Jeff talks about distributed university, I am not happy that he titled the post Google U. He writes on the topic of collaborative education – the new category: openguru I have opened in my blog. This post very clearly elucidates my thoughts (still abstract) on this topic:
Once you put all this together, students can self-organize with teachers and fellow students to learn what they want how and where they want. My hope is that this could finally lead to the lifelong education we keep nattering about but do little to actually support. And why don’t we? Because it doesn’t fit into the degree structure. And because self-organizing classes and education could cut academic institutions out of the their exclusive role in education.The real problem with this for society is that it cuts out the core business of the university, which also produces research and scholarship.The problem here is that the internet is unforgiving of needs to preserve old models and methods. It disaggregates ruthlessly.
So I think that education has a rude shocking coming unless it gets ahead of this change and figures out how to become less of an institution and more of a platform.
To top this, put it in context of India. 2 years down the lane – mobile is where most of the Indian population will be accessing online content, 3G hopefully will be up and running (regulation is throttling it). The desire to learn is very much there in the Indian culture. Name the city (rural or urban): education is valued irrespective of the social strata. And finally demographically, a young population which needs & wants to learn and will learn how to use the tools pretty damn fast irrespective of cost.
The only barrier according to me is TIME.
