I always think there is something to learn from these stories. The article is about Marilee Jones, the Dean of Admissions at MIT, resigning because she had lied about her academic qualifications: she had no undergraduate degree. The article states: ‘On the campus, where Ms. Jones was widely admired, almost revered, for her humor, outspokenness and common sense, students and faculty members alike seemed both saddened and shocked.’ Apparently Ms. Jones had received the institute’s highest honor for administrators, the M.I.T. Excellence Award for Leading Change (but not this sort of change, I assume…).

As Stephen Downes writes: “Sure, you can’t (legally) get the job without a degree. But it certainly appears that you can do the job without one.”
I haven’t seen an example recently, but a while back there were lots of reports of individuals impersonating doctors, and being well liked, and apparently competent. And of course, there are lots of doctors highly competent in areas in which they have no ‘certification’. Then there are researchers and academics…
The more interesting story here, is not so much the one about honesty, but about why competency is seen as being less important than credentials (that are  in turn deemed essential for competency). Paul Graham says some fascinating things about credentials, and the way they can slow advance, here.

If you re fed up the the ‘lets disrupt education‘ meme you might enjoy this article by Jill Lepore in the New Yorker. As  a taster:

In 2007, Christensen told Business Week that “the prediction of the theory would be that Apple won’t succeed with the iPhone,” adding, “History speaks pretty loudly on that.” In its first five years, the iPhone generated a hundred and fifty billion dollars of revenue. In the preface to the 2011 edition of “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” Christensen reports that, since the book’s publication, in 1997, “the theory of disruption continues to yield predictions that are quite accurate.”

“The interesting thing about Roger Schank, something he shares with Minsky, is the fact that he’s produced an incredible string of students. Anybody who’s produced such a great string of students has to be a constructive pain in the ass.”

 

[simnor_button url=”http://edge.org/documents/ThirdCulture/q-Ch.9.html ” icon=”double-angle-right” label=”Danny Hillis on Roger Schank ” colour=”white” colour_custom=”#fff” size=”medium” edge=”straight” target=”_self”]

I really like this from Rhett Allain. Of course I don’t know whether it improves learning, but it screams at me as an example of how the dissemination of low cost technology can improve learning— when it is coupled with insight and domain expertise.  More physics envy on my part, perhaps.

From a partly navel gazing article on how Harvard Business School is trying to actually see if it can advise itself on how to survive. Or, alternatively can devour itself.  Warning: contains disruptive innovation memes. I just thought the following was a new  variation on the usual images that University prospectuses use (sex mix, ethnicity mix, quadrangle, new glass covered ‘you can see everybody’ building etc).

Professor Christensen did something “truly disruptive” in 2011, when he found himself in a room with a panoramic view of Boston Harbor. About to begin his lecture, he noticed something about the students before him. They were beautiful, he later recalled. Really beautiful.

“Oh, we’re not students,” one of them explained. “We’re models.”

They were there to look as if they were learning: to appear slightly puzzled when Professor Christensen introduced a complex concept, to nod when he clarified it, or to look fascinated if he grew a tad boring. The cameras in the classroom — actually, a rented space downtown — would capture it all for the real audience: roughly 130,000 business students at the University of Phoenix, which hired Professor Christensen to deliver lectures online.

I tire (sounds a little too effectual), so I’ll start again. I get fed up with statements such as ‘people can’t learn from lectures’. it is obvious rubbish. Think AJP taylor. Think Jacob Bronowski. And then of course think of the mind-numbing  lectures I seem to remember sitting through in second year medical school, one bloody virus after another. It all depends, doesn’t it?  Lectures are not natural kinds: do drugs work?

Two good posts by Mark Guzdial here and here, with lots of comments that have out thought all my thoughts, earlier than I got to them. As ever, I like what Alan Kay says about theatre.

There is something inherently wrong with a system of payment where one goes bankrupt seeing over 40 patients a day and 12-13 hours of work.

 

[simnor_button url=”http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/views/blogs/pulse-team/at-last-some-honesty-over-mpig/20006839.blog#.U4sWWha6wwI ” icon=”double-angle-right” label=”An exasperated GP ” colour=”white” colour_custom=”#fff” size=”medium” edge=”straight” target=”_self”]

I came to this via John Naughton. Nigel Warburton is an  ex-institutional academic, who cofounded the site Philosophy Bites, whose podcasts have been downloaded ‘zillions of times’. In an interview he says he lambasts some university philosophers for playing along with institutional requirements that compromise your ability to think and behave like a philosopher. I am deeply impressed by how large an impact one or two individuals can have on learning. He says:

If he’s right about our present, does he think philosophy is in for a grim future? How does he suggest we fix the current state of things? Can we fix it?

“It’s going to fix itself because universities are going to become less important. People who are sophisticated users of the Internet will find ways to communicate which may not require them to be part of universities anymore. Established universities may be overtaken by publishers and other providers of resources and connections entering the world of distance education. What’s stopping people now is that they want a bit of paper at the end of it that says they’ve got a degree. Socrates didn’t issue degrees, but it would have been wonderful to have been taught by him. I think we’re entering a time of contact with interesting people. It’s difficult to imagine what’s going to happen, because things happen so quickly.

“There are a lot of brilliant people in universities, but they have no idea what’s going to happen, what’s just around the corner. Disruptive technologies have a history of producing dramatic change very suddenly. So a lot of those people who think they’re surfing the new technology, keeping abreast of developments and thinking that nothing’s going to change – I believe they’re fundamentally wrong. People thought massively open online courses were just another kind of distance learning, but already they’re changing, evolving very quickly, people are finding new ways of interacting.

“Because of changes in online teaching, in the next ten years, the university system will be turned on its head. If Philosophy Bites can make such an impact with two guys with a hard disk recorder and a couple of laptops, think what people who fully understand the new technology, who can write code, who can employ the best philosophical communicators around, think what they could produce. It’s only just starting. We’re going to see dramatic changes to how we learn, teach, do research and share ideas. I think philosophy’s future’s very bright.”

“it’s a worrying sign for philosophy in the academy. Someone who’s very good at conveying complex philosophical ideas in plain English– a good teacher, in other words – has come to the conclusion that a university is not the best place for him to be”.

 

[simnor_button url=”http://philosophypress.co.uk/?p=1159 ” icon=”double-angle-right” label=”Interview with Nigel Warburton ” colour=”white” colour_custom=”#fff” size=”medium” edge=”straight” target=”_self”]