Summers on the future of education

Larry Summers speculates about university education in the future. His first suggestion:

1. Education will be more about how to process and use information and less about imparting it. This is a consequence of both the proliferation of knowledge — and how much of it any student can truly absorb — and changes in technology. Before the printing press, scholars had to memorize “The Canterbury Tales” to have continuing access to them. This seems a bit ludicrous to us today. But in a world where the entire Library of Congress will soon be accessible on a mobile device with search procedures that are vastly better than any card catalog, factual mastery will become less and less important.

No, no, no. I stand by my old-fashioned, cantankerous belief that one of the goals of higher education should be that students learn stuff about stuff. In the last month or so I have been exploring two areas of economics that are relatively new to me: economic history and agent-based modeling. There is an overwhelming amount of information on each of these topics out there; where does a relative novice like me begin? One needs an intermediary to filter and organize all this material. My strategy is to find economists who teach courses on this stuff and read what they put on their syllabi and thereby acquire some foundational knowledge. For example, I've been reading Douglas North on the importance of institutions in economic history. With a knowledge of North in my pocket, I can now read something like Deirdre McCloskey's Bourgeois Dignity in which she offers a critique of North, and immediately understand the context of her argument. Sure, I could read McCloskey without any foundational knowledge (but how would I know that her work is worth reading?), then look up the books by North to which she makes reference, and backward-induct the knowledge I'm looking for. But my prior study of the subject is useful in telling me which of McCloskey's arguments are particularly important, and help me work my way through McCloskey more efficiently, giving me time to go on to the next controversial reading. Being able to access and use information is surely important, but you can't get on the information superhighway without some base of knowledge in the trunk.

But I agree with Summers' point #3:

3. New technologies will profoundly alter the way knowledge is conveyed. Electronic readers allow textbooks to be constantly revised, and to incorporate audio and visual effects. Think of a music text in which you can hear pieces of music as you read, or a history text in which you can see film clips about what you are reading. But there are more profound changes set in train. There was a time when professors had to prepare materials for their students. Then it became clear that it would be a better system if textbooks were written by just a few of the most able: faculty members would be freed up and materials would be improved, as competition drove up textbook quality.

Surely it's time for professors like me to get out of the business of delivering the same stale lectures that can be delivered more effectively by other, more attractive and articulate lecturers on Youtube. I'm in favor of outsourcing testing and grading as well (ultimately our hope is that students can impress people other than their professor with their mastery of economics or whatever they are studying; why not start now?). By outsourcing lecturing, testing and grading, I could spend more time helping students apply concepts in tutorial-like sections, having discussions that are informed by the course material, and helping students with research projects. The main impediment to this style of teaching, from my experience, is the expectations of the students. For several years now I've been telling my students that it is their responsibility to learn what is in the textbook, and my job is to help them apply that knowledge; therefore they need to do the assigned readings before coming to class and not expect me to spoon-feed them all the information they need for the exams. Shockingly, however, this message does not seem to get through - they really want and expect the spoon-feeding since this is what they've gotten throughout their years of formal education.