Functions of the University

Any advancement over current higher educational models must establish clearly defined institutional functions.

This table shows the structure of educational needs in abstract i.e. I haven't included the concrete instances of what kind of intentional community or what kind of training or testing or publication and so on. Age groups were split up arbitrarily, just enough to be able to make some meaningful profiling.

Research 

This function is sometimes capital intensive. It operates on a grant/proposal system, unless we're talking about R&D firms in the private sector. I think the best way differentiating the two is that academic research tends to be speculative, while the research private companies do tends to have an immediate instrumental value. In a higher education un-bundling, there could be institutions for undergraduates and graduate students that focus on deep immersion in a field with opportunities to do research while faculty also focuses on research, advising and publishing their work.


Knowledge Distribution

The publishing industry, library systems, internet databases, etc. are all a part of the distribution system, but traditional higher learning includes the additional service of the lecture with the advantage being that students can ask questions when they get stuck. In a higher education un-bundling, there would be more emphasis on face-to-face interaction for upper level study perhaps based on the seminar model. This means that content distribution would be best accessed through the aforementioned systems. For example, the Minerva project takes advantage of the internet by offering instruction online for courses earlier in the sequence. There are also plenty of tutoring platforms and question forums (e.g. Quora, StackOverflow, Reddit, etc.) that are either in person or online that serve to fill the role of office hours at a traditional university in a cheaper and more effective way. After all, few students take advantage of office hours at universities anyways. They rather ask friends first. Which brings us to another function...

Socialization Patterns

The university offers an intentional community in which students live together. Students are partially randomized and then placed in dorms to live together (unless they choose their roommates beforehand). They may or may not be studying the same material, so the dormitory functions as just that - a dormitory. Students connect through the lecture hall usually in an organic way, just like in high school. Though, if they share the same major, they will likely see each other in several classes. This allows for networked learning on assignments, studying, projects, etc. After university, people find a place to live and commute to work. Here collaboration is a must. What was a study group in university becomes the "professional network." After retirement, an emphasis on intentional communities reappear along with these learning networks as people learn new skills.

The un-bundling here comes in the increase in self chosen intentional communities dedicated to study. Even Minerva international students are encouraged to take advantage of this by co-living with other students in their home country before finally moving to California for the last two years. Other examples include HackerHouse and many other technology oriented intentional communities. There are likely many informal co-living situations between people who are independent scholars or "education hackers."

Another idea, see: Home College: an Idea Whose Time Has Come (Again) 

I also have another idea to contribute to the idea-pool. Let's say we have this thing called the "Grandma Effect" which is a phenomenon where children show their grandma some cool trick they can do or share some idea they recently learned about and grandma responds with a burst or enthusiasm, thereby encouraging the child to continue learning more. When it comes to college education, some may argue that success in learning comes from the structured environment and accountability measures set up by professors, advisers and parents. If at only 18, a high school graduate wishes to join other five other 18 y.o. high school graduates to study geography together, they can find a space to do it over the course of 3 years or less. However, this group of self-directed learners will run into the problem of accountability and structure, as well as social stigma. Since both these Millenials and the older population are suited to intentional communities there should be a matching mechanism that would match an older mentor from the retired population with these independent learners. The Grandma Effect would provide encouragement, accountability and increase the reputation of the intentional community.

These are all grand ideas, but we also need ways to learn today without relying on a sophisticated infrastructure. I will try to write a post specifically about the strategies individuals can use based on all the books I've read on the subject of self-directed higher education.

Signaling Methods (Credentialing)

Throughout formal education transcripts and standardized test scores serve as the signal that allows students to move through successive stages of the education system. There are school sponsored standardized testing as well as outside testing e.g. SATs, ACTs, GREs etc. Each level (high school, college, grad school) grants a diploma or certificate which shows that the student has met all the graduation requirements. With the implementation of sorting algorithms, some job applications are weeded out even before a person looks at the resume if they don't have a certain credential.

Alternative credential systems are still being devised but I will touch on some interesting developments.

Integrative Platforms for Life-long Learning:

While a degree signals that a student has focused on education exclusively for 4 years, imagine what signal is created when a person creates a learning profile over the course of more than 4 years. A learning profile does more to show what a person dedicates their time to learning through incorporating a variety of content from articles, videos, and coursework to books read. One such platform is Degreed. Users have the ability to add verified credits from accredited universities, but more importantly they can automatically integrate into their learning portfolio all the academic content they consume on the net using a web plugin. A similar idea is Mozilla's Open Badges which offers badges for a variety of different skills.

Talent Analytics:

More and more companies are becoming "data-driven." There is a so called Datafication of Human Resources. From the same article, here is an example of datafication of HR:

"A major customer service provider analyzed 7,240 employees over seven locations around the world and found that “relevant job experience” in the area of customer service had no impact on tenure, performance, or long term employee engagement.  They also found that candidates with many prior positions (ie. job hoppers) did not perform any better or worse than employees who had long term employment with their prior employer. The result:  a very powerful model now in use to hire and predict high performers in customer service."

Analysis of turnover and estimation of wages are all internally important processes but there are areas where populations that were disadvantaged in the past will be able to gain employment based on their own metrics. One criticism may be that

I foresee a personal analytics platform which takes key measures e.g. Distance of Daily Commute, LinkedIn Connections, High School GPA, Nutritional Targets, Sleep and Exercise Data, Test Scores, and more that will be used in a proposal system which replaces the resume. People will not just apply to jobs, but also create their own jobs by proposing how they can add to projects undertaken by existing companies. The personal analytics will be useful as a baseline for soft skills and generic abilities while a portfolio, recommendations, MOOC coursework, bootcamps and workshop experience will serve to show domain expertise.

p-e-r-e-g-r-i-n-a-t-i-o-n, Pt. 2

...more outtakes from the paper...

The Job-Market Signalling Model.

According to the work of Nobel Laureate Michael Spence, educational credentials signal to employers the value that an employee can offer to a firm. Education involves a series of tasks which prove that the student can meet deadlines, arrive on time, and handle responsibility. Most importantly, by purchasing education, the student conveys information about his or her productivity. The need for signalling arises due to limitations on the access to information in the market. Due to a phenomenon referred to as the Sheepskin Effect, the signal, i.e. a degree, can have value to an employer regardless of whether it contributes to the potential employee’s productivity. This applies particularly in domains of study which do not have a focus on "technical" training, such as gender studies, history or anthropology. This suggests, then, that undergraduates can improve their human capital by entering a technical field or actively seeking to gain skills which boost productivity. By taking on a business venture, college students can receive the best of their plan-of-study and still build human capital.

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One of the first things I learned as an undergraduate was the idea of opportunity costs. In fact, on page 4 of my macroeconomics textbook used higher education as an example of how opportunity costs work. This was even before I knew about signalling - a concept introduced later in the course. The text defines opportunity costs of a choice as "the value of the opportunities lost."

In the context of higher education, the opportunities lost are measured by the cost of tuition, books, and potentially room and board. Although students would have had to pay for room and board if they weren't students, the cost of room and board at college is often more expensive than other living situations. In addition, though, another opportunity cost is time, which can be measured as wages foregone (which can range anywhere from 15k to 35k/year for a worker with just a high school diploma). This means that at a typical state college, the highest cost of attendance is not even the tuition students pay. I'm surprised how little this is mentioned when media outlets cover the student loan crisis and unemployment among Gen-Y.

I also found out that there is a tendency for college enrollment to increase with unemployment. It makes sense since the opportunity costs are lowered if a person couldn't have gotten a job straight out of high school i.e. no wages foregone by attending college.

The list goes on. There are plenty of statistics related to higher education as well as other economic ideas that gave me a broader perspective on the decision to attend university. Taking macroeconomics was not required for the engineering track I was on, yet that was the class in which I learned the most that semester. Does it mean I should have changed majors? It could be a reason but I don't interpret this as a sign that economics was my special, true calling. My interpretation is that (1) we do well in subjects we like, (2) we do well in subjects that are taught in an engaging way and (3) there is always an initial barrier to liking a subject so I could theoretically like anything else just the same. The signalling narrative says that colleges just put a sticker on the students that were already smart and ambitious. Likewise, since I was already interested in economics I would have learned these things over time regardless of whether I took the class i.e. my grade at the end was just a signal of that interest, prior knowledge, etc.

Understanding key ideas in the field of economics brought me one step closer in my "peregrination" towards a deep interest in the future of higher education. In Miguel Street (the book I themed this blog after), Titus Hoyt, a scholarly man in a modest Trinidadian community, helps a lost boy find his way home. Later, he helps him write a letter to the Guardian about the experience.

"This, dear Mr Editor, was my first peregrination (p-e-r-e-g-r-i-n-a-t-i-o-n) in this metropolis, and I had the misfortune to wander from the path my mother had indiciated [sic]" (Emphasis mine)

I suppose you might say that in all things college education, economics is my Titus Hoyt and American Culture is analogous to "my mother." At times it feels like it doesn't matter what the numbers say and that whatever culture dictates takes precedence. Yet, all Millenials can benefit from understanding the economics of higher education.


For more economics and stats on college, try Marginal Revolution.