Youtube University

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Youtube University

A self-sufficient, self-sustaining education model.

Most people in the world today do not have the resources - money, spare time, adequate food and water, access to technology, or freedom from disease - to pursue an education. How can we fix this? We could spend trillions of dollars on charity and give away an education to SOME of these people, but why not develop a business model where we can educate ALL of them while making enough money to expand our operations?

Here is such a model. Youtube University: a self-sufficient, self-sustaining education model.

Imagine this. A professor and his assistants - graduate students and assorted gophers - conduct classes and teach students in the classroom the same way they do at any other university, but here, at Youtube University, all the lessons, all the speeches and lectures are captured on video and archived on a website. The website streams the professorial media and makes money from ads. The professor, besides being paid by the university from his students tuition, gets money from the ad revenue generated by his media, which means that the more popular his lessons (the better teacher he is), the more money he makes.

But what about textbooks, you ask? They’re free at Youtube University. You can download them as PDF or HTML or TXT, print them off, and do whatever you want with them. If you think you can improve the textbooks, contact the Publishing Department at YU, and they’ll review your suggestions, decide their worth by open debate and vote, and maybe include them in the newest version of the textbook.

If a professor wrote his own textbook and wants to make money from its distribution, then he is welcome to pepper ads throughout his textbook. If his textbook is biased, then this will be reflected in it’s popularity.

Finally, Youtube University has it’s own collection of internet forums, wikis, and chat systems. Each professor has one of each, where he and his assistants can help their online audience and post helpful things like guides, walkthroughs, Frequently Asked Questions, and whatever they deem useful. The professors get a share of their online ad revenue, so, once again, they have motivation to be effective teachers.

This is Youtube University, rough sketch. It can be adapted, without any major modifications, to a primary or secondary schools system, and it could be used to augment an existing school system.

If it is used to augment an existing school system, I imagine every student would be issued profiles on the web site by the school administrators, so they cannot create alternate, anonymous profiles and harass other students. In such a system, each student’s profile should also be password protected, and there should be a motivation to not share your password and a motivation to not steal other student’s passwords.

This model is ideal for those who do not function well in conventional education systems. Minorities who do not speak the dominant language can be educated from across the world by native speakers of their own language in libraries and internet cafes, without having to build, maintain, and staff large institutes in every country in the world. Not only that, but this idea would be a blessing for overachievers, social misfits, and all the brilliant oddballs out there. All it would require is an internet connection and maybe a private computer or laptop for the online students.

Parts of this idea exist already. Open source textbooks, internet schools, user-created content, online communities dedicated to sharing knowledge. As far as I know, I’m the first person to put them all together while intending to augment or replace our current education system.

Youtube University would be self-sufficient and self-sustaining once it starts, but it would require substantial start-up money. It may be easier to use it to augment an existing school system at first, and then branch out into other classes when it makes money.

I call it Youtube University because it brings to mind a popular website, but it doesn’t have to be youtube who hosts the videos.

Since I don’t have the resources to make this idea happen, I’m giving it away for free to anyone and everyone to do whatever they want with it.

What do you guys think? Does the belief that knowledge should be free, and that rent-seeking douchebags who are horrible teachers anyways should go fuck themselves make me a socialist? Is there anyone, anywhere who would implement my idea, so I can finally get an education (albeit an informal one, but hey, I’m a romhacker, what the fuck do I care as long as I have the skills?) Could you all do me a favor and put this idea out there, present it to anyone who will listen?

I came up with this idea because I read an article about conservatives Baptists and Pentecostals from the South going all over the country and harassing school boards into banning all sorts of curriculum, and I tried to think of a way that a school could achieve independence from politics.

This idea is subversive. Professors should make money from their teaching ability and not their monopoly on knowledge and experience? What university what support that idea?

I have a feeling that educators and politicians from nations like Brazil and Venezuela might like this idea, because it allows them to educate much of their populations, at a fraction of the cost of conventional education, which will make them competitive with China, India, and the West, especially the complacent USA.

Anyone know how to contact them, and not make them think I’m a scammer/nutcase?

Random Thought: Anyone else think we need an economic divorce from Wall Street and a political divorce from Washington DC? How else to deal with the problems of oil, religion, card-shark finance, and an emergent political aristocracy? Any ideas?

I’m running out of patience with my country.

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This is a great idea, and I’m sure such universities will eventually come into existence.

What do you guys think? Does the belief that knowledge should be free, and that rent-seeking douchebags who are horrible teachers anyways should go fuck themselves make me a socialist

Of course knowledge should be free! I wouldn’t place too much blame on the shoulders of teachers, though. They’re only accomodating to the system we already have, and most teachers are decent; truth be told, most of the blame for the lack of education in this country falls on the shoulders of kids who don’t want to learn, and sometimes by extension, parents.

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Blaming the teachers who aren’t afforded enough resources and don’t earn good salaries (who would become a teacher when you can earn more $$$ as a financial analyst or somesuch?) doesn’t sound socialist at all to me. Education is tied to politics because it is an aspect of society and doesn’t operate in a vacuum.

But if you are interested in open courseware, MIT, Stanford, Harvard and Yale offer the material of courses online. Google open courseware + [University Name].

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To what limit should knowledge/education be free? High school? Technical schools? Undergrad? Graduate school? Doctorate level? Professional degrees such as law, business, and medical degrees?

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If the phrase “knowledge is power” holds truth, then by making all knowledge free, the world will either advance extremely fast or be destroyed extremely fast.

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Guess what? CEOs are still all gonna graduate from a select few top business schools, therefore nothing will ever change and your youtube degree will be worthless (in both the literal and figurative and literally figurative sense)

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knowledge is free, you can get anything out of a book at the library that you can out of a textbook or from a teacher.

what isn’t free is the diploma - the proof you actually read the subject material and learned it.

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To what limit should knowledge/education be free? High school? Technical schools? Undergrad? Graduate school? Doctorate level? Professional degrees such as law, business, and medical degrees?

To the extent that the student is willing to learn, and actually capable of learning. Yes, I believe that if someone is capable of completing med or law school, and wants to do so, a civilized society would pay the bill for them.
The problem with our society is that we try to force students who don’t particularly care about academics, to learn them regardless. Which is completely absurd when you really think about it.

knowledge is free, you can get anything out of a book at the library that you can out of a textbook or from a teacher.

what isn’t free is the diploma - the proof you actually read the subject material and learned

Technically you can, but feedback is vital to actually mastering a subject, at least for most people. I guess a small minority of people could learn simply through texts but most need feedback. And obviously it depends on the subject; something like history the average person can self-teach themselves, to a degree. However, they would not be able to self-teach themselves how to write a good history research paper.

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Are you actually arguing for subsidizing the training of lawyers? I’m about as left on the spectrum as it gets, and even I wouldn’t argue for subsidizing that. The problem is that salaries for lawyers and doctors are near the top of the pay spectrum, and thus you are going to get a lot of competition for those jobs both from people who are genuinely interested in helping people and from people who want to earn a lot of money and figure that being a lawyer or doctor is a guaranteed way to get there. Now some people argue that doctors and lawyers need a lot more training than the average person, so thus higher salaries are justified. Maybe that is true, but if we’re going to be paying them at rates multiple times over the average way you’re going to get a huge demand for these jobs, and thus it just wouldn’t make any sense to subsidize their education. People are already willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and work for years for peanuts just to get into these fields - generally when that is the situation, things aren’t going to get cheaper; rather they are going to get even more expensive.

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The goal isn’t to give out degrees; it’s skill acquisition. Honestly, I got the idea from Fairuza Balk’s Blog (I am scarily obsessed with her), where she mentioned a website called romarights.org or something. Anyways, the Roma in Europe, especially eastern Europe, are put in schools for retards and forcibly sterilized, and I was wondering how you could educate a group of people who share a common language, are spread out over a large geographical area, and who are discriminated against by the ethnic majority, while still making a decent buck (that is, being self-sustaining and self-sufficient).

My loathing of educators comes from my education at a public school. I got perfect scores on all the state tests (I’m not kidding), and yet I couldn’t function in class because being around groups of people freaks me the fuck out, along with bright lights, loud noises, heat, and humidity, not to mention all the hormones baking off my classmates and the resultant borderline-homosexual hazing from my male peers. Every time I asked a teacher to please, get me out of here, they’d move me to a class with easier curriculum. That’s why I never tried to go to college. I wasn’t about to go through that again.

I will give my teachers this: they did the best with what they had. I was a freshman in 2001-2002, in Ohio, and we got fucked so hard by all the Christfags who came up from Waco to tell us to vote Republican. I think my schools budget was slashed by 20%? Don’t remember.

Jettatura: What the hell does that mean? Is that some kind of deep philosophical shit you learn in creative writing class? What practical use does that quip have? Are you saying we should all be Amish, or live in the woods and hunt deer?

My 10th grade English teacher said his goal was to teach us how to think. I thought he was full of shit. You can’t teach a person how to think, you can only teach them how you think. It can’t be taught, only learned.

You learn to think in response to your environment, and, from my own experiences, suffering provokes the greatest response. You learn to think when you suffer so that you can avoid pain in the future. I’m not saying you should torture somebody to make them a better person (probably because I’m not Christian).

It’s only okay to torture someone for their own good if they consent to it, like how a soldier consents to mental and physical suffering to prepare for the hardships of war, which may save his life and the lives of those around him, both soldiers and civilians, if he is disciplined to do his job to the best of his abilities. Without consent, it’s rape, no matter what good it does.

Curtis Said:
Technically you can, but feedback is vital to actually mastering a subject, at least for most people. I guess a small minority of people could learn simply through texts but most need feedback. And obviously it depends on the subject; something like history the average person can self-teach themselves, to a degree. However, they would not be able to self-teach themselves how to write a good history research paper.

^That’s why there would be forums and other interactive media in YU. It’s not as good as face-to-face contact, but if you can teach someone ASM through forums and IRC, then you can teach most other things.

Another thing: What do you guys think about using the Comic Book/Graphic Novel format for textbooks? Comic books are incredibly easy to comprehend, and many ideas are conveyed better through images than through text. A picture is worth a thousand words.

What are the underlying principles of education, of teaching, and of learning?

What is the best combination of methods?
Analogy, mimicry, empathy, what else?

How else can you educate more people, better, for less money?

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Getting back to important matters…

I wonder how many credit hours it’ll take to earn a degree in ‘Flashing Tits’ from Boobtube University?

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Thank you for that link, Cless!

I was thinking more about Jettatura’s quip… This is the first in a set of ideas I have. My goal is to create a world where no group of people is capable of dominating any other group of people.

And Killmore, you’re missing the point. It isn’t about earning a degree. A degree is just a piece of paper, it’s only worth comes from whatever worth we assign to it. Just like unbacked currencies. On it’s own, it’s useless, but with it, you APPEAR to be educated, which most believe means you’re intelligent and hard-working.

I don’t really give a fuck about appearances. I obsess over substance, over essence, the underlying principles which inform our existence. How can I apply the mindset I acquired from romhacking and reverse engineer the world around me?

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Way to completely misread my post.

Of course I’m well aware of the advantages and disadvantages (why the fuck am I making a 30 minute commute and back again twice a week per class if I still have to do everything online anyways goddammit?) of online learning. But my jovial quip was made in light of Youtube’s reputation (and even now “intellectual development” is not the first phrase I would use to describe Youtube nor even the second). My jest was not made to besmirch the good name of any university willing to employ Youtube as a means of increasing one’s amount of “busy work”.

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Or http://www.khanacademy.org/ .