{"id":1100,"date":"2010-11-25T16:48:14","date_gmt":"2010-11-25T15:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/t-machine.org\/?p=1100"},"modified":"2010-11-25T16:48:14","modified_gmt":"2010-11-25T15:48:14","slug":"death-of-the-uk-university-not-a-moment-too-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/2010\/11\/25\/death-of-the-uk-university-not-a-moment-too-soon\/","title":{"rendered":"Death of the UK University – not a moment too soon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adrian just wrote an excellent article for the Telegraph, on the role of physical Universities, and the extent to which they’re rapidly becoming irrelevant, eclipsed by low-fi educational resource on the internet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

QFT, a few hilights that fit *entirely* with my own experiences, both as an undergraduate, and as a tutor for undergraduates:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. modern lecturers are merely “talking textbooks”\n
  2. we act as if a non-teaching degree miraculously makes you “a brilliant teacher”\n
  3. most universities only give each student a few hours a week of face-time\n<\/ol>\n

    and, personally … although I have a Computer Science degree from Cambridge University, and although the syllabus was great, and the faculty highly skilled, I credit a lot of my degree to:<\/p>\n

    \nthe University of Hawaii\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    …because their lecture slides were of a universally higher quality than the sum total of Cambridge University’s slides+lecturer+tutors.<\/p>\n

    That’s shameful, on Cambridge’s part, but it also underlines Adrian’s points: I graduated almost ten years ago, and the writing was already on the wall. <\/p>\n

    Disruption is already here<\/h4>\n

    The beautiful (terrifying) thing about disruptive businesses is that – for the incumbents – they are invisible and seemingly irrelevant until it’s too late. And then, suddenly, the disguise is thrown off, and the incumbents are put out of business in a matter of months.<\/p>\n

    Universities that had coasted for decades (or centuries) on a patherically weak teaching structure are now facing real disruptive business, including competitors that don’t even *need* revenue. Nowadays, I think many Universities are soon to find they’re already too late to turn around their own laziness and buck-passing. The (hidden) revolution has already begun…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Adrian just wrote an excellent article for the Telegraph, on the role of physical Universities, and the extent to which they’re rapidly becoming irrelevant, eclipsed by low-fi educational resource on the internet. QFT, a few hilights that fit *entirely* with my own experiences, both as an undergraduate, and as a tutor for undergraduates: modern lecturers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}