The United States is often reputed to be one of the most advanced nations when it comes to education. While this can easily be argued when compared to the achievements of the people from many "underprivileged" nations, there is a trend that is becoming more noticeable as each new year passes.
Education standards have fallen to a level that would terrify some of our grandparents and great-grandparents. News feeds are more and more frequently reporting that schools are lowering test requirements to benefit those who won't learn, and school boards are focusing their attention toward frivolous side matters, rather than the core skills of reading, writing, and general mathematics.
Among the differences noted when comparing the United States with several other countries is that most of these nations that pose such an academic challenge have gone the extra mile in making higher education available to the masses. The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, India, the Czech Republic, China, Japan, and many other countries have either a central institution or a collection of state-level colleges that participate in an Open University concept.
With the use of the Internet these countries have taken the step into the 21st century by digitizing textbooks, even taking 2 or 3 year old textbooks that are no longer used in the classrooms, digitizing them and making them available to the public. Some also employ videos of lectures no longer used, and posting them on their websites, or open sites such as YouTube. Students register, some might pay a small fee to use the material, then they would either read the digitized material or watch the lecture. To earn credit, they would log in to the website, download a test for each video of lesson, take the test, and upload it back to the site where the computer would grade it. There is no need for instructor/student communication. The only staff is there to monitor the online sites. The United States stands alone in its refusal to offer open education on a public level.
The fact is that there are a lot of students who could earn a college degree this way, but they could never afford to attend college through traditional means. Fiance, family concerns, jobs, and health are only a few reasons why hundreds, if not thousands, of people can never make use of the traditional college setting.
If there isn't a score of professorial instructors jealously guarding the information used by a college who would insist upon being paid 6-figure overtime or royalties when their lectures are uploaded rather than personally attended, they don't consider that education. Both the institutions and the professors guard their lectures as if they were fully copyrighted.
These schools have even lobbied Congress to pass laws which would allow them to restrict and, or prevent, a US student from using a degree earned from one of these Open Universities. There are now several small colleges capable of granting degrees to students at very low cost, and in a relatively short time, but through these lobbying efforts, these schools are labeled “degree mills.”
Not only are there some fine schools in the country that would not only be enriched by an Open University experience, but it would certainly enrich the minds of countless students. And for the richest country in the world to be so selfish is a sad commentary, indeed.
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