New Education for a New Generation

Education has not changed in the last 500 years. The method that has been applied since the industrial revolution of graduating students in “classes” or “production lots” has lost its usefulness and in many situations, it fails to respond to the demanding and changing environment of the global economy we live on now.  On one side employers complaint about finding everyday more difficult to find candidates with the skills they require however unemployment rate has still not recovered from the recent recession and there are thousands of people struggling to find a job some of them even with high education degrees.  Education should be a bridge between employers and students providing companies the talent and skills they require for a changing and dynamic environment and providing students the opportunity to be productive and develop a fulfilling career. Additionally, the current education system is very capital intensive. A vast amount of human capital and physical infrastructure is required to deploy the education, which has caused student debt to rise exponentially in the past years. This trend is not sustainable and the education system requires a major disruption to catch up with the recent social and economic challenges.

Online education has been thought to be one the most viable solutions however, it hasn’t attracted enough number of students nor generated results that can be compared to the traditional method of education to consider that is the future in education. Nonetheless, a number of prestigious universities have ventured in online education uploading a number of courses and providing all the students who complete them an official certification. EdX for example, is one of the most popular websites providing courses from MIT, Harvard and other Top Tier Universities worldwide. During its launch, a core course in circuits and electronics from MIT was uploaded and 150,000 students from more than 50 different countries enrolled in it. This number is more than 10x the student body of the complete university. The course is hard and only 42,000 students passed it successfully which is in line with the percent of MIT students that passes it regularly. However to understand the scale that online education allows, in order to teach that many students an MIT professor would have to teach for two semester every year for forty years. There is no doubt internet and information technologies allow to scale content at an unimaginable rate. However, a very important element of the education system is the opportunity to connect with peers that have similar interests, listen and learn from professor experiences and build a lasting network. Online education cannot provide the human component that is still highly valuable in education today.

The path seems to be a blend model between the traditional and online education. Combining strengths from both approaches is what is providing the best results lately. Concepts like flipping the classroom in which lectures are video standardized and students are able to go through them at their own pace, pause and replay them and then come to classroom with questions and do homework with teachers are providing encouraging results. The possibilities that internet technology provides are very attractive. The academic content can be communicated through more entertaining and engaging means such as gamification and social media. At the same time, only online content and virtual interaction with tutors have failed to engage students. The human factor is what makes education more comprehensive. With a correct balance between technology and teacher based learning the results in students are more effective and less costly. Technology provides the opportunity to guarantee a high quality and standardized content while it leaves space for teacher to do the more personal aspect of education which is land the concepts learned into a day-to-day practical approach and together with classmates provide the social touch that all students require for a comprehensive development. 

Posted for MBA student and author Carlos Farah