Things to consider

If you’ve been following our latest series here at the Rukuku blog (or even if you just happen to be a living, breathing person), you probably know that the cost of education is too high.

But think about this:

  • What if educators and students didn’t have to worry about meeting at a location and wasting time getting there?
  • What if teachers and learners didn’t have to worry about acquiring the necessary teaching and learning materials?
  • What if the amount of students that an educator can meaningfully interact with wasn’t limited by the physical constraints of a classroom?
  • What if we currently have the potential to dramatically lower the cost of learning while greatly improving its quality?

If these questions sound hypothetical to you, they shouldn’t.

To learn more, please sign up for a chance at our exclusive, invitation-only launch. It’s coming on April Fools’ Day, but it’s no joke.

Why is higher education so expensive?

So, you want to go to college. I don’t blame you: college is basically four years of fun (with a side of class for about three hours a day), and when you’re done, you get a big, lavishly framed, magical piece of paper that helps you make money. It’s like there are no downsides!

Well, actually, there is one. The average cost of a college education in the United States is currently about $140,000 for a private institution and $56,000 for a public one. This is quite a hefty price tag for a four year party and a piece of paper – and that’s before you pile on a generous smattering of extra tens of thousands for room, board, and books. Given that the median American household earns just under $45,000 per year, these numbers are very perplexing.

When I talk to people who attended college 40 or 50 years ago, I notice a common theme: many were able to pay for it themselves with part-time side jobs, like working at a restaurant or delivering newspapers. In 2012, the income from such employment would barely be enough to buy books for the semester, let alone cover tuition. The vast majority of today’s students are unable to pay for any kind of college education without sinking into the abyssal chasm of student loan debt.

What changed? Somehow, I doubt that part-time waiters in the old days got the 2012 equivalent of $30,000 a year. The culprit must be tuition.

Why is education so expensive, and how can technology help bring that cost down? This week we’ll be discussing this topic in depth and attempting to find some answers. Stay tuned, Rukuku readers!

Solutions

In the previous installment, I discussed a selection of hurdles faced by the education world in the viability, effectiveness and adoption of new technologies. Here at Rukuku, though, we’re optimists. To us, that doesn’t mean crossing our fingers and hoping everything turns out okay. Instead, we recognize that for every problem, there exists an array of intelligent, creative, and occasionally, downright awesome solutions. As it pertains to tech and learning, a few examples follow. Some are uncontroversial, others are mutually exclusive, and many are subject to lively, opinionated discussion based on one’s political or social viewpoint.

Policy solutions. In our political discourse, the primary rhetorical tools have recently become beating each other over the head with vapid talking points and just generally yelling at everything. That is quite unfortunate, because there is a serious, level-headed discussion to be had on the subject of technology and our (failing) education system. A sober discussion on the topic might go something like this. Those favoring robust federal involvement in our schools and universities may say that more funding is needed, technology should be introduced into resistant systems with incentives and pressure, the system should be made more efficient and equitable (perhaps through subsidies for disadvantaged students and locales), and accountability should be increased. Deficit hawks and decentralists might retort that the right solutions are to give localities and institutions more leeway, stop constraining them with one-size-fits-all federal standards, and diminish what they believe to be the entrenched, change-resistant behemoth of an educational bureaucracy that we have created over the last couple of decades.

Natural market processes and innovation. Whatever your views on policy happen to be, anyone who has taken an introductory Economics class probably knows that peaceful, lawful competition among innovative producers results in ever-improving products and services at ever-lower prices. If you are a child of the era when the personal computer was an exorbitantly expensive, fantastically slow, nauseatingly beige, boxy monstrosity, you know this very well. The computers of today are enormously better, faster, and more functional than their counterparts of ten or 15 years ago. Despite that, the average price of personal computer equipment fell an astounding ninety percent between 1998 and 2009. The introduction of the tech revolution into education will be no different. In the last post, we placed special emphasis on socioeconomic factors causing disparities in the quality of learning. To be sure, this problem exists, and is serious. But in the face of the unrelenting innovation machine, it’s also temporary. Technologies are very rapidly becoming more accessible and more equitable for people of all backgrounds. If the demand exists (and it sure does), the innovators will always respond. To end with a small but shameless plug: Rukuku strives to be among those innovators.

There are so many reasons to look forward to solving the educational problems of the modern age.

Who’s aboard?

Source for stats.

Apple’s initiative and what it represents

In light of Apple’s recent announcement, this week on the Rukuku blog, I’d like to turn the focus to the implications, issues, and promise of recent tech innovations as they pertain to education. This will be the first post in a series aimed at provoking discussion on the topic.

As often happens when Cupertino executives in black turtlenecks unveil a new creation, the world of tech and education is abuzz over Apple’s new electronic textbook initiative. In case you haven’t heard of it because you live in a hole underground (I do, and trust me, it’s not worth it without internet access), the basic idea is this: Apple, partnering with major publishers, will offer interactive, searchable textbooks that students can purchase cheaply for a yearly subscription.  That’s right, students: no more shelling out $500 every semester for a backache. Instead, all your books will now be neatly and compactly stored on your iPad. Oh, right: you have to buy an iPad. And when you break it (and you will, since you’re a rambunctious college student), you’re gonna have to buy another one. Well played, Apple.


Regardless of the benefits and pitfalls of this particular project, it demonstrates something that is becoming remarkably apparent: technology is changing education permanently and at a rate never seen before. Gone are the days of wasting hours away searching for information in libraries, confining oneself exclusively to reading words on a page in order to learn something, being bored or unmotivated by educators, and other archaic 20th century problems.  Traditional methods of learning are being challenged, questioned, revolutionized, and improved.

If it’s not too immodest to say, that’s where our little company comes in. The world is careening into the future on the bullet train of innovation, and Rukuku is definitely onboard.
Leave us your thoughts on the issue, and stay tuned this week for more on this topic!

Procrastination

So, Rukuku readers: winter break is long over and we’re back in the grind. For many of us, that means battling a familiar, but destructive, temptation.

You have a major paper due this week. Are you writing it?

Admit it. You’re on the 50th page of Reddit watching a video of kittens dancing flamenco. The Facebook profile on the next tab is that of an individual related to you so loosely that it might legally be considered stalking. Meanwhile, your phone is causing enough desk vibration to register on the Richter scale.

But the Word icon on your taskbar, if clicked, would reveal a solitary cursor flickering away cheerlessly into the whiteness of its space.

In short, you’re procrastinating. And who can blame you? Kicking the can down the road is way more fun than doing work. It’s a cruel paradox of life that a thing so damaging to productivity is just so darn satisfying in the short term. In the long term, though, it’s a cruel and fleeting mistress.

We all know about setting goals, making deadlines, and sticking to schedules. To supplement those, here are a few innovative tips for warding off the habit in the modern age:

1. Your phone is a major distraction. Keep the call ringer on to be reached in case of emergency; turn all other notifications off. That’s right – no more Twitter updates from Justin Bieber.

2. Close all unrelated social media. Unless it’s directly related to what you’re studying, it’s a major distraction. If you really lack discipline, you can even adjust your browser settings to prevent yourself from accessing certain sites for a set period of time. Remember: your Facebook’s news feed is not the most important thing in the world. In fact (and this is the real shocker) it’s not very important at all.

3. Use a procrastination clock. This is an interesting new way to nudge oneself to better time management skills. It tells you when to work and when to play based on your own pre-selected settings. An example can be found here.

4. Reward yourself. As with dessert after a hearty meal, give yourself a little break every now and then. Just make sure the break isn’t the main course.

What are some strategies you use to combat procrastination? Please leave us your input in the comment section.

Nah, who are we kidding? You’re probably just going to put it off.

Merry Christmas!

Sitting on Santa’s lap this year, guess what kids (and the kid in all of us) ask for in their stockings:
  • Angry Birds on their iPads
  • A basketball signed by their favorite NBA star
  • The complete Harry Potter collection

Of course, this list will ensure searing bliss, but it won’t last forever. On the other hand, what if someone gave you a gift card to enroll in a class at Stanford? Think for a moment… What is a gift that requires no wrapping paper, gift receipts, or stamps—and last forever and keeps on giving?

Education is what we at Rukuku consider the gift of choice and the gift of a future. With the struggling economic times that we have all been experiencing, more and more we find ourselves saving for our educational training in preparation for our better life ahead. While selecting Rukuku for yourself this year, think also of giving the gift of knowledge—Rukuku—to someone you love.

Ru has turned his head all the way around to see you.  Is your name on our list yet?  Sign up for our launch at www.rukuku.com