Free education? Let’s liberate education from archaic forms

We don’t need no education. We don’t need no thought control. Words from the trilogy of songs Another Brick in the Wall from that most extraordinary of progressive rock bands, Pink Floyd, on their 1979 rock opera album, The Wall. Ironic, but not surprising, that this iconic protest song was performed by a group of students at what is now the University of Westminster, London.

The song was released 38 years ago in November and it was temporarily banned in SA, which made it so much cooler; banning does that. I was a student at the University of Cape Town at the time. We loved the song, supported the protest and yet we were at university, getting educated.

Education costs money, but education creates assets — real, live assets. It is unquestionably one of the most worthwhile of human pursuits, whether you’re teaching or being taught. But yes, somebody has to pay.

We’re wrestling with how to pay for education in our country, perhaps even more so than other countries do, because of our entrenched economic inequality. The “solution” to primary and secondary (school) education has been partially left in the hands of the private sector, for those who can afford it, although the unintended consequences include selection based on money, not merit and measurable differences in output. All matric certificates don’t carry the same education.

At tertiary level, the problem statement is quite simple: how are you going to pay your tuition fees and living expenses for three years while you are not employed because you are studying so that you can qualify to be employed one day? Students are protesting at universities and #FeesMustFall is a household expression.

Many alternative funding models have been put forward. I had a go at it myself in an earlier column. Private-sector employers, I suggested, could pre-fund the tertiary skills sets they required and graduates could repay the economics with service – pretty much how my bursary worked.

Student loans don’t work. Free education without rules won’t work.

While education should be a citizen service, if not a right, it is also a business. Everything I’ve heard so far seeks to fill this hole in our unbalanced equation with money — that’s like sticking chewing gum in a leak. We need to solve the equation. Better still, we need to rewrite the rules of the delivery and receipt of knowledge. If we don’t, the current model will continue to be uncompetitive, unaffordable and not sustainable. Old, albeit once functional, information delivery models are found wanting.

Of course, being in the classroom, face to face, will always be part of it, as will the student life and campus experience, but the structure of mainstream education has to change fundamentally, structurally, to survive.

We have to leverage physical infrastructure and human expertise to lower the cost of education delivery across the board. Technology has proven, again and again, to be the economic equaliser. E-commerce enables retail, remote, belowscale individuals and businesses access to the market place at the wholesale price. The economies of scale that arise from such universal-access models lower the unit cost of individually accessible technology, in a virtuous circle of empowerment and participation. Access to education, on a grand scale, need be no different.

Data (bytes of knowledge and wisdom, if you like) need no longer be transmitted by such ancient means as voice in the lecture theatre, or paper in the tutorial notes.

We need a hybrid education model. We need to transfer knowledge to the people, instead of expecting them to come and get it from us.

The principal advantages of e-education are lower cost of delivery, almost infinite access, unlimited monitoring and feedback loops, all real time, if you like. Instead of limiting the number of first-year entry slots, let’s instead disqualify first-year failures from any free next years. The education grid required to deliver this technology solution is not a cost, it’s an investment.

Education should be free, but there must be rules.

And the money invested in the system to deliver it must have passed through the scrutiny of the wise.

WE NEED TO REWRITE THE RULES ... IF WE DON’T, THE CURRENT MODEL WILL CONTINUE TO BE UNCOMPETITIVE