The perfect answer to a poorly understood question

In a logical turn of events,

Udacity, the online educational service founded by artificial intelligence guru and ex-Googler Sebastian Thrun, is offering a new set of tech degrees that guarantee a job in six months or your money back. (ElecCafe.com, Code School Udacity Promises Refunds if You Don’t Get a Job). 

Now this is very, very good news. It demonstrates how achieving career qualifications can finally overcome the unsustainable and, let's face it, unjustifiable debt that characterises higher education worldwide. Education is clearly in need of a "gale of creative destruction", to quote Schumpeter. There is much to applaud here.

However, philosophically there is also much to be concerned about. The same article exposes the underlying assumptions around the approach taken by Udacity's Sebastian Thrum:

“The ultimate objective of education is to find people a job”

Hmmm. Finding a job is a great outcome, and in purely economic cost/benefit analysis it's clearly a strong criteria for determining success. However the assumption about education revealed here needs serious critique.

What is the ultimate objective of education? 

My perspective is that one objective of education is to find people a job. How this relates across other objectives is always subject to a debate between those who more broadly suggest that the purpose of education is to assist individuals to flourish; improve society's coherence and advancement; provide self-actualisation; and, from Dewey, simply to enable an individual to enjoy more education ("Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself"; see also Adler's Paideia Proposal).

So, on the one hand the Udacity news is great. Education should be accessible, and employment prospects should be enhanced. But to equate employment with the ultimate outcome of education is to make a grave mistake about one of the key means people have to learn more about themselves and the perspectives they bring to life. Education ought not be limited to how well vocational tasks are performed, but with the quality of abstract thought  it can release - even, to an extent, abstract thought about things that don't really seem to matter at all. There's something about the essence of higher education that does and should transcend occupational outcomes.

There's something about the essence of higher education that does and should transcend occupational outcomes.

Now, I feel I might be accused of posturing here. I'm stating that as an opportunity to deny it! Yes, I'm highly qualified. I've worked hard to achieve what I have, and I've greatly inconvenienced myself and others along the way. As I reflect, my first degree - a Bachelor of Management Studies - was eye opening not just based on the subject matter but also what it required of me to achieve the qualification. I learned to think in different ways. THAT was the real education. I admit, too, that I am incredibly grateful that my BMS led directly to a job (though not as a manager - different story). But had I not been employed afterward, would that have meant my education did not meet its objective? Was that learning how to think all in vain?

Is the statement "The ultimate objective of education is to find people a job" true only for an initial degree or qualification? Once someone has a job, can education's objective be considered to be different? Perhaps Thrun means the statement in terms of the actual educational outcomes of the courses learners are taking; perhaps the actual objectives are solely directed at employment. Or, it could be that in all fairness the statement is intended to be read as "The ultimate objective of [the] education [we seek to provide at Udacity] is to find people a job [even though we acknowledge that there are broader aims for education as a whole]". Even if the latter were true, it's with picking up on the statement prima facie as an apparent zeigeist of education and the potential technology can bring to it. This zeitgeist would probably better position me as being involved in TEEO (Technology Enhanced Employment Outcomes) rather than TEL, where the Learning (as suggested across a previous post) comes first.

I'm getting way more philosophical here than is perhaps necessary given the innovative and commercially astute way in which Udacity is leading. Udacity is going where elements of education ought to go. I just fear that the less obvious and less measurable benefits of education may be overlooked.

I move to the UK in two weeks to the day, for a new role. Packed away are all of the volumes on educational philosophy (yes, someone still reads that stuff) I purchased over the last few years, seeking opportunity to read and formulate into a work on TEL and the philosophy of education. My suspicion is that some forms of TEL, which are likely to be highly successful commercially, may in fact short-change what effective education is capable of beyond a ticket to a job.

Come to think of it, I'll further develop that working title. I'm presupposing that "TEL and the philosophy of education" will be a commercial disaster... even so, I'll learn a lot researching the book and writing it. Now, that's an education!

A solution - a more nuanced turn of phrase

One way of reconciling the differences here in my thinking is to differentiate between the terms 'qualification' and 'education'. Another possibility is 'training' and 'education', which will be the subject of a future post. I'm inclined to suggest that Udacity is actually in the business of training toward industry-recognised qualifications, rather than education per se. There's a fine line, and I do intend to explore this in future posts (mainly because I don't have all of the answers, only an opinion!) and this has piqued my curiosity. I'm particularly interested professionally because I genuinely think Udacity has achieved something very clever, progressive and student-centred. I'm just wary that they have solved but a part of the challenges facing the post-compulsory sector, and I'm seeking how to articulate that. The concern is that others may look to this example and consider the conundrum of scalable, quality higher education for accessible cost solved.

My working hypothesis: Udacity are providing industry-recognised training directly relevant to employers, providing qualifications employers recognise and work-ready graduates. The extent to which this is education is what I'm interested to explore.