There was a time when the basic needs of human beings were just food, clothing, and shelter. With the rise of the industrial age, education was added as one of their basic needs. And now education is one of the most important industries in the world, producing graduates to manage and direct the economy, politics and the transmission of culture. But with the information age gaining more and more ground in our society, we are seeing conflicting trends in the education system.
The first conflicting trend is in the area of costs. While the cost of formal education in colleges and universities is increasing, the cost of education over the Internet is getting lower and lower. In many countries, the observation of education administrators is that the cost of education is rising above a country’s inflation rate. And yet, obtaining information, which is the raw data of education, is becoming cheaper and cheaper through the Internet. Students can inexpensively connect to the Internet through Internet cafes and access information that would previously cost them a lot. They can now download e-books, many of which are free.
An article about Academic Earth is written on the Personal Money Store website. He says that while Academic Earth is not an organization that can provide a student with college credit, it can provide most of the same material that they might receive in a traditional college classroom, whenever they want. , without the hassle of transportation and clothing costs. There is an ad on this website for “Great College Lectures, FREE”.
The second conflicting trend that I see is in the area of methodology. With more information to digest and more books to read, students are increasingly burdened with reading, memorizing, and understanding the content of teachers’ books and lectures. And yet, on the other hand, there are many people and groups who try to make learning fun and enjoyable, not an onerous experience.
There is an article on the DNA Read the World website titled “New Teaching Trends That Make Learning Fun.” In this article we read: “Making students enjoy and understand at the same time is the key principle that educational institutions should work on.” There are also online experiments with mnemonics to make memorization fun.
The third contradictory trend is in the results area. Almost in all Western educated countries, the complaint has been that the education system produces unemployed or underemployed graduates. There is no guarantee that a job will exist after graduation. And yet, jobs are generated through the Internet. Some find work writing reviews of books, programs, creating websites, programming, etc., not to mention the many online scams.
The Engines for Education website is trying to “raise awareness of the necessary changes in our education system.” Hopefully these changes also solve the problem of unemployment or underemployment of our university graduates.
What do these conflicting trends tell us? It seems that the following trends are possible.
As the cost of formal education increases more and more and the cost of non-formal education via the Web decreases more and more, only the rich will be able to access formal education, while the not so rich will be content with non-formal education through the web.
As the education process becomes more and more burdensome for students, more and more educational games will be placed on the web where students will spend more and more of their time. There are already signs that students are cutting classes to spend their time playing in internet cafes.
As our formal education system produces more and more unemployed and underemployed, more and more jobs will be created through the Web.
The changes in the educational area are not so clear at present but it seems clear that there are signs of substantial changes in the near future.
