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The (Online) Self-Educated: Doing What Colleges Can’t

Education is stuck at all levels. Increasingly so the older a student gets. College students not only face back-breaking debt, but also come out of their four-to-six year sojourns with little to no increase in their abilities or knowledge.

In one recent study, a group of students were asked to take a standardized test covering skills students are expected to garner from an undergraduate education, and 45 percent of students “did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning” during the first two years of college, while 36 percent of students “did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning” at all over their four years of college.

Traditional models of education don’t deliver a quality education at a realistic or reliable scale – we would need thousands more teachers to appropriately educate everyone, and no one wants to be a teacher because they get paid like crap and are blamed for the dismal future of our kids and the next generation.

So when young people graduate college, the education they receive is mostly useless; we can all get the same education or better online. If we’re self-motivated.

“But how many people really have what it takes — the courage, the stamina, the native smarts, the willingness to admit mistakes without blaming others, the sheer and extreme initiative — to learn that way? The entrepreneurial gene is not widely distributed,” argues Alan Jacobs.

Indeed, MIT offers many of its computer science classes online, but many of us are not likely to start one, let alone finish it, despite any express desires to learn programming. Not to mention the field of computer science has a myriad of resources on the Internet, all of which are free, to teach yourself how to learn math, javascript, html, ruby, and so on and so forth.

And we really need programmers to fuel the next phase of innovation. I work for a start-up, and my company is looking to hire multiple engineers. At every tech meetup I attend, non-technical founders are practically begging to partner with developers. And those who do hold these elusive titles are often recruited with incentives and bonuses.

Seems like a bunch of us would want to jump on the self-education boat and get after this opportunity to become one of the most sought-after titles in the world. But most people don’t follow-through (even when they have the express goal to learn programming). There is still a dearth of developers, despite the wide availability of knowledge on the Internet.

Which begs the question, is web education really the future?

In real life, we idealistically view education as “a dynamic and interactive environment in which students have daily real-world encounters with faculty and with one another, encounters which, unlike Google searches, are not limited by what you already know to search for,” argues Jacobs. “In many cases, those schools also require you to take classes you would never choose on your own, to read books you’ve never heard of, to articulate thoughts about issues so challenging that left to your own devices you’d just go do something else.”

True. But while Jacobs ultimately concludes that DIY education is “parasitic on existing universities,” (he is a University professor, after all), web education will be a force to be reckoned with.

First, we need to come to terms that free education and distributed knowledge is largely useless. Yes, a small cohort of people will take up the cause to learn a new skill or dive deep into a topic of study, but the rest of us will watch TED videos contentedly in our cubicles as our educational fill for the day.

The availability of free information is not enough. It needs to be organized appropriately, with content that is delivered sequentially over time instead of all at once. Each lesson or module needs to build upon the last in a clear path of knowledge. The information needs to be available in different formats and platforms to accommodate different learning styles and technologies (i.e., videos, transcripts, mobile, tablet, etc.).

And web education has to go beyond exceptional content. It needs leaders with expertise and authority, as well as a passion to teach. It needs learners that can use comments or live chats to ask questions and throw out ideas to see what sticks. And those learners need the opportunity to speak individually to the teacher through group coaching calls or individual mentorship.

In essence, online education needs to mirror the best of real-world education. Can it be better than an in-person experience? By far, yes. You can watch video-based lectures over and over again. You can pace modules to your rhythm. And, teachers won’t speak from theory, but success and experience. Not to mention an amazing community that will want to learn with you.

Web education can do what colleges can’t – deliver knowledge at an impressive scale and at an affordable price to change the direction of knowledge for the better. Log on.

By Rebecca Healy

My goal is to help you find meaningful work, enjoy the heck out of it, and earn more money.

14 replies on “The (Online) Self-Educated: Doing What Colleges Can’t”

I received my MA through Regent University’s online program and it was the perfect solution for me. During that time, I changed jobs, moved to a different country and travelled extensively and I never had to alter my school. There is no way that I could have done that in a traditional college environment. There are some drawbacks, especially if you are a nerd (like me) who likes going to class and learns well that way, but the flex it gave me was perfect.

That’s awesome – thanks for sharing. I’ve been investigating a lot of online master’s programs and it seems like they are becoming increasingly popular. Although, they don’t seem much cheaper. I love the idea of integrating education with your life instead of stopping your life for education.

I’m getting my MA now through an extension school program and while I attended most of my classes in person, lectures were usually video taped for those who were not able to attend. I agree that it is the perfect solution for so many people. I did take one class online and yes, the nerd in me did miss the in-class interaction a bit.

However, I’ve found that when you’re an older student or when you’re not there simply because you have to be – as is the case with many college students – the feedback that you receive from the educators is, for the most part, so much more fulfilling and helpful than it was in college. You signed up for that online class because you were really interested in a particular subject and the educator tends to be really excited about that and willing to help and really wants you to succeed and will make themselves available in any way that they can in order to make that happen. And being available is so much easier now that so much of us are communicating via email and skype, so the fear that you won’t get as much out of a web education as you would in person isn’t so much a factor anymore.

That bit about people wanting to be there is super powerful. I’m in an online mini-school for marketing right now and the community around the topic is amazing and unlike anything I’ve experienced – uber helpful, supportive, smart and engaging. I hope web education stays like that. And thanks so much for sharing your experience – so many people seem to self-educate, hopefully the market will react and we’ll have many more online schools soon.

“You can watch video-based lectures over and over again. You can pace modules to your rhythm. ”

This is one of the reasons I like online education, and love Lynda’s online resources. I’ve had bosses encourage me to pay LOTS of money to attend a 1-day class, but I always try to explain that Lynda costs less for an ENTIRE YEAR and I can revisit those videos whenever I encounter a problem with code, video editing, etc.

Yes! I just discovered Lynda recently and it was one of the things that prompted me to write this post (and the fact that I’m doing a mini-school for marketing right now as well). What’s also fascinating about Lynda is that it’s paid content behind a paywall and completely working and doesn’t even have that strong of a community factor – just really great instruction. I think it’s a fantastic model for others to look at and expand beyond technical education – like, I want to see an English literature class taught on the Internet. What would that look like? That excites me.

I haven’t finished the article (though from what I have read I am screaming, “YES!”)

Self-education is nothing new. Highly motivated people have invested in their own life-long education since the beginning of time. 

Formal education is FULL of opportunities of which students fail to take advantage. The one’s who take advantage of those opportunities on campus are the same ones who read blogs, magazines, and take online courses to continue their education after they graduate. They might not get straight A’s, but they’re innovative enough to take action. They’re the individuals who take initiative and responsibility for their lives. 

No, free information is not enough. If it were, people wouldn’t smoke or be overweight. We do need instructors and mentors to help guide us and organize the information for us in a logical manner. We also need to pay those instructors a salary that they deserve so that they will feel motivated to continue working with excellence. 

I learned absolutely nothing about finances or finding a job in college. NOTHING. Many college graduates have no idea what to do once they’ve finished formal education. Perhaps fancy schools should replace the gazillion general education courses they require for graduation and require courses on personal finance, and finding your ideal career. Academics are great. I’m a huge nerd. But my fancy degree did not prepare me for the overwhelming nature of the real world.

Love this comment, Courtney. I too used to get so frustrated in college for being the only one excited about learning. Eventually I stopped speaking up because it was boring that no one else would. I wonder though if the web brings out a different side in those people? I’m curious if being a “geek” is more accepted online. Also have been thinking about your last point. I always wished I studied English in college which is widely known to not help you prepare for the real world. Still, if there were some literature courses online now I would take them in a second. Most learning though is skills-based as it should be… I am just thinking out loud. The great thing about the Internet is that you don’t have to sacrifice one kind of learning for another. Anyway, hope I’m making sense. Thanks for the awesome comment! 

Love this post! I think that the trend “self online education through niche communities rather than online mega universities” is going to change the world.  The niche community/niche site is the key.  U of Phoenix doesn’t work either.  

This will distribute education across the internet and allow highly motivated people to target very niche areas of education.  The only people who should really be in college are people who want to do this anyway.  We may as well just create something called “Post High School” where people get shipped away for 2 to 4 years to do general education and drink beer.  Then its on them to succeed and learn when they get out.

I love the way you phrased the trend – I too agree that it will be niche education and wish I had mentioned that in the post. The second part of your comment got me thinking – doesn’t everyone want to be in college? I think a good majority of them just don’t want to learn (or at least not the way professors teach). The thing that’s intriguing to me about web education is that it’s done so well since there is so much competing for your attention online. We have to sit in class in real life. We don’t have to in class online – we can go check Facebook. So education online has to be phenomenally good, which I like.

You know, I studied for four years to degree level and I thought I gained a lot from the experience but, as I’ve gotten older, I realise that part of the reason I got a lot out of it was because I was learning to look after myself as well as studying for a degree.  Life experience is so rarely taken into account when ascertaining the value of a degree.  Of course, had I managed to do my degree course online I wouldn’t have been so far in debt and probably could have worked more sociable hours to supplement my eating habit.  

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