This is the first line from a recent front page Huffington Post article entitled ‘The Creeping Capitalist Takeover of Higher Education’. It basically gives a very detailed account about the how higher education had a real change to make an affordable option through online courses and degrees, but in most cases have NOT delivered any real savings to students. You really have to commend the exceptions to this travesty, like the computer science program at Georgia Tech. I was offered a position in the Chemistry Dept. at Georgia Tech and sometimes wish I had taken this position, especially after seeing some of the great decisions this institution has made over the past 20 years. However, this is an aside. What I strongly urge is for ALL HIGHER EDUCATION educators to take a hard look at what they can do to change the current capitalist system to one that provides ‘open source’ and/or freely available options, material, etc.
I know this has become a huge priority for myself. What exactly am I doing?
- Trying to put as much material as I can freely available on the web. For example, https://biopchem.education (e.g., biopchem YouTube and Vimeo Channel)
- Making fees optional, setting up non-profits, trying donation driven models and exploring crypto-currency and blochchain models (e.g, EdChain)
- Helping young students learn ways to add content to large public and freely available sources of educational material, data, etc.
- Publish freely available or pay-optional material, content, learning modalities and R&D.
- And more…. but enough lists for now!
We ALL need to come together to change the system in the US (and throughout the connected world). Everyone deserves the option of a freely available high quality education.
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