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Kim Zussman

1/13/05
Higher Agitation, by Kim Zussman

Picking up on the textbook brouhaha, and with pre-collegiate teens, one wonders whether the college process has become bloated and anachronistic:

1. Tuition i$ ridiculou$, $o are textbook$
2. Admission process includes many specious and professorial self-congratulatory hoops.
3. MIT and many others have *free* (without stealing, no laws broken) coursework downloading. Theoretically aspiring students anywhere can study with proviso of no sheephide to hide behind.
4. Perhaps someone else should comment on the eternally obligate political inculcation du jour.

The query is whether the markets which trade information and thought will one day arb the educational process better. Barriers to access appear to have been constructed mostly for the benefit of ensconced professors and university endowments (formally run by current hedge managers). Like musical file-sharing, what happens when young Ramanajan in Madras perfectly learns all the MIT coursework, can ACE any exam here, and shows up at Intel to apply for a job sheepless? What will be the squeals from Ivy profs/grads/parents when this happens?