Review: The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere

The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere by Kevin Carey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This was not quite the book I thought it was going to be. It is focused on the history of higher education and not education policy or proposals. It tells the story of the particular circumstances that gave rise to the contemporary hybrid American university (one part research institute, one part liberal arts, one part practical education/training) and shows how those circumstances are changing (mostly due to technology). With these changing conditions, Carey argues, the hybrid model is starting to come a part. Technological advances are exposing the faults and cracks of higher ed and educational entrepreneurs are exploiting those opportunities. Eventually, a critical mass of new models will emerge and college as we know it will end.

What will the future look like? Carey's vision of of the University of Everywhere is aspirational and ideal. He's not offering a proposal or any detail. He sees a future where technology breaks up the hybrid universities. Technology will make what is a scarce resource, widely available and nearly free. What he calls your educational identity will be more under your control and direction (not housed on transcript somewhere in the ivory tower). Education won't be 4 years in one location: it will be lifelong and every where.

Using his experience taking an intro biology course online at MIT edX and interviews with different educational entrepreneurs, Carey presents the bits and pieces that are chipping away at the foundations of the ivory tower (the different ways people are offering online classes, using technology for education, and experimenting with alternative ways of credentialing). Each one of these pieces is exploiting a problem in the hybrid model and as they become more numerous and more successful, the hybrid model is breaking down.

I am glad Carey discusses the credential issue. That is the key to the breakdown of the hybrid model. Once employers and others can make use of credentialing systems that are as good as (even better than) a college diploma, the edifice of much of higher ed will come crashing down. As Carey notes, Harvard and MIT will be just fine. The state universities, community colleges, and small colleges (like Rockford U) that depend so much on (1) current tuition and (2) vast numbers of students whose primary aims are credentials for jobs not education will lose their market and their revenue. Though the disruption will be difficult and scary, and I don't know what will emerge, I think a higher ed system with more models and more competition will lead to a system that is more effective, more accessible, and more affordable. In this respect, I agree with Carey.

I am, though, much more skeptical about the technology; it is earlier than we think. It is hard to see how the intimate seminars of upper-level, advanced classes in most of the liberal arts and sciences can be taught online with the current level of technology. I think there is a lot that can be done and will eventually be done, but the dynamic, face-to-face chewing of ideas in a shared inquiry of a seminar is not (yet) replicable in discussion forums, chat rooms, or google hang outs. An Intro to Bio may work great -- as it seemed to for Carey at MIT edX, but what about a senior level seminar on the economics of Shakespeare's plays?

Though it wasn't what I expected, I learned a lot about the history of education and educational technology. Carey weaves in anecdotes into his history and interviews that make the book interesting and compelling.



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Review: The Fantasy Sport Industry

I recently reviewed The Fantasy Sport Industry: Games within Games (Routledge Research in Sport, Culture and Society) by Andrew C. Billings and Brody J. Ruihley for the Nordic Sport Science Forum.

The central idea of Andrew Billings and Brody Ruihley’s book, The Fantasy Sport Industry¸ is that fantasy is a game-changer. It is a game-changer in the way sport is covered by and represented in the media. It is a game-changer for the fans and how they consume sport. Indeed, it is potentially a game-changer for the very sports on which these games are based.

Fantasy Sports have been around for several decades. They started small, the domain of, so the stereotype goes, geeky guys in their basements. But these games have expanded exponentially in the last twenty years. Something like thirty five million North Americans play fantasy sport in some manner: that’s more than the numbers of people who play golf, watch the American Idol finale, or own iPhones (Berry, 2; Billings and Ruihley, 5). Fantasy is now a regular and frequent feature of the broadcasts and news reports of sporting events. Networks such as ESPN have dedicated programs for fantasy. There is even a TV sit-com centered on the members of fantasy football league called, appropriately enough, The League (of which this reviewer confesses he is a big fan). Much of all this revolves around Fantasy Football, but there are fantasy leagues for all the major professional sports (indeed there are fantasy leagues for non-sporting activities as well: Fantasy Congress and Celebrity Fantasy to name two).

Given all this interest, it is no surprise that fantasy has become big business with billions of dollars in revenue. Billings and Ruihley set out to provide a much needed look at this growing industry. The first chapter provides the overall context. The authors discuss the philosophical question of just what makes something a fantasy sport and breaks down the basics of how fantasy games are played. They demonstrate the popularity and growth of fantasy and through this ask the main question of the book. Why do people play fantasy? This raises the important follow-up question: what effect does fantasy have on all the ways we normally consume and understand sport?

You can read the rest of the review: http://idrottsforum.org/klesha_billings-ruihley141003/

Review: Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think

Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think by Bryan Caplan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


An interesting read. I am not sure I buy all his conclusions about the (lack of) long-term effects of parenting, but his overall point makes sense. No need to be a "tiger mom": give your kids love and a rational space to live in, and the rest is up to them. But as I came into the book with that view, Caplan's book does little to lower my 'price' for more kids. And anyway, it won't convince Kristen!



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Review: Sandy Koufax: A Left's Legacy

Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy by Jane Leavy

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Overall, I liked the book and it certainly deepened my interest in and knowledge of Koufax. The chapter on Koufax and his Jewish identity was, to no one's surprise, the most interesting of the book. The chapter that covers the last inning of his perfect game was thrilling. I think Leavy did a good job of showing us Koufax's character. Clearly not an easy guy to get a read on, but she gets him into the book without it devolving to an 'as-told-to' or a 'tell-all'. Nevertheless, I didn't care for Leavy's narrative structure. It jumped around a lot, back to Koufax's early days with the Dodgers, to present day, and to the 60s. She switched from one person's testimony to another so much, I often found myself turning back a few pages to figure who was who.



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Review Online

My review of Tara Smith's Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist is now online at The New Individualist. The review was published in the magazine's Atlas Shrugged 50th Anniversary tribute.

The review summed up in a few words: worthwhile book that has some flaws.

Sophie's World

Sorry for the long delay in posting, but moving and setting up shop have kept me from my blogging duties. Classes start next week, so I am quite busy. Nonetheless, I have just finished Sophie's World--a book that as a philosopher I am often asked about. I decided it was finally time to read it so I could offer an educated opinion. The following is my brief review:

For the most part, the history of philosophy offered in Sophie’s World is sound, though of course often overly simplified. Such simplification is expected and acceptable in a book of this size and for its intended audience. It is at its best in the classical and medieval periods. As we get into the 18th and 19th centuries, there are some disappointing and questionable choices. There is altogether too much attention given to Marx and Freud, while nothing is remarked about John Stuart Mill or John Locke (his political thought). A reader might get the impression that existentialism was the dominant philosophy of the 20th century and not the analytic tradition that actually does dominate, for better or for worse, the Anglo-American world. The thinkers of great importance for this tradition: Moore, Russell, Wittgenstein, are not mentioned at all. This absence is ultimately forgivable because the book was written by a Scandinavian for a Scandinavian audience. Still, the reader should be aware that philosophy in the English speaking world goes in a very different direction than the direction that Alberto takes Sophie.

The story itself is not all that interesting. There is little in the way of characterization and the mystery and fantasy elements are too forced. Sophie can be annoying in the way a 15 year old know it all can be annoying. The adults, other than Alberto, are hardly more developed than the adults of Charlie Brown. And for all the fantastic elements in the book, the hardest to believe is that Sophie’s mother lets her daughter gallivant around with a 50-year old stranger.

I do not think this is not a book for a seasoned philosopher or really any adult reader. It is just a bit too childish. I would probably recommend it, however, for a young adult interested in learning about philosophy. But, then again, if that young adult were precocious enough to be interested in philosophy at that age, I would rather just hand him something by Plato or Aristotle.

Review is published!

My review, referred to in several earlier posts, of Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-perfectionist Politics by Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl has been published in the The Independent Review. I've been a fan of 'the Dougs' work for a long time and so it was a great honor and privilege to review their latest work. And Norms of Liberty is a very good and worthwhile book. So, as I do in the review, I recommend it here as well.

Read the review...

Good News!

My review of Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl's Norms of Liberty is scheduled to be published by The Independent Review in their Winter 2007 issue (mailed in December). Yippie!