Unlike the revolution started by the
printing press which soon stabilized, internet changes are not merely drastic
but continually accelerating.
In the liberal arts, one can practice
Spanish with a native speaker in Argentina on Skype for free. No need for four
years in college with an American professor who never learned how to trill an
r. No need for a community college degree in graphic design, when Roberto Blake does
a far better job of it for free on YouTube.
Academia will soon die out. The relic
courses designed only to make work for obsolete professors will no longer be tolerated.
The debt, and the social bloat, will have to collapse. Education has now become
truly democratized. Only Engineering, the Sciences, and Medical Education will
survive -- and these in only an abbreviated form.
This has the advantage of removing the
last holdouts of a vestigial intellectual aristocracy which distorts our
Republic with claims of expertise, and high salary requirements. However, the
downside, as evinced by YouTube reporting, will be the total lack of
responsibility. We will happily lose the Ivy League elite; but alas we may pay
for this liberty with BDS coming out of every pore.
For
those who say the servers can be shut down, you can learn how to set up your
own for a few hundred dollars. In fact, older computers are perfect for such servers.
It
will be interesting. I, for one, feel that it will be good to see ossified,
overpriced universities disappear. I would rather exercise my own discretion
than have choices made by some elite dinosaur. Academia was the last vestige of
medievalism. Good riddance! Long live the internet.
