So, I haven't read last week's Supreme Court decision, the one that abolished race-based affirmative action in college admissions, but I don't need to. I have a few thoughts on the subject that don't involve knowledge of any arcane technical issues. The general overview is enough.
In short, the Court made the right decision for the wrong reasons. Race-based affirmative action is bogus because race does not exist. Race is one of those "I know it when I see it" things, but has never been defined. And anything that cannot be defined is not real. The idea of race came about long before anyone ever tried to precisely and coherently define it, and all attempts to do that have been a posteriori.
The a posteriori process is a major failing of rationality: First someone has an idea, then they decide that the idea is correct, and then they hunt for proof that they are right, while ignoring evidence to the contrary.
The scientific method is the opposite. It starts with facts that need explaining, not an explanation that needs facts. As Richard Feynman said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
So "race", whatever imaginary quantity that race might be, was never a valid basis for college admission.
That's one part.
The other brain-dead aspect of this Court decision is that there should be college admissions.
They missed the key issue.
This was a real WTF moment.
C'mon folks, knowledge is not scarce. One piece of knowledge can be shared among an infinite number of minds, and is never diminished by that sharing. The real problem here is not "race" but that there should be college admissions. In fact, the whole idea of college is stupid, from the ground up.
College, university, whatever, is a medieval institution that has been kept on life support out of habit, up to and including the present day. It arose out of equal parts desire and scarcity and continues with that mindset. Tell most people that what we can generically call "higher education" should be a free, tax-supported resource, and they will complain that they don't think that they should pay for anyone else's education.
In other words, the reaction is "why should I pay so that person can get something that I don't have?", which relates to that idea of scarcity, but it ain't scarce. You get educated, I benefit too. I get educated, you benefit. Education is good all-around.
Sure, get medieval once if you want. Just try it.
Live in a time when fast communication was measured in months. When maybe 2% of the population could read and write, when any subject field had maybe 10 experts if that many, if you could even find them. In those times a few earnest students would band together, pool what money they could scrape up, and hire an expert to lecture them, because that was the most efficient and effective way to transmit knowledge. Once that was all done, you were among the elite of the elite.
No books, no libraries. Buying a book might have been equivalent to buying a house today. Books were all hand-copied, one at a time, and were hoarded by priests and the super-rich, not circulated. The best way to get information was to listen to an expert talk and to scribble your own private notes.
As we still do today, for some reason. Stupid, right?
Here's how higher education should work.
- You want to learn something, you sign up for a course. Any course at all, at any time. No restrictions.
- You receive information on how and where to find the resources you need.
- The only prerequisite is the desire to learn a subject — if one subject is too deep for you, it's on you to fill in the gaps.
- You spend your time reading, thinking, doing exercises, watching videos, sharing questions and answers, participating in online discussions.
- There are no grades.
- You choose to be evaluated in any of several different ways whenever and however you feel like it — so for example take as many different tests as often as you want, and use them to measure your competence.
- When you are done with a course, you are done. No one cares what you did. No one keeps track of you.
- You do this in as many different ways as you want, for as many subjects as you want — whatever interests you.
- There are fees but they are moderate, because hundreds of millions of others are doing the same as you, and you all contribute a little, and it adds up.
At such time as you feel that you want to earn a living in a field, and feel that you are ready, you take a battery of exams. If you pass, you are then a certified professional. Examples: certified public accountant exams, bar examinations.
You do not have to leave home, travel to another city or state or country, live in a cell with someone you have never met before while paying an anonymous corporation to feed and care for you. No monopolies. You live wherever you want, with or without anyone you want, in any way you want.
No schedules. You do not have to go to certain rooms in certain buildings at certain times on certain days for a certain period of time and watch someone talk at you, and make a recording on paper (or these days, via keyboard). You read, watch videos, take sample tests, video-conference with your peers, submit and receive questions, answers, and critiques while at your own home base as you have the time and the inclination. Almost all communication is asynchronous.
And as I said, no grades. You are graded if and when you ask to be certified in some way to reach a particular goal.
For those courses requiring lab work it would be trickier but not impossible.
Every city has a school system. All elementary/secondary school systems have buildings. Existing high schools have labs. Most cities have hospitals and veterinary clinics which have some sort of lab, and many cities have various other labs (water treatment, sewage treatment, testing of paving and building materials and so on, depending on the city).
Overall, high school chemistry, biology, and physics labs could provide most of what's needed for in-person, hands-on, college-level lab work, which isn't that fancy anyway. This lab aspect would need a little more thought, but basically I think that even it could work "remotely", especially since it would be all on the student to learn whatever was needed, however they could, and no one could just skate through, letting someone else do the work, and expect to get through a later professional certification process by faking it.
And hey: I recently learned that there is a thing called the "Western Governors University". Surprising. It's about a quarter of the way there already. Western Governors University
How about that then?
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