College from scratch

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If you were going to create a college from scratch, what would you do?

...about money, curriculum, fund-raising, recruiting students, hiring and managing teachers, accreditation, any of it?

See an idea you like? Hate? Don't understand? Add a + or - or ? in the [+/-] box for any given entry.

  • I would try to get the important parts right, then go ahead and start it. In fact, that's what I did, and I'm looking for faculty members: Sphere College [1], Students discuss their experience [2]
  • to @cshirky from @buildership - are you familiar with Debategraph.org wiki tool to visually map and discuss issues? It has good interface in that it lets people drill in and comment on branches of their choice. Could be useful with this or in your next Scratchwiki.

Organizational Model

Partial distillation of ideas:

  • for-profit (@openworld) students vested to degree they enrich curriculum (@openworld)+++
  • 3 years X 11 months (@hc)+
  • 1 yr required community service pre-college (@jsonin)+--
  • fees: 2% of lifetime income (@hc, @jthessert)--
  • funding/admissions like public K-12 (@studentactivism, @jsonin)-
  • tenure limited to 8 yrs (@jakewk)++
  • project-based classes (@jkeltner, @JoeBorn, @smithtk)++
  • game-like classes (@schirra, @jakewk)
  • self-directed learning
  • emphasis on doing with learning best achieved as a byproduct (@maxmarmer)
  • applied labs (@digiphile)
  • recreate published experiments (@fare)

@theadamrocca Quoting "1 yr required community service pre-college" by @jsonin. IMO, no such thing should be "required". Please refer to my entry for Curriculum below.

@vfrolov Local businesses & communities with their challenges must be involved partners in education for students to learn NEW things.

@emahlee: more self directed, collaborative, interactive, cooperative, fun. Learning centered on intrinsic motivations [+++]

@rkabir:

  • UNCollege: 1 boy, 1 girl from every country. They come together and agree on curriculum, everyone teaches 1 class. [---]

  • LifeCollege: only teach life lessons. Pass down years of wisdom, collected from alums, approximating the Bene Gesserit. [--]

  • ConfidenceCollege: only teach students to be confident, all else is just enabling making. Confident makers, making. [--]

  • FailureCollege: every grade is F. Desensitize students to failure so that they go on to try the impossible, take more chances. [++ --]

  • Everything from scratch, recursive. Each class redesigns from scratch anything that exists today. [-+]

@CodyBrown: so much of undergrad education has nothing to do with academic education. It's mostly camp for 4 years, accredited. [- + +]

@hc: Attend 3 years X 11 months each year. No foreign language requirement (learn it later.) No frats. Fee: 2% of lifetime income. No grad students. [- +]

@ONEworldcitizen: Universal & Free. Focused on the meaning of life not grades. Focused on relationships not titles. A place where to foster respect, courage, love, critical thinking/feeling and horizontal power. [++ --]

@schirra:

  • Design a curriculum that acknowledges work (school) and play are not polar opposites -- embrace game-like classrooms. [+++]

  • Throw out classist ACT/SAT/GRE tests & refuse to adjust admissions criteria to cater to flawed "top college" lists. [+++]

@mauroalex: The university as a social platform to teach, learn and share. There is no ex-student or ex-professors, everybody has something to teach as long they want. In this place you could find people interested in developing projects and research. [++ -]

@ carlmalamud: Move back to Newton model where students/faculty sign up with each other. Students drive process at U. of Localhost. Have degrees be awarded by anybody/everybody, worth of a degree is based on a pagerank-like algorithm. [++]

@jsonin:

  • 1 year community service pre-college required for all United Statesians (like city year, peace corps) [ ]

  • Open education for all, throughout our lifetimes (love the enduring micro tax by @hc), open rankings of colleges (edu marketplace), open marks/grades of students [ ]

  • Required to graduate/masters/PhD: MAKE it, don't just talk about it. [ +]

@jakewk:

  • Each academic paired with a professional from relevant field for classes taught; use a theory>application rubric [ ]
  • Tenure limited to 8 years (enough time to do important research, but not enough to encourage "job 4 life" performance decay) [ +]
  • Incorporate gaming principles & elements as methodologies to encourage skill acquisition and measure student performance (leveling up, rankings, competitions) [- +]
  • More explicit focus on helping students identify their own weaknesses and strengths [ +]

@studentactivism: My first step in creating *collegefromscratch would be to organize funding and admissions more like public K-12. Second step? Make students, faculty, and administrators equal partners in governance. Third step: Integrate serious training in undergraduate teaching into all doctoral programs. [-]

@openworld: Launch College on a for-profit basis. Incoming students are vested as co-owners to degree their homework/studies enrich college's virtual curriculum. Extra vesting for student-planned agro, environmental, special economic zone plans that yield land grant endowments to support educational and health care partnerships in poor communities. Development of the land grant sites by private parties helps fund national and global extension of the College's distance learning and CME/telemedicine network. Communities conveying largest sites to success-sharing development partnerships receive lifelong free access for all residents to virtual learning and eHealthcare resources from the College. [- +]

@jkeltner: all courses would be multi-disciplinary and project-based. ideally a combination of online material for content deliver and in-person meetings for discussion/debate/application (although i would make options for online only). make the school flexible - try new things and change your plans. any plan you come up with will need to be altered, and the lack of flexibility is a big challenge for schools today. [+++]

@digiphile: Fund multidisciplinary labs for applied innovation & incubation. [ ]

@jthessert: Education as Social Business Designed to Heal World: Variations of People to People Social Investing designed to resolve need for balance between philanthropy + investment in context of Education, Also Resolve need for balance between Structure and Freedom: Platform built on top of twitter... where percentage of income of students post grad is returned to investors (mentors? teachers? Same?) [+]

@PeerLearning: Land grants to fund microscholarships & distance learning links for poor areas? Students with equity stakes in universities? [+ ]

@catherine_white: undergrad:profs who really teach, drill, communicate, good notes. Its about gaining a very solid foundation of a subject. grad: harder online, as need peers to review, collaborate, inspire, challenge: perhaps campus atmosphere maybe better for this. [ ]

@calcondor: No classes, no site, no formal instruction. Recruit people of "TED" caliber to take on apprentices. After two years of working with the best and most innovative change agents "students" will be proven, resourceful, connected and fully-charged. Watch out. [-]

Departments, Grading, and Curriculum

Partial distillation of key points:

  • no letter grades (@losanjalis, @Japansen, @ekstasis?)
  • credits for work, etc (@sewsueme)
  • curriculum
    • macroeconomics and stochastic calculus (@kpich)
    • interdisciplinary (@alesh, @schirra)
    • survival skills (@matthewburton, @roberte3)
    • advanced tech (@matthewburton)
    • classics (@roberte3)
    • critical thinking (@mtiller)
    • areas where mass media are weakest (Radical)
    • systems thinking (@vfrolov)

@theadamrocca Many of us want more electives, more options, more freedom, and less required core textbooks. I'm not saying take out the requirement of specific core textbooks completely, but suggesting that we reduce them significantly compared to the status quo. I'm not advocating a chaotic system here, but I personaly believe we can use a lot extra freedom of choice, mix & match, and even reach a level of "Custom-Made Degrees" eventually. Some may argue that it would be too time consuming to grade or evaluate theses on thousands of books or subjects that the hundreds of thousands of students will want to choose from, but why not apply the "wiki" & "open source" idea to the very process of grading, by allowing the very authors of such books or experts on the subjects, not necessarily from the permanent staff of the university, to grade or evaluate any theses on non-standard subjects or books? What's in it for them is another issue that would be open for more brainstorming. I personally believe that academic education should be even [more] fun than free personal reading, if we are to accelerate our development as a race, and in order for academic education to be more fun than that, it should have a lot more freedom than currently available to compliment the already existing fun collaborative and social element of academic education. If I am to summarize this idea, I'd say: More curriculum flexibility, freedom, electives, aspiring for "custom-made degrees", the subject of which would be chosen and titled by the graduate at their own risk, but accreditation still given by the university ensuring equal efforts were made to earn all degrees and the core textbooks were covered. []

@JayRosen_nyu: Students would not declare majors; they'd declare questions. Then they could flirt by asking each other, "What's your question?" [++]

@nmw: maybe declare language / dialect / community (e.g. text blogger / podcaster / vlogger / wiki - or even "SMS", "SMO", "essay", "reporting", "academia", etc.); in the "real world" these would ultimately correspond to TLDs (e.g. .COM .TV .EDU etc.); Hence web disciplines might reflect DNS analogously to the way they correspond to LC classification today (note, however, that language / dialect / jargon might be slow to "adapt") Nmw 21:33, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

@kpich: The 21st century philosopher kings shall be trained in macroeconomics and stochastic calculus. [+ -]

@losanjalis: no A/B/C/D/E grades, reward creativity [++]

@Japansen: No grades at all. Classes designed small enough that each teacher knows who is in the class and what they are doing. Students are judged to have learned enough or not based on this. Curriculum based on developing tools and skills for identifying what isn't known and how to figure it out. "How" and "Why" are the two coordinated elements of instruction: can't have one without the other, but in combination they unleash curiosity, which leads to all sorts of good stuff. [+-] @theadamrocca: The following, "teacher knows who is in the class and what they are doing", assumes that we'll be teaching in brick and mortar all the time and for everyone. This clearly has nothing to do with the majority of education in the future, not even a lot of it today in 2010.

@ekstasis: single biggest failure of education is the focus on grades as a proxy for learning. they don't always track. [++]

@JoeBorn start with a "senior design project" and encourage them to spend the rest of the time at university trying to realize the project. It's the best time in a person's life to pursue a project like that and sadly most die when they graduate. [++]

@alesh: a pretty modest change to the college system would be to knock down the barriers between departments and schools. Let students use whatever resources they can justify for whatever ends they can defend. [+++]

@Jen_McFadden: Eliminate freshman year curriculum. Instead, create programs that take students to 3 different countries and 3 different socioeconomic and geographic areas of the country. [ ]

@matthewburton: My curriculum would be two-pronged: advanced technology and self-sustenance. Every student would be required to take equal credits in each prong. The first prong would teach biomedical engineering, nanotechnology, nootropics and other technologies with transhumanist applications. The second would teach primitive survival skills, farming, navigation and carpentry. Single courses on the history and philosophy of technology would also be required. The senior thesis would be a monograph on the future, which route humanity should take, and whether or not that route will be a conscious choice. [-] @theadamrocca: 99% of suggestions using "required" will quickly get a "no" from me, and many others I believe, because we already have enough old "requirements" as it is and it is fairly unlikely that we'll get new better "requirements", but I'm open to 1% genius "mandatory" innovations.

@larsleafblad: Experiential syllabus focused entirely on: Design. Story. Symphony. Empathy. Play. Meaning. c/o @DanielPink [+ ]

@schirra Remove barriers between depts & create courses/research projects that speak to our increasingly interdisciplinary world. [+++ ]

@roberte3: Every student is given works of Knuth, Shakespeare, thoreau, horticulture, a shovel, saw, seeds 5 acres +water. Make the students learn latin, and then start reading plato, then cannon till the end of civilized time ~1500ad. Students get expelled if they read anything post Luther #suckitDescartes [-]

@PeerLearning: Reward creators of homework that evolves into new global eLearning resources in a #CollegeFromScratch [+]

@willrich45: show evidence of "edupreneurship"...what can you do with what you know? [+]

@sewsueme: credits would not longer exist. ppl would have to prove that they learned something & then would earn a badge or something. learners could collect "credits" (learnings) from anyplace--Apple store, a uni course, an apprenticeship as long as they cld prove. ultimately you add up the badges or whatevers and they equal something of value to employers and learner. there might be some new course creation but aggregation from multiple places wld be important. [+ ]

@fare: As training + public service, students to reproduce random published experiments (skewed by citation/reproductions) [ ]

@donohoe: While they whole idea of 'let student decide course' etc is a nice idea, it is really just that, 'a nice idea'. Make it a point to provide structure and defined points of failure/pass (and then add in flexibility from a student level). While some people do well in a very open self-set environment there are many people who need a level of discipline and structure. [+ ] @theadamrocca: Agreed, and gave a +, and this is coming from a "free curriculum" near-fanatic. I believe we should be able to choose the majority of what we learn, but I also believe there should be a bare minimum of "obligatory" knowledge that qualifies anyone to be a psychologist, engineer, etc, albeit a lot less than the current status quo of compulsories, so yes, a "structure" and a reliable failure/pass tipping point are also needed.

@mtiller: I'm frequently stunned at how pitiful the analytical skills of college educated people are. They never learn the basics of things like reasoning, bias or even the principles of the scientific method. If we were better at processing the overwhelming amount of information we have at our finger tips, we'd do much better at utilizing that information in a constructive way. [+ ] @theadamrocca: A more target-focussed phrasing can be "Offer reasoning, reading with an open mind, and the scientific method as 'highly recommended' parts of any degree."

Curriculum focused on areas where mass media are weakest: economics, 'censored' stories -Radical [ ]


@ewellburn Offer a fully open “design-your-own certificate” program in which students customize their own competency frameworks with guidance from an advisory panel then use learning plans, electronic portfolios, “authentic” competency-based assessments, and professional peer-based review of skills and knowledge to achieve credit equivalency. [+ ]

@vfrolov Systems thinking is critical for creation of holistic enduring solutions to problems. Vladimir.frolov 00:25, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

@voxels In undergrad: a few, very general but interdisciplinary degrees issued in cognitive skills (memory, attention, motor skills, executive skills, language, critical thinking, empathy, etc.) with concentrations in a hard science inclusive of, perhaps, economics. Graduate school would feature specialization in particular functions, but the students should not be tracked against each other's progress in coursework. Allow each to choose a particular topic in the syllabus and spend an extended amount of time exploring it over many weeks (rather than the one week typically allotted). The structure provided by advisors/professors should be flexible enough to accommodate the varying skill level of the class (so, in this way, both students and teachers must improve their approaches to education). Rather than grading students, require documentation of their work for approval, with honors given in a system of peer reviewed and external publication.

@michaeljung There are no tests, to pass tests is not the aim. To walk the path is the test. Continuously. Students are awarded recognition (form of grades) as the teacher/prof deems appropriate to the students level. Constant feedback is given. Tests announced or unannounced are not harmony. That is the way Shaolins/Buddhists train and teach their students.

Student Requirements and Participation

Partial distillation of ideas:

  • experience how others live (@Jen_McFadden)
  • survival skills (@matthewburton, @roberte3)
  • service projects (@Jen_McFadden, @alicebarr) self-sustaining (@rkabir)
  • students teach too (@djstrouse)
  • interdisciplinary (@alesh, @schirra)
  • critical thinking (@mtiller, @fare, @jeffsonderman?)
  • areas where mass media are weakest (Radical)
  • project-based classes (@jkeltner, @JoeBorn)
  • game-like classes (@schirra, @jakewk)
  • applied labs (@digiphile), real-world research (@jkeltner)
  • recreate published experiments (@fare)
  • macroeconomics and stochastic calculus (@kpich)
  • advanced tech (@matthewburton)
  • classics (@roberte3)

@djstrouse: All student should be required to teach as well. The teacher-student shift is no longer a sharp wall but a gradient that runs from elementary school to the elderly. At all stages of education, people teach the group "below" them at the same that they learn from the group "above" them. This not only helps the student-teachers learn better, it also helps to alleviate the shortage of teachers. [++]

@openworld: Students are 1) co-owners of College based on success in their roles as 2) co-creators of virtual learning resources, and 3) planners/assisters in asset-building development partnerships with emerging economies and lagging developed country communities. Focus of 3) is on applying innovative technologies and transparent policy/institutional practices (akin to Paul Romer's Charter Cities, but using build-operate transfer concessions to ensure lasting assets for local health, education, and environment causes). [+]

@AFG85: for students, go YCombinator style--systematic applications, then one weekend of ten minute interviews. [ ]

@Jen_McFadden: The students should be required to volunteer and observe local and multi-national non-profits in practice, to see how companies like IDEO and Google innovate, to visit museums and great architecture (even if only online), and experience how others live. After the first six months, students should submit volunteer projects to a database. The most compelling projects receive funding and the students help manage/implement the ideas. [+]

@alicebarr: First have every senior take a year before college to work in some kind of service project away from their hometown. [ ]

@jkeltner: all students should be engaged in real-world research as part of their courses. [ ]

@brumbaugh: Take the :45 clip from the film "Accepted." To get a better idea of how it might look. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0khdtPcLn9c) Also students would be responsible for a project that shows their own learning, a la Google 20% time. [ ]

@solidadrocks: have writing curricula be part of the student process, then release curricula + feedback via the internet. [ ]

@alanrosenblith: instead of measuring only academic performance with grades, also measure student engagement. Then make it a requirement of graduation that a student finish at least one class with LOW performance but HIGH engagement. Will encourage students to go outside their comfort zone and stay engaged. [ ]

@jeffsonderman: Make the students talk, listen to and question each other, moderated by the faculty. A good university makes you discover the important questions and how to analyze. Memorizing individual answers is not as important. [ ]

@rkabir

  • Invite all applicants to a huge weekend unconference. Everyone shortlists 10 people they want to study with. Build a weighted graph of the most requested classmates, repeat. [ ]

  • In order to graduate, require each student to establish a self-sustaining sommunity/society betterment project [ ]

@fare:

  • Teach students to detect logical fallacies & deal with multiple incompatible (most false) points of view on a subject. [ ]

  • Sort students by MBTI and other categorizers & base feedback on double-blind tests to improve teaching personalization [ ]

@rbowse: Create a college that you can participate in for life, not just 4 years. [ ]

@EMendlow: no age barriers--ppl go back to school at any age 2-3 yrs, w/ fellowship support--for changed goals or joy of learning [ ]

Faculty

@FuterYomToe: strongly endorse comments by WilDoane and retnull. Been in & out of the biz since 92 and would say that, beyond whatever is/isn't broken about tenure model specifically, the larger funding model for higher-ed instruction is now seriously broken, in terms of the disconnect btwn the cost of ed credentials that schools still demand for hiring faculty vs what they are now willing to pay (often NOT a living wage, no benefits etc). If this isn't somehow addressed, we'll see the same result in US higher ed that we saw over the past century in K12: ie, as educated women found other opportunities, they abandoned their super-exploitative schoolteacher positions which had significantly underwritten the quality of mass K12 education earlier in 20th C. See retnull's stats below: if 70%+ of US college teaching is now done by exploited instructors, we can expect the same exodus and resulting implosion of quality (such as it is). I'm scanning the many fabulous suggestions in above sections for ideas that might address this specifically. [+-]

@WilDoane: As someone who is passionate about teaching and my students' learning, but who can't find a permanent position in my discipline (computer science education) in this economy (several interviews have turned into "we've canceled that search because of the budget" discussions)... I encourage everyone: stop bashing adjuncts. Weak adjuncts are as bad as weak tenured faculty. Good adjuncts are worth their weight in gold. Let's focus on the important, underlying issues: from the students' perspective, quality of learning experiences; from the professional educators' perspective, earning a living wage with some job security, whatever form that takes. For example, in many states, adjuncts (assuming that teaching is their only job) are not eligible for unemployment when they're out of work over the summer because they have the "reasonable" expectation that they'll be rehired in the fall. [+-]

@losanjalis: Hire local teachers, hold $ and actions accountable.

[+]
  • Who said "+" and why?
[-]
  • Who said "-" and why?
  • @vfrolov This comment concerns the "local teachers" part: The mission of an academic institution is to help people gain certain knowledge and skills, and to be perfectly capable to fulfil their talents in their local, regional, national or global community. Therefore a college should invite not only non-locals, but also non-nationals as deemed appropriate. (Most of Africa, for example, would have no real progress in education if not for non-local teachers.) Vladimir.frolov 01:36, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
[?]
  • @vfrolov Please elaborate on "hold $ and actions accountable". Vladimir.frolov 01:36, 7 January 2010 (UTC)


@rkabir: Rotate faculty, from all colleges. Bring the best. Promise x grad-student-years of grant money for one year at the college.

[+]
  • @vfrolov I support "Rotate faculty, from all colleges. Bring the best". I've explained the reasoning in a [-] comment to an addition by @losanjalis above. Vladimir.frolov 01:51, 7 January 2010 (UTC)


@jonfernquest: All research must be published in peer-reviewed online journals universally accessible, must include and cite work outside of scholar's narrow academic clique, taking care to cite relevant work outside of scholar's country especially that written in different languages, online seminars and presentations should involve students from poorer countries [+-]

@smithtk: professors would function more in apprentice mode, use projects, connect students with current examples of their study; co-learners [- +]

@iscool: get rid of tenure [ -]

@retnull: Tenure model is broken, if tenured faculty become lazy teachers and cease their own growth. However, all-adjunct model does not work because currently, faculty cannot earn a living wage from adjunct teaching alone. US schools average only 27% tenure-track faculty (NYTimes, 12/30/09). The remainder are underpaid and emotionally under-invested in their institution. Solution: better wages for adjunct faculty, better faculty review mechanisms to tie salary to effectiveness as an instructor, rolling one-year contracts for full-time untenured faculty. [+ ]

@ONEworldcitizen: Faculty? What faculty? ;-) They are just the elders of the community served by them. [-]

@openworld: Faculty members create frameworks for student learning and for student co-creation world-class learning resources. Resources can be actual and virtual. Compensation might be on Singapore's "flexiwage" model. [+]

@AFG85: For professors, have a small full time staff supplemented with practitioners from different fields teaching for one semester [ ]

@jkeltner: no tenure for professors - and i would recruit only professors who want to teach (not just research). [ ]

@sewsueme: instead of having a college counselor you would have a concierge/ curator who would help you make sense of your education journey [ ]

@mrdomino: A professor is someone who knows something so well that she's forgotten learning it. This makes her a bad teacher, but a good resource. A professor, then, working with motivated students in an adequate environment, should need only to introduce the material and make herself available for questions. [ ]

@sakuha: don't have profs be afraid to fail students who cannot write well (or even competently/correctly). [ ]

@acmcdonaldgp: Faculty = Facilitators. The role of facilitators is not to impart knowledge, but to guide students to create their own knowledge. Knowing the end destination for a course, facilitators can ask questions, promote student exploration, and help guide them to the destination in order to embark on their next journey. [ ]

@kognate Faculty is rewarded/encouraged to participate in the schools community of scholars. This would not just be a reward for published papers, rather a system/culture that encourages the faculty to be scholars WITH each other, regardless of department. This could(should) include colloquia and seminars within the school and with scholars from other places. [ ]

Classes and Media Use

@alesh: require anyone to start a blog at least 6 months before admission -- a public forum for what you hope to accomplish, and a log for what's happening as you succeed or fail -- permanently accessible to school admin, professors, and the world.

[+]
  • @catherine_white @alesh I agree with the blog point: blogging has made me up my game, and work to contribute to a greater 'classroom of thought'
[-]
  • @donohoe - Disagree on the grounds that I'm an awful awful writer... with little time for that. What about alternatives to blogging that are also informative, particularly in more technical disciplines?
  • @vfrolov A blog shouldn't be a requirement for admission, but the courses ought to include blogging. Vladimir.frolov 23:11, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

@matthewbattles: Each class would proceed by collaboratively figuring out what the syllabus for the class should be. [-]

  • @donohoe - Sounds great on paper, but how would you ensure a good course emerges from a committee environment without jading at least some students?

@alicebarr: Then at least one course per year should be passion based. [+]

@AFG85: Classes would create wikis for specific topics and students would be graded on the quality of their contributions. And the same wikis would be used year after year, so new students would have to add to the contributions of last year's students. [++] *comment by @openworld: can include wikistyle Debategraph on issues/forks in subject area

@MZimmer557: first and foremost a discussion with High schools to ensure teaching methods, testing, and curriculum match [+]

[?]
  • @vfrolov Does that mean that the College would have the same tests? Vladimir.frolov 23:07, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

@rkabir:

  • Each class makes amendments to the curriculum at their 5, 10, 25, and 50 year reunions available to all students. [-]

  • Evolve the core curriculum every year. Then, each class year composes a shared curriculum that they all take. [ ]

  • @donohoe - I don't understand your first point, could you clarify... ?

@openworld: All lectures recorded and transcribed/translated via global partnerships. Microcontests encourage student teams to offer case studies, visuals, other content enrichments. Granular learning content is navigable by (steadily enriched) student co-created, feedback sensitive breadcrumb trails. Alumni above certain giving level receive annual or other regular access to updated insights from favorite teachers. [+]

Facilities and Amenities

@MartinZaimov: Secluded mountain area not in the US or Asia. Carefully select faculty who participate in designing and building campus [--]

@jthessert: NO Physical campus: the real world is your campus. [-]

@losanjalis: decentralize location, hold small interactive classes, place students in community-based orgs in addition to book learning, raise $$ from community that college is housed in, integration of students and community (less gated spaces) [++]

@lbbinc: the physical part of college is critical to a child's development, it's not just about the school learningrobotchampion [+]

@hc: No athletic facilities, snackbars. [+]

@bremify: Disagree. 1. Athletic facilities sometimes refers to dance/theater facilities. 2. Playing on a team (just as acting with a 'team,' dancing with a 'team') can be a crucial life lesson. 3. Physical exercise can be an excellent release from/partner to academic study. [+]
@vfrolov Agree w. @bremify Vladimir.frolov 23:31, 5 January 2010 (UTC)


@rkabir:

  • Every graduate promises to come back for their 5th year out of college and be a senior's RA. The alum helps the grad with any/all projects for that year. [-]

  • Establish a grant for each class year that the class governs and can allocate on student projects as they see fit [-]

@sewsume: The real question is "when does place matter for learning?" Sometimes it does; sometimes it doesn't. One size doesn't fit all [+]

@openworld: College's hub campus is linked to lifelong learning centers in partnering communities. College can create small presence in economically-blighted neighborhoods as well, provided is offered and accepts equity in idle/vacant properties. Community service internships in local centers/branches offered to foreign students interested in spreading skills and later applying for green card status. [+]

@boraz: traditional Uni is library + everything else. New one? Digital repository + everything else. Occasional MeetUp for socializing [ ]

@matthewbattles: I like the idea of mashing up distance and local education: imagine a college students matriculate into online, but then get matched with local students and likely profs. [+]

@sewsume i wld try to use underutilized community assets before i wld build new buildings (eg movie theaters, libraries) [ ]

@iscool: get rid of flat screen tvs for the dorms [ ]

@ricetopher: Why build anything? College as aggregator, filter set, facilitator of networked learning better model in an age of ubiquitous info. [ ]

@shanacarp: libraries and books are surprisingly central to large research universities and should be the central focus of the campus. In fact, the library should be the main hangout. Learning how to do advanced research in primary sources that one can touch, such old films and pots should occur in libraries (and do). Students also should have a wide variety of rare books to access, and should be taught how to use them from day one. Further the main designs of libraries should encourage students to interact with each other, and by doing so learn from each other about a wide variety of topics, whether how to properly color a presentation to what Gematria is to their first shell script. This includes all computers ports and labs. [ ]

Accreditation and Funding

@shanacarp: I don't think college is about accreditation. I think that is something that happens when you join your profession or your craft. College is about teaching how to think critically so you can do a better job at that craft through a range of subjects. The age of college should be pushed back to age 16 and draw on public funds as part of "late high school" [+]

@openworld: Detonate the current accredition systems by creating world-class, competency-focused exams open (for a fee) to any learner - including OpenCourseware learners - in the world. Tests can be given actually at main campuses/linked facilities, and virtually at designated (proctored) exam sites. Remote sites should use video recording to deter cheating. Main funding: certification tests/diploma fees, and land grant endowments (see above) in partnering communities seeking free access for all residents to College eLearning and eHealthcare resources and certification/diploma services. [++]

@danielbachhuber: Multidimensional form of accreditation that aggregates experience and decentralizes authority. danielbachhuber Accreditation is exactly what needs to be solved right now. Biggest challenge and opportunity. Other pieces are there. [+]

@alicebarr: Funding should come half from the student and half from someone who makes lots of money (as a way to give back). Perhaps there could be a give to college fund amount if you make over a certain amount. [ ]

@ccoletta: If employers run the accred system, they will likely not value skills they don't need now. [ ]

@solidadrocks: cut the pentagon and shadow government apparatus, use demilitarized funds to fund education. if tuition + fees are required, cap as per @hc's suggestions above. [ ]

@rkabir: Follow Singularity U's One Percent Club: http://singularityu.org/about/one-percent-club/ and encourage entrepreneurship [ +]

@mandiberg: less infrastructure for urban universities. no computer labs: students use their own computers anyway, and they study in coffee shops. make them find their own housing. shake them out of baby-mode earlier, they will be forced to become more responsible and more capable. [ ]

@mrlockyer: Here's a long-term strategy - All students legally pledge to pay 1% of all future earnings to pay for their college life. Not a Graduate Tax - more an educational relief fund. [ ]

Research and Examples

@openworld: 70+ Land grant endowed universities (Stanford, Duke, Cornell etc) and how they reaped revenues from land. Co-creation of eLearning resources via global partnerships (OCW, NTU etc). Student-created course materials (Olin). Microscholarships as a means of expanding grassroots access to eLearning resources (Sri Lanka and Kyrgystan - www.entrepreneurialschools.com ) [+]

Anon: Take a look at Elon and High Point in North Carolina, for a real-world example. They were clearly rebuilt on business plans crafted by people with marketing MBAs. [ ]

@jsteig: look at http://ow.ly/Sp7k from @hampshirecolg No grades, no tenure, not much endowment! [+ + ]

@solidadrocks: Assign Deschooling Society [3] (book [4]) and Tools for Conviviality [5] (book [6]) -- then take notes. [ ]

See Philip Greenspun's Ars Digita University --Radical [ ]

@matthewbattles I like Mountain School of the Arts [7] as a model for low-key, bespoke, organic colleging. [ ]

@digiphile: learn from the example of PCU & "Accepted" http://j.mp/4LHTkG [ ]

@carlrigney: Have you read Clayton Christensen's DISRUPTING CLASS? http://www.amazon.com/dp/0071592067/ [+ ]

@ONEworldcitizen: UniTierra is an extraordinary example to reclaim our freedom to learn, aka insurgent learning: http://ow.ly/SpRu (Gustavo Esteva) [ ]

@bdwcu: would be great to share more about @bdwcu. From scratch is definitely how we started. [ ]

@shanacarp: This PDF contains the University of Chicago Record. In it contains Robert Pippin's Aims of Education Address, an annual event part of the freshman orientation experience there. It is titled Liberation and the Liberal Arts: The Aims of Education It is about why we choose to get educated in the first place. http://bit.ly/8lxLcL [ ]

@rkabir:

@jtheibault: Timothy Burke had some very good ideas on how to start a new university a couple of years ago: http://bit.ly/5C8EIb Main thing I would add to Burke's proposed methods sequence is "Research." Odd thing for a historian to omit. [ ]

@advee77: question-based curric has potential for non-siloed ed. see UMaryland's i-series courses as example: http://bit.ly/7A88g0 [ ]

@underoak: An example and a model: Black Mountain College in North Carolina, now defunct. [ ] http://blackmountaincollege.org/content/view/12/52/ (Becoming defunct, of course, was a problem. Some of the other great ideas here about money, students giving back after graduation, etc., perhaps could address that issue.) [ ]

@jthessert: Think Invest in Superstar debate http://bit.ly/6IJlFa + Black Mountain College http://bit.ly/vqke , but more creative + interdisciplinary + focused on blend of socent + real life practical skills... where every day of class creates more value for all involved than is captured... "How To Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century" http://bit.ly/486EMO... "Disadvantages of Elite Education" http://bit.ly/8OKH1O + "I like to think about our public schools as a lucrative enteprise" http://jessicamah.com/blog/?p=625 [ ]

@mtiller: Engineering schools (in particular graduate schools) have become far too vocational. Innovation is going to suffer when all people learn is what is currently being done in industry. [ ]

@adjunksU: micro-courses lead to certification. [+]

Notes on Wiki Culture

Moved to the Talk page as there had been issues while editing the article because of its length. (The Wiki had been, and is still, saying "This page is xx kilobytes long; some browsers may have problems editing pages approaching or longer than 32kb. Please consider breaking the page into smaller sections.")

Wiki contributions

This section is to explain that the main (this) page contains specific individual suggestions for the CfS as of now. Some of the contributions had been restored in their original form at Contributions for reference.

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