Disclaimer: I used to be an English teacher, certified (and certifiable!) grades 7-12. As such, I had the pleasure of going to graduate school part-time over a series of years to earn the first MA. I took education courses and student-taught. I also grew up with two English teacher parents who had very different, clashing views of what education was, in which direction it ought to move, and whether what was occurring 'now' was 'progress'. This will be my 3rd degree; I have very definite views on what education is and is NOT.
That said, I agree with what much of B and D have to say about the perception and actuality of education as a delivery system. The only exceptions that I found as a k-12 student were in Advanced Placement classes, where instructors - often with 'Ph.D' after their names - forced us to engage with the ideas rather than rote responses. Conversely, an expensive undergraduate education provided little non-delivery learning, particularly and amazingly in my own department and field. This again reinforces what B and D had to say about undergraduate education. My undergraduate degree would fall into their category of 'credentialing' - meaning it would look good to an employer and therefore put me among the candidates selected for an interview. It would not, however, speak to B and D's idea of a community, or engagement with practitioners: the murky area that we assume is going on in education, but in reality may not be.
Let's assume that B and D are correct and that graduate school is the real connection to higher knowledge, where you are 'doing' rather than being passively 'done to'. Isn't this a lot of money to spend over 16 years in public and private institutions, only to learn that you'll need to drop another $72,000 + for another 2-4 years of active education to become a practitioner?
Let's go back to k-12. As I entered teaching in New York State, the old Regents exams were being 'supplemented' by exams in the 4th and 8th grade. Part of this was tracked credentialing: a 'Regents diploma' was worth more, in New York, than a 'non-Regents diploma'. There was more pressure to obtain these diplomas, secured by passing a series of subject-area tests and completing a 'Regents sequence' in one area. As No Child Left Behind was inflicted on New York, the pressure accelerated to capture and track weaker students at earlier ages and supplement one specific part of their education before they took the final exam sequence and were doomed to the 'non-Regents diploma' wasteland. Mind you, once you left New York State, this whole Regents diploma gobbledygook was unapplicable to any other state - and it certainly was no guarantee of better employment anywhere. What it did do, pre-NCLB, was grease the wheels for acceptance at in-state institutions at a point when in-state schools were relatively inexpensive. After NCLB, the benefit to NY was that they already had some form of testing in place.
When NCLB arrived, 'education' left the building for kids who had difficulty passing the 4th and 8th grade tests. More math, science, English, social studies; less music, art, gym, intramural, and afterschool activities. More teaching to the test, more rote responses, less time for cross-curricular learning and serendipitous knowledge. Also, more of the same kids with the same deficits in the same classes; so therefore, less chances to learn from others with varied strengths and weaknesses. Hardly educational, hardly a community of learners, and hardly a surprise to find that this kind of 'education' has extended to undergraduate institutions.
I don't see this changing in the current environment. B and D address this somewhat in their talk about centralization, but I lay the blame for this squarely at the feet of the so-called 'business model of education'. Credentialing may be the main thing high schools and colleges do, but this turns learning institutions into widget factories, where the only difference is which factory made the widget. Ultimately, the real issue is that a University of Phoenix widget is considered far inferior to a MIT-manufactured widget. Is that because we assume more learning goes on at MIT? Or is it strictly MIT's reputation? At this point, that reputation has little to do with the actual everyday learning and practice at the MIT community, and all to do with how MIT is rated - and by whom. If MIT were to sponsor a completely online degree program along the lines of the 19th century University of London model, then their online degree would have the equivalent weight of their current degree. So the question is, why don't they do this? I would go back to the business model of education: there must be some reason that an institution like MIT, with the brains to make it really work (see, I bought into the 'reputation' assumption!), doesn't move forward with it. Could it be financial? Sure, you could market it. It would be innovative. But how much money are you going to make on it? What's your reputation going to be as the new kid on the block? How do you change the perception of the market - and those who market universities - so that an online degree gains acceptance and retains an institution's reputation?
Really, what we're talking about is ephemera: not the logistics of how, but a sea change in perception. We also have to begin looking at education as a public good and not just a commodity. And as long as we throw Olympic sports under the bus for a football program, it ain't gonna happen.
