Uncollege

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Bypassing College? Ideas On Learning Outside the System

March 19, 2013 | 10:49 AM | By

9780399159961Dale Stephens, founder of UnCollege, a movement that challenges the notion that “college is the only path to success,” has some advice for students who are willing to take the nontraditional route between school and work.

In his book, Hacking Your Education, Stephens outlines a path that he says will allow students to “ditch the lectures, save tens of thousands, and learn more than your peers ever will.”

Below, a few excerpts from the book, among many useful ideas called “Hack of the Day” that are sprinkled throughout the book among personal anecdotes.

 

 

 

Crash a Class

This hack is pretty easy; I want you to do what I did at community college and what Kirill did at Stanford. I want you to go to a university that you don’t attend and show up for a class. It doesn’t matter which university, and it doesn’t matter what class. I can’t guarantee what you’re going to learn, but I can guarantee that you’re going to learn more by crashing a class than you would sitting at home on Facebook.

1.   Identify a university near you. CollegeBoard is helpful for this.

2.   Go onto the university’s website and look up the course schedule. Choose a class that interests you and note the time. You can find the course catalogs on the university website that will list the time and location of classes.

3.   Be sure to choose classes that are in big lecture halls so no one will notice or care that you drop in.

4.   Show up to the next class. Participate in class. Pretend you’re a student. Ask a fellow student what last week’s homework assignment was.

5.   If you enjoyed the class, go again. If not, choose a different class and repeat until you find a class you enjoy.

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Dale Stephens, Higher Education, Uncollege

What Colleges Must Do to Stay Relevant

November 28, 2011 | 10:12 AM | By

Flickr: J. Gresham

For many Americans, going to college has been the next natural step after graduating from high school. A college degree has served not just as a status symbol, but also proof that graduates have mastered a subject and can put the knowledge they’ve acquired in school to practice.

But the value of a college degree is being questioned by those who wonder if there’s a better alternative. With free, high-quality education available online, and a growing new movement around nontraditional ways of earning credit for expertise through digital badges (a digital portfolio of sorts that includes credit for online courses, traditional college courses, and workplace achievements), colleges must find new ways of staying relevant.

Distilling a recent New York Times interview with Richard DeMillo, director of the Center for 21st Century Universities at Georgia Institute of Technology and author of Abelard to Apple: The Fate of American Colleges and Universities, a few imperatives are becoming clear.

  • INFORMATION IS PRICELESS. With MIT’s OpenCourseWare – the university’s classes offered online for free – as well as a long list of other quality free educational resources, the public perception of what holds value in education has changed. Facts and how-to’s are freely available to anyone with Internet access. So why pay upwards of $40,000 a year in tuition? “OpenCourseWare was an important signpost that hammered home the point that the content Continue reading →
FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, badges, Higher Education, MIT OpenCourseWare, open education resources, Uncollege

How Valuable is a College Degree?

May 27, 2011 | 3:51 PM | By

Flickr:Gadgetdude

Most parents dream of seeing their kids graduate from a good college. The assumption is that the vaunted degree will guarantee a successful career, the closest thing to being financially stable, and ultimately, a happy, fulfilling life.

But a number of authors and high-profile businesspeople and entrepreneurs are debunking the notion that college is the best solution. They’re questioning whether paying tens of thousands of dollars and investing four or five years in an institution should be the default for young people when so many more options exist. With free, high-quality education available to anyone, is college necessary? These folks say no.

  1. BILL GATES. “Five years from now on the Web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world,” said the Microsoft founder, famous Harvard dropout, and controversial figure in education last fall. In 2007, he told the Harvard graduating class in a commencement speech, “I’m a bad influence. That’s why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today.” Gates has said that learners of all kind should be able to receive credit for any kind of learning they do, and college shouldn’t necessarily be “place-based.”
  2. PETER THIEL. The co-founder of PayPal is giving $100,000 to 24 people under 20 years old on the condition that they drop out of school for two years and start a business. Thiel’s offer was intriguing enough to attract hundreds of applicants and to even lure a few away from Harvard and Stanford. Check out who made the cut. The youngsters have big plans, too — from decentralizing banking in the developing world with a mobile payment system to bringing Web-based videos and mobile apps into the classroom. Continue reading →
FILED UNDER: Culture, Bill Gates, Higher Education, Paypal, Uncollege