I Majored in Wiki

As I think back over my many glorious years at college, I remember doing beer bongs, playing beerpong....basically put the word beer before any word and I was probably doing it. Good times.
When I wasn't studying to become an alcoholic, I actually participated in various educational activities. In fact, I wrote a thesis paper, maintained high grades and even attended a lecture or two. After four years, I graduated near the top of my class with a diploma from a top university. If the educational bureaucrats were to write a script for the ideal collegiate experience, I would be their star (minus all the drinking). The problem is, I didn't learn anything.

Sure, I learned "life lessons" and crap like that, but you can learn those from a fortune cookie. The truth is, universities aren't in the business of educating people. They are in the business of handing out a piece of paper so you can get a job. "Who cares if the kids don't learn anything. They'll get a job and learn from their employer. Besides, there is no other business in town. And at $100,000 a pop, why rock the boat" could be the slogan for the US university system.

Thankfully, two factors are going to contribute to the demise of the current university model. The first is financial. The math goes like this: Large budget commitments predicated on growth + shrinking endowments due to bad investments + increasing cost for student loans + shrinking alumni contributions + families who can no longer afford college = Screwed.

The second factor is that there's a new competitor in town that actually has the ability to educate people: Wikipedia. A few months ago, seeing the dark clouds of the economic crisis overhead, I wanted to become educated on the storm that was coming. I started my search on one wiki page and before I knew it, I read over 50 pages. And all it cost me was the price of an internet connection. Now DLaz (oh jeez, only three post and I'm already referring to myself in the third person, this can't be good) will school 99% of econ majors on the details of how we got into this mess and could maybe even hold his own for a few minutes with Roubini (look him up, idiots).

And the reason why Wikipedia is more effective than anything the universities can offer is because you can get answers to your questions in real time. No more waiting for your 70 year old professor to get back to you. No more arduous research in the libraries that fatigues the average person. No more 4 years of waiting for your degree so the universities can suck 4 years of tuition payments out of you just so you can announce to the world that your "qualified" in a specific field.

I can already hear people bitching, "but Wikipedia isn't a reliable source for an education." Well, you know what else isn't a reliable source? Fallible teachers with biases (all of them) and text books that change each year because the publisher learned something new, like that the theory of evolution is a better model than creationism (what! you mean some textbooks still teach creationism? oh, they don't teach creationism, they teach intelligent design. my bad).

Well, tonight, hopefully all of you will drink your wine a little more at ease, knowing that your kids may receive a BA or a BS from Wikipedia University and save you $100k.