higher education

3 posts

20 Year-Old College Dropout Thinks Alternate Experiences Beat Going to College, Encourages Students to “UnCollege”

20 year-old Dale Stephens dropped out of school in the 5th grade because he was bored. In his observation, school wasn’t really a place for learning — it was a place to discuss Pokémon. Determined to embrace his idea of learning he then created his own curriculum in lieu of a formal education. In subsequent years he’s gone on to build a library in his hometown, live in France, and work in Silicon Valley — despite having dropped out of school again. This time college. He now runs uncollege.org, a site for those seeking unconventional education, and has just published a book Hacking Your Education: Ditch the Lectures, Save Tens of Thousands, and Learn More Than Your Peers Ever Will, that tells millennials college isn’t the only way to gain success — it’s all about experiences outside the classroom.

Is this notion a stroke of simplistic genius or detrimental? Continue reading →

It’s Time to Abolish the Bachelor’s Degree

Last week Congress finally passed legislation that prevented the interest rates on federal student loans from doubling to 6.8%. While this move was welcome by college students and their parents, it does little to stem the skyrocketing debt that student loans are creating for Americans. Neither will increasing Pell Grants, increasing funding for state universities, or having a student loan debt strike. Our higher education system problems are structural, and the only way to fix this problem is change the entire structure of higher education. The first thing we need to do is abandon the standard bachelor’s degree. Continue reading →