It's Saint Patrick's day, so what better time to consider the celebrated Irish author Frank Delaney. His website features his superb observations on literature and a line by line analysis of James Joyce's novel Ulysses. In a series of very enjoyable podcasts Delany makes Ulysses accessible to all. Who says you can't get educational resources of the highest quality for free on the internet! --

Writes Delaney:

"Re: Joyce! On the international literary feast day of Bloomsday, June 16, we launched a podcast to commemorate James Joyce's mighty novel, "Ulysses", the action of which took place in 18 hours of June 16, 1904. Now, every week, here on the website, you'll find a five-minute mini-essay from me designed to take you through this extraordinary novel. Ulysses is on every list of the greatest books ever written and it's on every list of books that readers begin but never finish. Even though it runs to some 375,000 words,I mean to go through the text sentence by sentence if I have to, in order to convey the full brilliance of this novel - and the enjoyment to be had from it. So I'll be podcasting for some time to come! One follower has already called this exercise "the people's Ulysses." It's such an absorbing book, it's got diamond mines of references, it's so compassionate, so tender, so moving, so funny - and most of us never know that, because most of us have long been daunted by it. No need to be afraid any more - that is, if you make a habit of listening to these podcasts."

Find the introduction to the Frank Delaney series of podcasts on Ulysses here.

Let's Get Real About the Bachelor's Degree

Due to degree inflation* the bachelor’s degree has lost it’s relevance as a measure of intellectual achievement. It has become more of a badge of employability than anything else. Government and corporate employers figure that if you were docile enough to fork over the big bucks for a four-year degree and able to withstand the institutional time waste, you’re probably manageable enough to be good employee material.

Smart education shoppers would either try to streamline this process, get it over as quickly and cheaply as possible, or skip it entirely. By skipping it I don’t mean to say that ignorance is bliss, I mean, of course, to promote the benefits of self-education.

In a more perfect world we would see a lot more independent study pathways opening up and a lot less of the idea that you have to take anthropology and music classes before you can get your employment permission slip.

I mean if you want to be an engineer you should be able to opt out of any program that wants to load you down with extra classes designed to make you a “well rounded person” (and to drain your bank account and waste your time). You’re a free adult, it should be your choice.

To build on the engineering example: If you’ve got your sciences, maths and the reading and writing part down after high school, you should be allowed to go right to the engineering classes. High school, and then a year-and-a-half, or two, of concentrated study in your chosen field and bam! You’re ready for an entry level professional job. Another two years and you can get a masters.

Cut out two years of high school part II (lower division college), waste less time, save tuition and get into the productive phase of your life sooner. Overall you’ll be staring life $150,000 ahead of the game. There aught to be a movement to see to it that this becomes a lot more common. Just say no to educational BS!

*Degree inflation is caused by a form of social promotion. Unqualified students are given degrees or diplomas because the society expects it. Because parents and students who've paid big bucks and spent years hanging out at or near a college campus feel that the stigma of not giving the hapless student a degree would be so great that it might damage the larger economy. Students pretend to learn, the colleges pretend that they're earning degrees and employers pretend that it qualifies them to earn an adult sized paycheck. The result is that (almost) everybody knows that the modern bachelor's degree is a poor imitation of what it used to be.

Free Online Learning From Carnegie Mellon University

Today our search for resources for the Free University Project brings us to Carnegie Mellon University's Open Learning Initiative. The courses here look to be the best organized and presented that I've seen so far. Again, they are not offering a comprehensive catalog of classes. These are generally lower division classes, such as a student might encounter in the first two years of college. An independent student combing the online world for resources might be quite happy with what they find here. In fact these courses might be just what someone needs to get prepared to pass a CLEP test for credit. Categories include:

Engineering Statics

Statistics

Causal and Statistical Reasoning

Modern Biology

Biochemistry

Chemistry

Economics

French

Logic and Proofs

Physics

Empirical Research Methods

Computational Discrete Mathematics

Visual Communication Design

The courses can be accessed here: Open Learning Initiative

Instructional Design Course from Wikiversity

Thinking about creating educational materials? Could you use some help developing or honing skills? Well the people that gave us Wikipedia, and now Wikiversity, have something that might interest you. How about a free, open source, course to help you... "develop the skills needed to design instructional material using media (especially communication technologies) to transfer knowledge as effectively as possible between teachers and learners."? It's a course under construction, but it seems to be taking shape nicely.

Wikiversity is an enthusiastic promoter of the open source education sector. I'm just starting to look at all their offerings and trying to get the measure of what they have done so far. A free, open source, course on instructional design looks like a great place to get started. Check it out here.

The Five Year Party

It's been a while since I was in college so I'm talkin' to folks and reading up on the latest campus happenings. Right now I have the book The Five Year Party, by Craig Brandon. I read a lot of it last night. It's a shocker, but it reveals little that wasn't already happening in the 1970's. Remember Animal House [Blue-ray]? I'm also looking to get my hands on a copy of another book, Why Does College Cost So Much? Judging from the reviews, it looks at the question from the college administrator's point of view, concluding that the cost is high and getting higher because good help (instructors) is expensive. Craig Brandon (The Five Year Party ) has a different conclusion. He believes that academics makes up only 25% of the cost. He attributes the rest to bloated administration and a race to see who can have the most luxurious amenities and extra curricular activities. I think I agree. (text continued below)
Brandon also mentions that in 2009 the state of Pennsylvania began to look at creating schools of higher education minus the frills, like the Greek life, athletics and anything else that doesn't bear directly on learning. Got to look into that too. I'll give a more thorough review when I finish both books.

Curriki: Open Source Curricula for K-12 Education

The Curriki website is the online home of a project to build open source curricula for K-12 students. The site uses the wiki format, that allows the site's users to create and edit parts of the website's content. Users are invited to add content and edit the site to provide the community with resources for teaching.

This is a model that could work just as well for higher learning. And so it's worth investigating.

Not only is the model interesting, the support it's getting is worth noting. When you have someone of the caliber of Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Micro Systems, on your board of directors, as Curriki does, you have a certain measure of credibility.

I've only just had my first look at Curriki. It seems to be chock full of resources, to have good design and lots of tools for navigating the content, but to my mind it's a bit jumbled; maybe a lot jumbled. There's a lot of coursework and related materials to sort through, but my first impression is that it's not very intuitive. It's kinda like some one says to you, here's a really comprehensive list of the parts that make up an automobile, now go forth and build yourself a car.

How about some help making an overall plan for the project?

Often when I find an interesting website I do a quick search on alexa.com to see what kind, and how much traffic the website in question is getting. curriki.com compares in traffic to homeschool.com, which I take to be a major website in this area of interest. Of even more interest is the fact that Curriki has a lot of international traffic. Apparently people in India, Pakistan and Indonesia are interested in the english language curricula served up at curriki.com. When some of the most motivated students in the world take an interest in something education-related it may be a good sign that a closer look is in order. Which I will be doing.

The Free University Project

As I write this the whole world seems to be undergoing revolutionary changes.

All across the Middle East and North Africa people are rising up in an attempt to make big changes. In Wisconsin, where I make my home, protesters are converging on the state capitol in numbers not seen since the Vietnam War. And in the nation's capitol and in the state houses politicians are staring down the barrel of governmental bankruptcy.

Seems like a great time for a revolution in higher education!

And indeed there is such a revolution underway. The Free University Project is a new journalistic enterprise that aims to take the measure of that revolution and to act as champions for it. We invite interested people to join us in using our website and this blog to create a community of like-minded individuals and institutions.

If you've got ideas or want to submit a blog post of your own, post up in the comment section below. After all it's nothing less than the free marketplace of ideas and knowledge that is at issue.