21 February 2007

Henry Jenkins' "YouNiversity"

I like everything about the article except the title. My favorite quote is "The modern university should work not by defining fields of study but by removing obstacles so that knowledge can circulate and be reconfigured in new ways."

Unfortunately, I have real doubts about the powerful institutional antibodies of nearly all higher education institutions allowing something like this to happen. So often, even tentative moves in this direction get rolled back. The most likely scenario is that "higher education" ends up having very little to do with "institutes of higher education" and vice-versa. Seems a bit depressing to me, but it's probably a good thing. And a few progressive institutions will make it through, and new ones will spring up. The old universities will never die - at least not in my lifetime - but they may become increasingly irrelevant.

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