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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 25/02/2013 03:44, spike wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Me
too! I looove Stanford, that is the place to out-hang. Lots
of interesting stuff going on there always. I had forgotten
how cool, interesting and mathematical is Hayden. In some
ways he is the more approachable Bach, warm, nice, still
precise and profound, but huggable is Hayden.<o:p></o:p></span>
<pre><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></pre>
<pre><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">After the concert, while I was waiting around for the 1300 lecture, I walked about and pondered the future of high-end
universities like Stanford and that other place across the way whose name often escapes me, Berk something I think.
The online learning will have an enormous impact methinks. I would like to steer the thread from insanity to Stanford.<o:p></o:p></span></pre>
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<br>
Yes, the future of universities is interesting. Why do we have them?
There are several functions they do:<br>
<br>
1. Teach stuff to people<br>
2. Validate what they know, either absolutely or in relation to
other students<br>
3. Get people to interact and network<br>
4. Help people grow as persons into autonomous, smart
citizen-intellectuals<br>
5. Do research<br>
<br>
Online courses can do 1 and 2, up to a point. One reason a lot of
people drop out is that they do require dedication and focus, and
not everybody got it. At a physical university you have A) a social
support system of friends, B) university staff trying to get
students motivated or help them if they show signs of slipping, and
C) a high threshold of entry that through cognitive dissonance and
the sunk cost fallacy keeps people in - you don't want to have
wasted all that college money, right? This is why I think online
courses are a huge win for smart, young and ambitious people in
simple circumstances, but they are not the solution for the average
could-be student in those circumstances. Universities grab you
better.<br>
<br>
The third function is why campuses are important. People run into
each other. There is a high concentration of smart, creative, and
promising people: a lot of the old school ties will be really
valuable later in life. People come up with business ideas or just
learn how to deal with social life and its politics by participating
in local organisations and networks. Oxford Union is not just a
debating club: it is the debating club where a certain number of
your fellows are going to become heads of state one day, and
everybody knows it - so the internal politics will be a real test.
The Oxford college structure makes students and faculty of different
specialities at least have lunch and dinner together, and encourages
socializing across discipline boundaries. These are things online
courses will not have much advantage over, which is at least why
Oxford and Cambridge are currently just ignoring them.<br>
<br>
The fourth function is mysterious, and maybe more of wishful
thinking than anything real. <br>
<br>
The fifth function is somewhat decoupled from the others. Brilliant
researchers are not on average better lecturers, but having access
to people actually finding new knowledge means that universities
will typically be more up to date than other institutions.
Conversely, you want to have ready access to smart students to get
involved in your research - in a sense the education part is just a
constantly ongoing job fair for the researchers to exploit. <br>
<br>
One reason to have universities is clustering. Most universities are
clusters of institutions and companies that benefit from access to
each other and people - Stanford and Silicon Valley is perhaps the
most famous example. I think we will start to see online clustering
where online services also network with other services for mutual
benefit, but I don't know if they are going to be effective enough
at retaining attention and people to become "real" clusters.<br>
<br>
I also wonder about virtual research clusters. The same problem
about keeping things together recurs, but one can use other means to
hold them together (such as contracts). A cluster might outsource
lab work or observational work, doing the cutting edge theory and
analysis in-cluster. <br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Faculty of Philosophy
Oxford University </pre>
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