Whoever thought it was an educational experience to throw thousands of adolescents together might look like a damn fool today. The web is making that rite of passage of going to college unnecessary. For free or a pittance of the $200,000-something it costs to matriculate at Harvard or MIT, those of all ages can get a college degree or the equivalent in education on the web. In the current edition of FAST COMPANY, Anya Kamenetz chronicles how.
This concrete documentation that going to college isn't required either for intellectual development or a career might finally burst the higher-education bubble. And a bubble is just how Columbia University's Chairman of the Department of Education Mark C. Taylor describes the situation in THE NEW YORK TIMES. Taylor also notes, "education is big business and, like other big businesses, it is in big trouble."
The same bursting of the bubble occurred in glossy magazines, book publishing, advertising, and legal services. This week parents moved their offspring into the Yale dorms here in New Haven, Connecticut. It made local television. It should have. It was like bearing witness to seeing a Model T tool down the Boston Road.
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