We shouldn’t need more money, or time, or real life problems to solve…
we just need to be smarter about choices.

Thank you Anya.. for sharing your insight and expertise.

Greetings from New Zealand.

I just ordered a copy of DIY U after reading the sample chapter of the book and following some of the online comments that it has generated.

Stephen Downes initiated a useful discussion about your book and the ideas it presents on his website (http://bit.ly/aI5WwD). The following is my contribution to that thread, which deals, in part, with the question of whether or not the problems associated with institutionalized education can be solved by creating different kinds of institutions (or reformed versions of the institutions we already have).

“I must agree with Stephen here. The problem with institutions and organizations is not limited to education. Over time, institutions almost inevitably experience goal displacement. This is the process by which the initial objectives (the provision of education and support for research, for example) are superseded by the need to protect and expand the increasingly expensive and entrenched management structures and administrative personal. Branding, marketing, and advertising become central concerns and require increasing resources. Words (mission statements, slogans, and tag lines) replace, and are often at odds with, action. The image of the institution in the media becomes more important than the reality on the ground. Diversity and criticism is suppressed by the requirement that the organization speaks with one voice. Top-down management structures and increasing job specialization hinder innovation and discourage a sense of personal responsibility. By rewarding institutional loyalty, the process accelerates and becomes self perpetuating. In the education sector, these problems are exacerbated by the incredibly damaging idea that education is just another business selling commodities to consumers in a “free” and competitive market. Education is a human right, a public good, and a community project.”

Electricity enabled the centralization of production and contributed to the conditions that led to the development of the 20th century corporation. The Internet, and related networked digital communication technologies, is enabling new kinds of formations that don’t require the same physical plant or organizational structures. We can become self-actualizing searchers, connectors, and learners in a collaborative, public, and open environment without predetermined rules or preordained leaders. By recombining the free exchange of ideas and artifacts with everyday social life and work, we can reinvigorate our communities as we reinvent education. Most established institutions and the elites who own them, manage them, or are employed by them, will not give up their privileged and powerful positions without a fight. This will have to be a bottom up movement.

All the best,

markmcguire.net

I particularly like the last sentence of your post, but it begs the question of what education is and, maybe more importantly, why you want it. There’s nothing wrong with leaving that undefined for an individual, but when you start having taxpayers or teachers or institutions or governments or any other non-student stakeholders (whether individuals or organizations) investing in it, there has to be some agreement on what it’s *for* in order to get the cooperative effort. One of the things that I took away from your first chapter is that, as problematic as the bundling of various services may be for today’s university, it’s exactly the putting together of all of the pieces that enabled different stakeholders to believe that they were investing in…well…whatever it was that they wanted the university to be. There was a productive ambiguity in its purpose which enabled the creation of social and economic bonding. If those bonds break, if you break the Katamari Damacy, then you need some other cohesive force if you don’t want downsizing and disaggregation to turn into atomization.

If students are going to step up and demand a new social contract (still a big “if” at this point), then all the stakeholders who participate in that contract need to have some agreement regarding its goals and their importance. Without that, DIY U will mean that students are on their own.