Lets Take the Vanity out of Vanity Press

Well folks, much is changing in higher education as a result of the disruptive technology -  readers and tablets.  We are going to have to adjust our thinking and the way we do things in higher education.  This is going to be hard when the entire workforce came in expecting tradition and "the way we do things here" to never end.

Much has been published about graduate faculty molding graduate students into academic clones of themselves.  This complaint happened when we found that graduate students, fresh out of grad school, had little ability to teach.  Many new hires in college were deer in the headlights stunned the first time they were put before a group of students.

We have already fought the battles to get graduate students more exposure to teaching while in graduate school and support with the centers for teaching and learning once they get their job. Now the publishing process is changing.

Do you all remember when we were taking bets on how long Amazon could stay in business?  "Who would buy a book on line?"  Well like - e v e r y o n e! Now Amazon is going one step further and going into self-publishing.  This is going to create more changes.

Who is self publishing for?

1.  Faculty that use 1/4 of a textbook and the rest original materials.
2.  New authors with innovative ideas - OMG we need them!
3.  Publishing timely articles and books that need to be out quickly.  (Try and get a tech book out before it is obsolete.)
4.  Faculty that want to cut the cost of textbooks by publishing their own or choosing a cheaper one.
5.  Authors that haven't gotten published because publishers didn't want competition to their best selling authors.

This is going to be an interesting change for education as we watch and participate.  This is a great time for innovation and new minds. 

Now College is Free! Whopii!

Free college.  Not too sure how they are going to make money, but the idea is very interesting.  Here is how it works.  Lots of people volunteer to teach classes on line.  Students can take the courses and earn a degree from the college.  Couple of kickers are - the college is not accredited.  And, it only offers two courses of study:  business administration and computer science. Well, we can add one more drawback, the name.  The University. of the People.  Sounds a bit hokie.

However, name aside, this idea has some merit.  First is that if employers accept graduates' degrees as valid this could change the status of college financing.  I have lived through the time when people believed that employers would not accept a for profit college degree and an online college degree.  Hard to imagine that these degrees were ever questioned, and no, I am not that old.

The question is, how relevant is a prestigious degree versus what a student knows?  Most college faculty don't want students to passport stamp through a series of prefab courses but want them to actually learn and be able to apply that learning to real life problem solving.  Not all students coming out of all colleges can do this, $50,000 a year or not. 

This concept of the free college needs to be watched as the graduates emerge.  If they can impress employers then we have a viable contender here.