Stephen Downes

Jon Dron applies something like a systems analysis to the question in the title, asking essentially, "what does it mean for higher education to work?" In one role, teaching, it doesn't perform especially well, due to conflicts with its other roles. But in another role, 'surviving', it has done remarkably well, having persisted for centuries and having expanded around the globe. I do question, though, whether this is true: "The main technological features that universities acquired in the first century of their existence are still fully present, in virtually unaltered form.  Courses, classes, terms/semesters, professors, credentials, methods of teaching, organizational structures, methods of assessment, and plenty more are visibly the same species as their mediaeval forebears, and remain the central motifs of virtually all formal higher education." Are they really? I wonder about that. (I suppose I could ask ChatGPT...)