There was a time when the basic needs of human beings were limited to food, clothing and shelter. With the rise of the industrial age, education was added as one of their basic needs. And now education is one of the major industries in the world, producing graduates to manage and manage economics, politics and the transmission of culture. But as the information age gains more and more ground in our society, we are seeing conflicting trends in the educational system.
The first conflicting trend is in the area of cost. While the cost of formal education at colleges and universities is on the rise, the cost of online education is declining. In many countries, education administrators note that the cost of education rises above the rate of inflation in a country. However, getting information which is the primary data for education is getting cheaper and cheaper through the internet. Students can connect to the Internet inexpensively through Internet cafes and access information that would have previously cost them dearly. They can now download e-books, many of which are free.
On the Personal Money Store website, an article was written about Academic Earth. She says that although Academic Earth is not an organization that can provide a learner with college credit, it can give him or her nearly all of the same materials he or she would take in a traditional college classroom, at the time he or she wants, without the hassle of transportation and the expense of a dress code. There is an advertisement on this site for “Great College Lectures, Free.”
The second conflicting trend I see is in the area of methodology. With more information to absorb and more books to read, the burden of reading, memorizing and understanding the content of books and lectures given by professors increases on students. However, on the other hand, there are a lot of individuals and groups who try to make learning fun and interesting, not a stressful experience.
At the DNA website Read the World, there is an article titled “New Directions in Teaching That Make Learning Fun.” In this article we read, “Making students enjoy and understand at the same time is the basic principle on which educational institutions should work.” There are also online experiments with mnemonics to make memorizing fun.
A third conflicting trend is in the results area. Almost everywhere in countries with a Western type of education, the complaint has been that the educational system produces unemployed or underemployed graduates. There is no guarantee of a job upon graduation. However, jobs are created through the internet. Some get jobs by writing book and software reviews, creating websites, programming, etc. Not to mention various online scams.
Education website engines attempt to “raise awareness of needed changes in our education system”. We hope that these changes will also solve the problem of unemployment or underemployment of graduates of our university.
What do these conflicting trends tell us? The following directions appear to be possible.
As the cost of formal education is higher and higher, and the cost of informal education over the web is lower, only rich people will be able to access formal education while rich people will be satisfied with informal education through the web.
As the process of education becomes more stressful for students, more and more educational games will be placed on the web where students will spend more and more of their time. There are already indications that students are interrupting their classes in order to spend their time playing games in internet cafés.
As our formal education system produces more and more unemployed and underemployed, more and more jobs will be created through the web.
Changes in the educational field are not evident at the present time, but it seems clear that there are indications of fundamental changes in the near future.
