Education For Sale

as many of you may know, i've been attempting to be more active within the youtube community these days, and i subscribe to a lot of different people with a lot of different ideas. just this afternoon, dan brown posted a video concerning institutionalized education. instead of summarizing the video, i'm just going to link it here and let you watch it, then respond afterward.

the interesting thing about this video is that the topic concerns something that i was just talking about with my uncle marc at my grandfather's house earlier today. we were really talking about politics and economics, which led into a discussion of academia in general. this makes sense, as he is a doctorate-level professor at a school that i don't remember right now [may be regent, where he got his ph.d] and he works in academia every day. in the discussion, i was mentioning that the internet has really thrust us into a new age of information where it's become more expedient to conduct our research business in a non-ivory-tower situation.

marc pointed out a few things, such as the concept of research with physical books in a physical library still holding a high value in education [specifically in preparing a paper or dissertation] for reasons of 'serendipitous discovery' of adjacent books on different topics that one may not find in the event that they were doing purely online research. he also mentioned the need for an online search engine which aggregated and parsed through only peer-reviewed journals and publication to verify that the information has a high probability of being valid. he also said something that got me thinking of the whole concept of the 'value of information':

bud: 'yeah, but that sort of information isn't public because they can't let us within their ivory towers to get it. it's too valuable to them.'
marc: 'oh, so all information should be free, then?'
bud: 'ideally.'
marc: 'well then, i hope you don't like making money at your job.'

my first thought was inclined toward accusations of exaggeration, but the more i think about the value of education and the cost of information, the more what he said seems valid. are we doing some far too utopian thinking here? in a world of completely free information, especially in the u.s.a. where the economy is so heavily based on information, how will anyone make a profit over anyone else? how can the mass of information cultured on the internet be organized without any trained leaders that have anything to speak of their credentials in overseeing such a massive undertaking? who will teach? will it end up being the blind leading the blind?

i think those are some questions that have to be answered before i'm fully sold on making a shift toward making information totally free. as it stands, it seems like there has to be a certain level of disconnect between the educator and the educatee in order to produce the educated. what do you think? let's get some discussion going here.

regarding today, let's just say that things went well for me with the dmv. i'll be posting a vlog on my youtube channel tomorrow explaining what happened, and i don't want to ruin the surprise, so i'll build a little suspense instead! i've still got to edit that video, the new julieandstacy video we shot tonight at practice and the julieandstacy f.a.q. video we did as well, though that one won't be going up until next week anyway. i've also got to edit my dad's video of cycad sex. don't ask. it's not as perverted as it sounds.