Ken Burns or Instructors? [View all]
August 22, 2016
By
Scott Jaschik
U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (at right), a Wisconsin Republican in a tough re-election battle against Democrat Russ Feingold, used an appearance on Thursday to say the "higher education cartel" is raising prices and preventing reforms that would help college students learn at affordable prices.
He criticized accreditors and tenured professors for blocking reforms. He said that he favored "certification," in which people could demonstrate competency or skills in certain areas through testing rather than earning degrees. (The University of Wisconsin is a leader in competency-based education, in which students earn degrees sometimes in ways similar to the path Johnson suggested.)
Johnson also said the education system could become much more affordable by changing the role of instruction.
"We’ve got the internet -- you have so much information available. Why do you have to keep paying different lecturers to teach the same course? You get one solid lecturer and put it up online and have everybody available to that knowledge for a whole lot cheaper? But that doesn’t play very well to tenured professors in the higher education cartel. So again, we need destructive technology for our higher education system," he said.
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https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/08/22/gop-senator-save-money-replacing-instructors-ken-burns-videos
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