- Why go to university for your learning?
- Why pay a university for your learning?
- What are learning institutions for?
These are the three questions which round off Week 10a of H800 and I think they are so fundamental it’s worth having a bit of a think about them before moving on. There follow some initial jottings, not at all a worked-out view!
I might consider first, why did I decide to do H800. It’s a course about Technology Enhanced Learning, and arguably, I’d be able to find about this by doing my own research, reading books and articles and asking people. One reason is that it’s a kind of short cut - other people are doing the research for you and pointing you in the right direction. Therefore a lot of time is saved and I can achieve more than would be possible on my own (the old ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ argument).
The opportunity to participate in a community of learners is a reason that might motivate some students. When I was studying Italian last year, we used a course book that could be purchased much more cheaply than the course but many students took the view that we just wouldn’t be motivated to get through it without the group ethos. If honest, we could probably add that being assessed, both formally and informally, is part of the motivation as well as conforming to a structured study plan.
However, all of these are reasons for doing any kind of course, not necessarily a university course. The extra value we get from a university is being taught by people who are paid to be scholars in their discipline – so people whom we can expect to be up-to-date, critical and active participants in their field. Whether this is important or not is bound to vary with an individual’s reasons for studying.
So, I think this kind of answers the third question, as far as universities are concerned anyway. As to why pay, this is really a political issue, isn’t it? If universities are institutions which consist of people critically engaging at the forefront of new developments in various fields, then someone has to pay their salaries. Whether this should be the student or society as a whole … well, I do have an opinion but this isn’t the place for it.