Newspapers and colleges

Title copied from DeLong:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/03/newspapers-and-colleges.html

Who linked the key idea from Kevin Carey:
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i30/30a02101.htm

Question: Are colleges in trouble the way newspapers are in trouble? Will digital access to content wreck their business model?

My answer: No.

First, if you are teaching such that the YouTube or iTunes videos of your lectures are equivalent to taking the class, something seems to be going wrong. This is especially true if you have a reasonably small class size. Students know how to read. If the written material is sufficiently unclear that you need to then come to class and explain it, maybe you need a better text. The lecturer should be adding value over a good text one way or another.

In big classes where interaction is limited, the lecturer can add value by shaping the information from the text (emphasis/paraphrasing). Because of writing/printing lags, we can assume the text isn't necessarily up to date in every way. Maybe places where the lecturer challenges a claim of the text signals areas of interesting debate. But what about fields where the basic information doesn't change much year to year (e.g. calculus, but not psychology)? And what happens when students get their textbooks from a Kindle that can update more rapidly?

There's a learning and memory question in there: is it better to read, hear or read+hear for long-term memory of the content. The last of these implies multiple repetitions which is better. But is podcast+text < lecture+text? If not, maybe intro classes do end up changing a lot with technology.

Second, there are definitely classes and probably also extracurricular activities that depend entirely on discussion and face-to-face interactions. These become more available and potentially more important as the big intro classes become easier. One good example from the Psych department at NU is that a lot of our Psych majors get to participate directly in psychological research via an independent study. Neither Psychology nor scientific methods are as generally well understood as they could be and hands-on work in a lab is not only fun, but very valuable in both of those domains.

Third, there is a lot more to being at a college than just sitting in lectures. I'm not entirely convinced that the social networking being done outside the classroom isn't occasionally as valuable (or more) than the facts being absorbed from the courses taken. I think some professors/lectures forget this on occasion. We're a small piece of undergraduate education even beyond the fact that each of our classes is just one in the midst of many that students take.