Dive Summary:
- Forbes' John Tamny writes that online education's bubble will burst before traditional college education because it is centered primarily on learning, which, he argues, college is not about.
- Citing "superior American achievers" ranging from Stephen Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs--who all had little college education or none at all--Tamny argues that parents and students spend a fortune on college not for education, but for networking contacts, status and the "right" friends and spouses.
- Online education would only have true value, he writes, if employers actually desired the knowledge students acquire on a college campus, and that this great overselling of its merits has created a bubble that will never exist for traditional college.
From the article:
... It all sounds so good and promising, until we realize that college is not about learning much as we might wish it were. Online education would erase traditional schooling if learning were truly the purpose of attending Princeton, or if employers cared what was learned at Princeton. ...