Same problem of numbers in China and India (I've written about the abysmal standards in India on this forum in the past). But there's something additional operating in "higher education" in the USA: a McDonald's (or Walmart) model of standardising curricula, lecturing, and testing along with a techno-fetishism (e.g., Sidney Pressey's "teaching machine" in the 1920s). It's this lethal combination of commercial values and commercial organisation and this techno-fetishism in US "higher education" that interests me. MOOCs and digital diploma mills like U of Phoenix are one aspect of it. The drive to standardise testing and teaching in American schools another. What essentially is being killed is the possibility of spontaneous interaction between teacher and student by this mediation of technology and bureaucracy.
Addendum: And along the same lines, look at the sheer number of posts on this forum that run like this: "I've got a GPA of 3.47. Will that affect my chances of entry into a top program?" Education's been reduced to numbers in commercial and soulless USA. It's profoundly depressing reading these posts.
I see.
Well, I don't find expressions like "techno-fetishism" particularly enlightening or informative ("semantic content low to negative," so to speak). Similarly, I find "a McDonald's (or Walmart) model" in the context of education unconducive to a thoughtful conversation. IMO loaded phrases with debatable emotional connotations rarely work as good analogies (unless the intent is to show that what we see is a great development for the low-income consumer segment, just like Walmart clearly is :-]).
I mean, one could as well describe the opposite as Neo-Luddism and thus conclude the exchange of opinions. Private universities
aren't exactly a US-specific phenomenon, either.
I don't really see the connection between MOOCs and the purported "drive to standardization"--perhaps we just see things differently, since, as I've mentioned earlier, for me MOOCs are simply akin to textbooks. Hence, I read your comment as isomorphic to "textbooks are one aspect of techno-fetishism and the drive to standardization in the US education," and I'm admittedly left somewhat puzzled. For me, there's still a variety in the textbook market. But perhaps that's too optimistic in your opinion?
You do have a point regarding the undesirable aspects of
centralization in the education market (I think it's a better choice of word than "standardization" in this context). Similarly to you (I suppose), I don't think legislation like
NCLB is necessary or, more importantly, helpful (as opposed to harmful). The problem is that in a political system (which, let's be honest, is not without a major influence here) there's a strong implied-incentives configuration which results in a similarly strong tendency to "sounds good" policies (judged on the intent) as opposed to "works well" policies (judged on the actual consequences). I remain quite skeptical, however, that "
it's for the children" is only ever heard from the lips of American politicians. In fact, I'm pretty sure the phrase is quite "popular" within the Commonwealth of Nations, too
One note regarding the size of primary and secondary classrooms (in the OECD context)--it's worth noting the contrast between, say, Ireland and the UK (seems geographical proximity doesn't really explain much):
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/class-size-around-the-world/
http://oecdeducationtoday.blogspot.com/2012/12/how-does-class-size-vary-around-world.html
Correlation between small-class-size and student performance is not so clear-cut:
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG02-02.pdf
Similarly for the university education:
http://personal.lse.ac.uk/LARCINES/class_size.pdf
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00973793
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repo...zes-smaller-isnt-always-better/article620700/
Correlation between small-class-size and university rank is not so clear-cut, either:
http://www.usnews.com/education/bes...al-universities-with-the-smallest-class-sizes
Just something to ponder
