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Online Education: First accredited university to offer online versions of all of its lecture...

...courses to conduct all tests in a supervised testing center in at least one public library in the largest greater metropolitan area of each US state, and to charge nothing for these courses or testing but to use its endowment fund to cover the costs. [Education hasn’t evolved much since monks read to a small room of the sons of nobility in the Dark Ages when books were rare and the ability to read was even rarer. This challenge finally brings education into the Computer Age.]

Grading is not done on the percentage of a test the student gets right (90% or more = A, 80%-89% = B, etc.) but based on how many attempts it takes the student to get 90% on a test (first attempt = A, second attempt = B, etc.). [This alone will make its degree FAR better than what college students get today and thus will be another nail in the coffin of the old educational system.] If a student ever aces a test (gets 100% correct), they get a "+" added to their grade (regardless of what grade that is). If students wish, they can continue to take the same test even after they have received a grade to earn a "+" (meaning they aced the test) and this "+" added to the letter grade they've already earned. They can continue to take the test up to four times (including the attempts to get a letter grade) or when they earn a "+", whichever happens sooner. This means that a student only has one attempt to try get a D+.

The questions on this computerized test will be taken from a much larger master list of test questions for that textbook, the order of the questions in the test randomly presented, the order of the answer choices of multiple-choice questions randomly presented, the variables in questions randomly assigned (thus changing their answer choices), and, if the student fails the test (didn't get at least 90% on it), the student will not be told the answers to the questions they got wrong but how many questions they got right and wrong in each chapter of that textbook (thus informing them which chapters they need to study more before attempting the test again).

[Once the above is done and students are allowed to progress at their own speed (see second paragraph of Future Challenge #4 below), how employers evaluate job applicants will change. It won't be just what is the fresh-out-of-school applicant's grade point average that will matter, but how long they took to get their degree. The faster they got their degree, the more valuable that person will be as an employee. In the real world of work, no supervisor has his subordinate come into his office and receive series of lectures over several months on a book he wants the employee to learn. No, what happens in the real world is the manager will walk over to the employee's desk, drop a book on it, and tell him to read it. And the boss isn't meaning the worker to take three to four months to read it. No, the supervisor means for the subordinate to read it as fast as possible so the business can benefit from the knowledge it contains as soon as possible. In other words, the employee will have to quickly self-educate themselves. Not be slowly spoon fed, as our current educational system does. Given this, the educational system advocated in this challenge and its future challenges is closer to how students will be required to acquire knowledge in the real world of work and that is great for everyone involved. For the students, there is less disconnect between student life and work life. For employers, they know those who graduate from the educational system outlined in this challenge will be able to better operate as their employees.

Additionally, the supervisor won't be satisfied that the subordinate was able to learn and retain only 70% of the information in the book. No, the manager expects the employee to learn and retain 100% of the information and quickly. While the boss won't be happy that the worker might only retain 90% of the information, he will likely accept it. He won't accept that the employee doesn't learn and retain 30% of the information. 70% retainment is fine in school as that's a "C" there. It isn't fine in the work world. The new educational system advocated in this challenge forces the student to aim and achieve at least 90% retainment of knowledge from textbooks. And this is where the new educational system grading helps employers in another way. It tells the hirer how many times the job applicant needs to study before they actually know 90% of the information they've read. Not think they know but actually know. By the new system requiring the student to re-test if they don't get 90% on a test and giving them a lower and lower grade for each time they fail to prove they know 90%, the employer has an idea of how well the job applicant not only acquires knowledge but how well (or poorly) the applicant is at knowing they have acquired it. Think about it. If a student knows they will not pass the test unless they get at least 90% correct on it, they won't take the test until they think they know at least 90% of the knowledge it contains. But if they routinely fail to get 90% on their tests (as they're a "solid B" student), this indicates a person that CONSISTENTLY overestimates his ability to learn and retain information. Would you want to employ someone like that? How about someone that is a "solid C" student that take, on average, three attempts to learn information from a book?

Given the above, you can then see how employers will take into consideration not only the student's grade point average but how long they took to get their degrees. This will then put pressure on all students (or, in many cases, their parents putting pressure on their children) to learn as well and fast as possible to make themselves into job applicants that employers will want to hire. Likely, one of the best things that a job applicant can put on her/his resume is that they belong to one of the academic societies laid out in Future Challenges #22 through #27 below. Their membership in one of those societies will clearly indicate to employers a job applicant who will learn well and fast.

Finally, we need to be honest about our current educational system. It is a failure. The problem isn't that we're spending too little money on it since studies have shown that has no bearing on results. Spending on education has steadily been increasing over the years but test results have remained the same. The problem is how the system itself is structured. It hasn't changed since the Dark Ages. And if that wasn't bad enough, it is teaching our children bad learning habits. Our children are learning to learn in a way that they will not be expected to learn when they get a job. The real work world doesn't spoon feed its employees knowledge as our current educational system does. We need to correct this. We need to realign and restructure our educational system to enable our children to have a better starting advantage when they enter the workforce. This challenge and its future challenges does just that.]

Future Challenges:

1) First accredited university to do the above and no longer offer lecture classes. [This will cause the death of most colleges and universities. After this is offered to the public, lecture classes will go the way of the buggy whip. The colleges and universities which will survive will be those currently offering degrees that require a lot of laboratory class work. These surviving educational institutions will survive by the majority of the rest dying and students transferring to these surviving ones to take their lab classes from them. In other words, all liberal arts colleges will die out but some of the hard science universities will survive the cut ... with all liberal arts colleges at those hard science universities dying out themselves. Students required to complete all of their textbook classes (what we currently call "lecture" classes) before attending these remaining colleges and universities to finish out their degrees with the required lab classes for those degrees. From the standpoint of how four-year universities are today, what this means if you were to visit the future and one of these surviving universities, the students on campuses will all be seniors and for the few lab class work intensive degrees, some juniors. Freshmen and sophomores will be non-existent. The dormitories will house only a few juniors but mainly just seniors. In BTC creator Jack Decker's home state of Wisconsin, perhaps only two out of the thirteen four-year University of Wisconsin universities and thirteen two-year UW colleges will survive this education revolution and those two will likely be University of Wisconsin - Madison and, due to its engineering college, Jack Decker's alma mater UW-Platteville. {Though Jack Decker has no doubt that the UW Board of Regents will sacrifice all other UW universities, including UWP, to ensure that UW-Madison survives.}]

2) First accredited university to offer online virtual reality laboratory classes for all of its laboratory classes, to conduct all tests in a supervised testing center in at least one public library in the largest greater metropolitan area of each US state, and to charge nothing for these courses or testing but to use its endowment fund to cover the costs. [Laboratory classes don’t conduct experiments that break new ground for science. Lab professors know exactly what to expect (good and bad) from experiments done by their students. This makes such lab classes suitable for virtual reality simulation. It is only graduate students working on their master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation who push the boundaries of science and need to do real-life experiments.]

3) First accredited university to do FC #3 and to provide an online service so potential employers can know how degraded a graduate's degree has become since s/he received it, to provide "update" courses to their graduates to keep their degrees up to date with that degree's academic field (and thus be certified as having a "current" degree from that university), and offer this as a free service to their graduates with its cost covered by the university's endowment fund. [As soon as you get a college degree, its information starts to become dated. For high-tech degrees, they can be become dated the moment you graduate. This future challenge gets universities to help their graduates remain current with their chosen field. This means universities will need to develop career-long relationships with their graduates to help them always possess an up-to-date degree. It means education never stops for graduates as they will need to take the latest "update" course(s) for their degree to maintain the value of their degrees.]

4) First accredited university to do Future Challenges #1 and #2 and no longer offer real-life laboratory classes. [Currently (as of 2024), there are 6,241 undergraduate universities in the USA. Only one university needs to conquer this future challenge to wipe out all the rest. Those universities that realize this and act quickly to be part of this revolution in education will at least have a chance of being one of the surviving few. Those with well-funded endowments (such as Harvard University and its $49.5 billion endowment) will have the best chance, but even they cannot wait for others to test the waters first since once a student starts going to a university, they rarely ever change to another – unless there is a very good reason, such as it being free and online. And once the first child in a household goes to a university, the rest of his or her siblings commonly go to the same one. The key to survival for well-endowed universities is to then lead this change: sell off their lecture halls and dormitories (putting the money into their endowment fund); slim down their graduate programs to just experimental laboratories (all book and lab learning is already done by the students who apply to these graduate programs); and to set up testing centers in as many public libraries and their branches across the USA as possible. Those which try to charge for their education will lose to those who offer it for free. Those who try to force their students to attend video-conference classes to try to give a reason to continue to employ lecture professors will lose to those who don’t.

This will be the greatest paradigm shift in the history of education. Expect this shift to be swift and merciless. This challenge eliminates one of the biggest costs and headaches to families: college education. Parents will not only save on tuition but also on room and board since their kids can stay at home while attending college online. It will also save on taxes by college education no longer costing federal, state, and local governments money. Additionally, the following future challenges will eliminate possibly as much as 90% of all elementary and secondary teachers and other educational costs.]

5) Same as #4 but for middle schools. Fast academic progression should not enable students to participate in after-school activities of kids chronologically older than them. In other words, a student who is chronologically a sixth grader but who is taking high school courses online should only be allowed to attend middle school dances and not high school dances. [Even though a child might be intellectually on the same level of a much older child, the child won’t be physically or even emotionally as mature as that older child. It is thus best that when it comes to social events that children socialize with their chronological peers.]

6) Same as #4 but for elementary schools.

7) First accredited university to offer free to any public or private high school online and virtual reality versions of all of its high school lecture courses and laboratory classes. Participating high schools must not require their students to physically attend school if the students take all of their courses and lab classes online, are able to keep ahead of their test deadlines, and maintain at least a “C” average. [Freedom from the classroom will be the biggest incentive for students to get their homework done and their tests passed. All of their friends will be out of school and they will want to be with them. In addition to this carrot, there will be a stick. The stick will drive “D” students to work hard to become “C” students because going to school will then physically isolate them from, and cause them to be viewed negatively by, all of their peers. Going to school will be viewed in the future the same way as being forced to ride the “short” bus to and from school is viewed today: it will mark one as stupid.] Online students are only required to take physical education classes if they’re outside of predefined fitness boundaries (“ideal weight range”). [Expect schools to require their fat online students to attend daily morning aerobics classes.] Online students are allowed to participate in all after-school activities (sports, plays, show choir, dances, etc.).

If online students can maintain a “B” average or better, they can progress through their coursework at a pace faster than their chronological age would normally allow and can graduate early. [This will finally allow the really smart kids to unleash their intellects and see just how far and fast they can go. No longer chained to their chronological peers, these smart kids will view education as a challenge instead of as a prison term.]

Schools must allow their online students to go to school year round, including summer. Schools must offer supervised testing centers at least one day every week of the year. [The original reason that kids got the summer off from school was to help out on the farm. The USA hasn’t been an agricultural nation since the 1800s. Education must adjust to the times. Additionally, for the really smart kids, this also enables them to see how fast and far they can go in their education by not stopping them from pursuing their education over the summer.]

8) First public library to offer a supervised testing center for its local elementary, middle, and high schools. [Expect the same public libraries with which universities have made arrangements to provide a supervised testing center for their college students to get more mileage out of their testing centers by offering to also do this for their local elementary, middle, and high schools. This challenge will GREATLY help public libraries survive the eBook revolution by giving them a new service they can provide the public. Expect public libraries to aggressively pursue this opportunity when it avails itself and to strongly lobby their local school boards to have their students only use the public library's testing center. By charging the school system a great deal less than what it would cost the school system to operate its own supervised testing center, the public library can pitch this to school boards as a way the school system can save money. This then can become an important revenue stream for public libraries. Even if the public library were to offer this service free to their local schools, it still benefits the public library by being another reason for people to donate to it and local governments to continue to fund it.]

9) First US school board to require all of its schools (elementary, middle, and high) to take advantage of the university’s offer above. [As school boards are elected by taxpayers, expect this change to sweep the nation when it can be implemented.]

10) First US state to require all state-publicly-funded or state-subsidized schools (elementary, middle, high, and college) within its state to take advantage of the offer of any university that can provide them the above free complete educational system.

11) First major US state (population of 9 million or more) to require all state-publicly-funded or state-subsidized schools (elementary, middle, high, and college) within its state to take advantage of the offer of any university that can provide them the above free complete educational system.

12) First US House Representative or US Senator to successfully introduce a bill to Congress that both houses pass and the President signs (or his veto over-ridden) that requires all US schools (elementary, middle, high, or college) who receives federal funding of any amount to take advantage of the offer of any US university that can provide them the above free complete educational system.

Offering its educational system free to any who wishes to take advantage of it, first US university to open up at least one supervised testing center in at least one free public library in:

13) A non-US city.

14) At least 50 countries.

15) At least 100 countries.

Offering its educational system free to any who wish to take advantage of it, first non-US university to open up at least one supervised testing center in at least one free public library in:

16) A US city.

17) The state capitals of all 50 US States.

18) At least the 100 largest US cities.

19) At least the 200 largest US cities.

20) At least 50 countries.

21) At least 100 countries.

First international academic society whose members are made up of those who, before the age of 19 years, have graduated with a:

22) Bachelor's Degree.

23) Master's Degree.

24) Doctorate Degree.

25) Professorate Degree.

First international academic society whose members are made up of those who have graduated with:

26) All aces (thus earning a plus ["+"]) to all of their grades. Their grades can be other than As. Those wishing to be a member of this society would continue to take tests until they receive a "+" to their grade OR they have taken the test four times, whichever is shorter.

27) All their grades being "A+".

First radio talk show hosts to champion this challenge and:

28) Get their alma mater to officially take on the above original challenge. To win this future challenge, the host must get on the university's chancellor to announce or confirm that her/his university is taking the above original challenge.

29) Get their alma mater to WIN the original challenge. To win this future challenge, the host must first get the university chancellor on their show to officially announce or confirm that her/his university is taking at least the original challenge and then subsequently that university WINS the original challenge.

30) Get their alma mater to WIN one of the Future Challenges #1 through #6. To win this future challenge, the host must first get the university chancellor on their show to officially announce or confirm that her/his university is taking the original challenge and Future Challenges #1 through #6 and then subsequently that university WINS one of those Future Challenges.

31) Get a BA or BS degree from a Future Challenge #3 university. The host must have taken all of their course (both textbook and lab) online.

32) Get a master's degree from a Future Challenge #3 university.

33) Get a doctorate degree from a Future Challenge #3 university.

34) Get a professorate degree from a Future Challenge #3 university.

Discussion:
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