The Structure of Education is Crazy

Education generally and higher education in particular is deeply suffering from structural binding that is making it much less effective and far more labor intensive for both student and teacher than it needs to be and what is worse has no real path to understand the quality of the result, or even the satisfaction of the need either for the student or Society itself.

A. Graduation/certification is hazing not a measure of knowledge.
Because certification provides entry into a class system that does not neasure actual ability, immense extraneous expenses in time and money are added far beyond the actual information or skills imparted, and to justify this and compete in self perpetuation most of a schools actions and decisions have little or nothing to do with education. This is especially true the more the emphasis is anything other than educating the students.

B Education is lifelong and not always at the same speed
The facts of life, written more in the real structure than rules or common belief, is that education starts with young children until 18-24 tears old and then is cut off to the average person. Differences in ability, or much more often life events that cause one to lose ground can only very rarely be made up at all. And even if the knowledge/skill is acquired by alternative means the certification is not, and the ability to contribute is blocked

C. Technology has Changed.
Senior professors who lectures a class of hundreds with the same speech year after year in order to justify his salary is short changing both themselves and their students. Technology could produce a much more interesting "Lecture" to convey information that is one way, and a secondary system to provide feedback like a FAQ system for common questions and one or two layers of human support for the places where the question is odd or interesting enough to warrant it. BitTorrent and technical support for computer programs etc have necessarily had to deal with these issues and while some bad ideas exist there, there is much that can be applied to all education.

D Government Support and Management is Critical
Of all sources of power to make decisions, and means to spread costs that are not directly transactional only the Government can act in the public good and in support of the Commons, and as an honest broker in the certification of facts.

a. Certify Knowledge Like the old banks that printed their own money, education certification is also money negotiated with dubious and certainly variable value, but unlike the old bank notes each certification carries with it an inseparable human life, causing each of them to be treated in equally unfair variety.

By creating a standard series of tests, perhaps thousands of questions long, that could be taken any number of times, it would create a standard measure of knowledge that could even be graphed blue where knowledge was strong to red where it was weak, that would apply a much stronger certification, without demanding where the knowledge came from.

b.Create an Alternative Path- By providing a Government supplied efficient Internet structure where through great BBC like explanations from the best, the general information is imparted, and then Bittorrent like a tree of seed providers and peers could efficiently impart and spread that information in ways pioneered even by Meetup, and the Obama campaign, the teaching of the most knowledgeable could reach millions instead of hundreds, and not just once but over years.

This would not eliminate books, but would impart more knowledge faster and more deeply than was technologically possible even 20 years ago,

c. Place all critical knowledge and skills back into the Public Commons. This can only be done by financing the production of the product, but by compartmentalizing and privatizing knowledge, not only are those who could contribute prevented from doing so, those with the knowledge can manipulate false outcomes, but two people, each with half of a majior breakthrough might never know, or if they can each discover it than what do they posses that is special.