In a recent article in The Atlantic, Ian Bogost of Georgia Tech observes that there has been a near universal rejection of remotely-delivered college in the US. Students, parents, state legislators, university administrators, college football fans, and the president, have all demanded that college campuses reopen. Many people have, of course, noted this and most have taken it as an indictment of remote learning. Me for example. Bogost’s take is different and interesting. He says that our unwillingness to accept remote classes as an acceptable substitute for the traditional college experience is a sign that college has never been primarily about education.
From the article:
An education may take place at college, but that’s not what colleges principally provide. Higher education survived a civil war, two world wars, the Great Depression, and the 1918 Spanish flu, the worst pandemic the U.S. has ever faced. American colleges will outlast this crisis, too, whether or not they are safe, whether or not they are affordable, and whether or not you or your children actually attend them. The pandemic offered an invitation to construe college as an education alone, because it was too dangerous to embrace it as an experience. Nobody was interested. They probably never will be.
I suspect he is right about this. Unfortunately, I’d be willing to bet that over at NILOA they are reading this and thinking,”We better double down on co-curricular assessment if that’s what college is really about.”