Friday, November 1, 2013

A Thousand Buzzwords of Light

On Linkedin, a website that everyone should abandon immediately, there is an article using the word "disruption" in conjunction with "education" so you know it's bullshit. It's by James Maeda, president of the Rhode Island School of Design:
I think Reid is right. I can see a future when all of a person's skills, gained from college and beyond, get aggregated; much like a Coinstar machine collects all the change you pour in and spits out a total sum, we will some day pour all of our various skills, experiences, and milestones into a Degreestar machine, and out will pop a degree equivalent, be it an MIT CS degree, or a Stanford MBA. In this brave new world, many college professors will become free agents, doling out individual course credits to be collected by a trusted aggregator--be it a Harvard, or maybe even LinkedIn.
I see a future for trusted aggregator Fox University™, and finally real employment for Professor Jeff Goldstein.

Bonus twaddle:
In some ways, TED is the Harvard of our times.
Which way is that?

7 comments:

OBS said...

Oh jeebus. It's like a geeky antisocial glibertarian's wet dream.

El Manquécito said...

I doubt that TED can match the damage Harvard B School did to the economy.

Smut Clyde said...

Does it have Innovation in its DNA?

Substance McGravitas said...

Can there be any problem at all in professors being able to dispense credit while, say, conducting a transaction at the BMW dealership?

mikey said...

Do we provide any allowance for individuals who actually, oh, I dunno, benefit from LinkedIn?

Because I'd like to be all ideologically pure n shit, a lefty to stand against all those nasty teabaggers, but I'm trying to get/keep a job here.

Or is that no longer permitted?

Substance McGravitas said...

Linkedin avoidance is more about safety than politics: I have no objections at all to doing what you need to do to put food on the table. Which includes all manner of things I guess.

Joseph S. Barrera III said...

I thought Harvard was the present-day Harvard.