should probably write about later in the year with regard to MOOC forums), but mostly I wanted to see how the conversation evolved when some of the details surrounding my One Year BA project were shared with more of the world.
Looking over the close to 100 responses that story has generated so far, a number of people have understandably challenged the notion that spending one year immersed in MOOCs and other forms of free learning can really be considered the equivalent of a four-year undergraduate degree.
Obviously, I brought such challenges onto myself by subtitling my project “The One Year BA” and organizing my course load to resemble the distribution and major requirements of an actual liberal arts degree program. But I also made it a point (both in the Slate piece, but more thoroughly in pieces arguing for and against college equivalency) to highlight that belief in such equivalency is based on what measurement stick you choose to use.
If the measure of learning is how much work I put into my courses over one year (vs. what someone in a residential college does in four), then clearly my One Year BA is less than a four year one. This is actually true both quantitatively (the number of papers and tests I had to pass was definitely fewer than what you’d be asked to do during a four-year BA program of even moderate difficulty) and qualitatively (those tests were, in general, much easier than anything I remember in college and peer-grading meant simply passing a course was not a challenge – even if a very high grade took extra effort).
But that extra effort is the key to understanding an argument in support of college equivalency. For writing a paper as though it was going to be graded by a harsh professor (vs. a more lenient team of peer graders) provided the incentive to engage with the material taught in a class more deeply than I would if getting a passing score was all I cared about. And if absorbing and internalizing material (i.e., learning) is top priority, why should the number and difficulty of assignments be the only legitimate measure of that learning?
Now I still stand by my pro argument that said study via MOOCs and other forms of free learning (albeit not necessarily compressed into a single year) can create the same kind of transformative experience one would have by exposing yourself to classes on the same subjects through a traditional residential degree program. But, as expected, several Slate readers pointed out what I considered to be the strongest argument against this position: that my previous experience as a four-year residential student (coupled with learning, work and life experience since) is what prepared the ground for the type of transformative experience I talked about at the end of my One Year BA.
At the heart of this argument is the very reasonable assertion that your average eighteen year old is not equipped to work and study independently, the key to success in MOOCs and any other kind of self-motivated learning process. And while acknowledging the strength of this argument, I would also counter that it assumes the only way to develop the discipline, study and thinking skills required to successfully learn from a non-traditional educational program is to attend four expensive years at a traditional college or university.
Not that such an experience doesn’t have value above and beyond learning (notably with regard to friendships made, conversations had and life-passage experiences enjoyed). But when it comes to creating independent learners who can take advantage of the bounty of educational resources coming online, I can’t help but think that there must be at least one way to become a self-propelled learner other than first spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to obtain an undergraduate diploma.
On the surface, the least fruitful responses to the Slate column consisted of arguments (which I suspect play out frequently in other forums) between those who studied math and science as undergraduates (who insisted what they learned in college could never be compressed into a single year – even if studying something mushy like English or philosophy could) and defenders of the rigor of a degree in non-science subjects.
I say “on the surface” because the science snobs (a group I participate in, given that my original degree is in chemistry) have a point with regard to MOOC-based education, given that massive online classes in math, science, and technology tend to be more difficult than MOOCs covering humanities topics. But this really had more to do with methods of evaluation used in courses where quantitative topics can be assessed with open-ended questions with exact answers, an option not available for less cut-and-dry topics like ethics.
More to the point, it was the substance of the material I studied over the last year that taught me how subjects like science and philosophy are inextricably linked. For just as philosophy has always reacted to the reigning science of the day (Kant, Hume and their contemporaries were all confronting the discoveries of Isaac Newton, after all), science at its most successful is an act of philosophical exploration (which is why Einstein began his experiments in his own head before writing down a single equation).
Settling such a dispute (presuming any dispute can ever be settled in the comments section of an online features piece) requires a well-rounded education in both the sciences and the humanities, built on facts, informed by history, but open to creative interpretation that can lead to new ways of understanding. And while you can certainly obtain such an education between the ages of 18-22 at a prestigious and costly college or university, it’s not entirely clear that this is the only way (or the only time in your life) to do so.
Leave a Reply