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Tag: "college"

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By Erich Vieth on October 24th, 2009

College classes free, for anyone

If you’d like to attend college classes over the Internet at a wide variety of prestigious colleges, consider visiting Academic Earth. According to the about page,

We are building a user-friendly educational ecosystem that will give internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars. Our goal is to bring the best content together in one place and create an environment in which that content is remarkably easy to use and where user contributions make existing content increasingly valuable.

The participating universities include Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UCLA, and Yale. I just finished watching an informative lecture on “The Origins of the Financial Mess.” I’m wondering what I’m going to view next. Maybe I’ll watch some more of Shelly Kagan’s 26-part series on the topic of “Death.”

Education • Featured • Internet
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Never pay for textbooks again, in six steps.
By Erika Price on June 10th, 2009

Never pay for textbooks again, in six steps.

A college education (and even more, the “college experience”) costs a lot of money. One of the most bemoaned college-related expenses is textbooks. Every quarter or semester, students trudge through their local bookstores and shell out hundreds of dollars for the heavy, price-inflated compendiums of glossy photos, useless asides, and (maybe) small slivers of information.

The pattern of behavior is always the same: the students scan the bookstore shelves for cheaper, used editions (perhaps $70 a pop instead of $100). Some classes require multiple books; some classes require ten. The students carry the stack of texts to the counter and pony up hundreds. In class, the books may never be used- it’s impossible to tell when they will actually be relevant.

Later, these students gather the books up and try to return them to the store for a pittance (maybe $20-30). Often a book is not returnable because it is an “old edition”- a new version has just come out, with minor updates such as a new cover photo and a table with a new layout. Next quarter, everyone will be buying the full-priced new editions.

The textbook industry is a racket. The books are made unnecessarily expensive, for they are puffed-up with frilly nonsense. My school drove up the price of Psych 100 textbooks by requesting a special “Buckeye Edition”; the only difference was a black-and-white photocopy inserted into the first page, which acknowledge the student reader as a member of Ohio State. It’s a hose.

Last year, however, I realized that I never really have to pay for textbooks. For the past four quarters of school, I have not laid a cent on a bookstore’s counter. As I see it, there is no reason for any student to ever pay for textbooks, ever again. Here are my simple steps to attain free textbook access:

Consumerism • Featured • Intellectual property • Internet • Reading - Books and Magazines • Recommended Reading/Films/Sites • Web Site
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A program that gets college students enthusiastic about the scientific theory of evolution
By Erich Vieth on February 24th, 2009

A program that gets college students enthusiastic about the scientific theory of evolution

David Sloan Wilson has written some terrific articles on the topic of evolution. I recently ran across a 2005 article he wrote for PLoS Biology www.plosbiology.org titled “Evolution for Everyone: How to Increase Acceptance of, Interest in, and Knowledge about Evolution.” The article explains the method by which Binghamton University has successfully infused its undergraduate curriculum with real-life applications of evolutionary theory. The EvoS program began in 2002. Here’s the mission of EvoS:

The mission of EvoS is to advance the study of evolution in all its manifestations, including all aspects of humanity in addition to the biological sciences.
Many organizations and websites promote the study of evolution, but EvoS is unique in two respects.

• EvoS is based on the realization that evolutionary theory will probably never be generally accepted–no matter how well supported by facts–unless its consequences for human affairs are fully addressed. Once evolution is seen as unthreatening, explanatory, and useful for solving life’s problems, then it becomes not just acceptable but irresistable to the average person (see the tutorial for more).

• EvoS makes a connection between evolutionary theory and the unification of knowledge, which has always been the goal of a liberal arts education and contemporary efforts to integrate across disciplines. The same kind of unification that took place in the biological sciences during the 20th century is now taking places for the human behavioral sciences and humanities–but is not yet reflected in the structure of higher education. EvoS is the first program to diagnose this problem and comprehensively provide a solution at a campus-wide scale.

David Sloan Wilson explains that the Binghamton program makes use of 50 faculty members representing 15 departments. The program was created based on the following assumption: “Evolution can be made acceptable, interesting, and powerfully relevant to just about anyone in the space of a single semester.”

Education • Evolution • Featured • Human animals • Psychology Cognition • Religion • Science • Sex
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A required course is worse than an elective.
By Erika Price on February 19th, 2009

A required course is worse than an elective.

I wrote the initial draft of this post using my Ipod’s Wordpress application, tip-tapping away as I sat in the very class that inspired it.

A required class is worse than an elective class. A simple and inevitable process ensures this. Making any college course a requirement for graduation ensures that more students will enroll in the course. This enrollment will necessarily include disinterested students- kids who would never take the class if they didn’t have to. These students will only meet the minimum standards to achieve graduation.

A mass of disinterested students sucks the life out of a classroom. Responses must be pulled like so many teeth, and more people sleep and scribble on their desks than take notes. Out of boredom, a few play games on their laptops or write blog entries on their iPods. No one makes the effort to go over the required readings. No one shows up to class if they have a choice. Usually, attendance is made into a requirement itself.

American Culture • Communication • Education • Featured • History • Science • Uncategorized • Whimsy
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By Erich Vieth on January 09th, 2009

Would you like to go to college for free?

Would you like to get smart cheaply?   You can now “attend: selected courses at prestigious college courses for free, while sitting at your computer.    The participating universities include MIT, Yale, McGill and UC-Berkeley.  This is a great opportunity if you’d like to get serious about the topics of the selected courses.   The participating colleges videotaped [...]

Education
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By Erich Vieth on November 17th, 2008

Alaska: the anti-education state

Andrew Sullivan offers some shocking statistics to back up the claim that Alaska is not a place that values education for its children.  And nothing like the anti-education governor to serve as the spokesperson for this anti-education:
Her eldest son has a history of vandalism and was given a GED on the way to Iraq; her [...]

Education
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By Erich Vieth on May 19th, 2008

What to do about all of those college students who aren’t qualified to go to college.

What do you do about all of those college students who have no business being in college? If you’re a conscientious English teacher, you flunk them. And when you get incredibly frustrated that you really must flunk so many of them, as did “Professor X,” you write about your dilemma in The [...]

Education • Uncategorized
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How to create a diploma mill: How to legally become the President of a fake college.
By Erich Vieth on April 04th, 2008

How to create a diploma mill: How to legally become the President of a fake college.

I once created a fake college and I’m proud of it.
This might strike you as odd, because most people who create diploma mills are doing so to make a quick buck by passing out bogus degrees.  These fake diplomas, in turn, allow unqualified people to get promotions and or get jobs for which they are [...]

Corruption • Education • Politics • snake oil
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