1DO0vxU

Accreditation/A scarce degree
Membership in a tribe
A situation for growth (which is where you’d file perspective and understanding)
Once courses are digitized, they ought to be shared, particularly by non-profit institutions
working in the public good. Given that all the major universities ought to/should/will create a
university of the people—giving access to information and great teachers to all (and if they
don’t, someone should and will, soon)—which of the other three really matter?
Accreditation: A degree from an Ivy League school is a little like real estate in a good neighborhood.
It makes a lousy house better and a great house priceless. We make all sorts of assumptions
about fifty-year-old men (even fictional ones—Frasier Crane went to Harvard) because
someone selected them when they were eighteen years old.
With so much information available about everyone, it gets ever harder to lump people into
categories. Graduating from (or even getting into) a prestigious institution will become ever
more valuable. We need labels desperately, because we don’t have enough time to judge all the
people we need to judge. It’s worth asking if the current process of admitting and processing
students (and giving a “gentlemen’s C” to anyone who asks) is the best way to do this labeling.
But there’s really no reason at all to lump the expense and time and process of traditional
schooling with the labeling that the university does. In other words, if we think of these schools
as validators and guarantors, they could end up doing their job with far less waste than they do
now. They could be selectors of individuals based on the work they do elsewhere, as opposed to
being the one and only place the work has to occur.
Membership in a tribe: This is perhaps the best reason to actually move to a college campus in
order to get a degree. While access to information is becoming ever easier (you’ll soon be able
to take every single MIT course from home), the cultural connection that college produces can
be produced only in a dorm room, at a football stadium, or walking across the quad, hand in
hand. Catherine Oliver, an Oberlin graduate, remembers living in one of the co-ops, planning a
menu, cooking, baking, washing dishes, mopping floors, and sitting through long consensusbuilding
meetings.
All of it builds tribes.
For centuries, a significant portion of the ruling class has had a history with certain colleges,
been a member of the famous-college tribe, sharing cultural touchstones and even a way of
speaking. The label on a résumé is more than a description of what you did thirty years ago—
it’s proof, the leaders say, that you’re one of us.
Until that changes, this tribe is going to continue to exert power and influence. The real
question is how we decide who gets to be in it.
Stop Stealing Dreams Free Printable Edition 93