|
|
Bill Gates Predicts Shift To Online Post-Secondary Education
By Michael Marr
Expert Author
Article Date: 2010-08-13
At the recent Techonomy Conference, Bill Gates presented on a variety of issues during his keynote session. Afterwards, he left it open to questions from the audience. One woman asked him if he thought online education could overtake the brick-and-mortar institutions.
Bill Gates appeared confident in saying that online education will become not only the norm in society, but also a much more effective solution.
Bill Gates was quick to note that this is not plausible in grades K through 9. Gates considers these grades as akin to "babysitting", and this assertion is a valid. Mr. Gates did bring up his thoughts on other forms of education for this age group via home and charter schooling, as he found those options superior to the current status quo in education.
For higher education, however, Gates was clear on his opinion that the information available on the web now and in the near future could reasonably be distributed in a way to make it a more powerful educational medium. One of the keys driving to this point is costs. Tuition at universities continue to rise. Online institutions can provide the same, if not better, education without the major overheads of a traditional brick-and-morter university.
Obviously, there are a host of online universities now. Many traditional universities offer courses, if not partial to complete degrees, online. The basic infastructure certainly exists for Gates' predictions to come true. However, Gates' wording does not appear to be suggesting that the existing online infrastructure is what will be controlling this shift online education. Instead, he tends to lead one to think that there will be some other, much larger, institution in which valuable information will be gathered and given as a standardized and accepted form of education.
The only negative impact, as Gates pointed out, is the decline of college partying.
About the Author:
Michael Marr is a IT staff Writer for WebProNews.
|
|
