“The cost of higher education is not a function of bricks and mortar. The cost is people. It is labor intensive. No matter what the technology, the learning is about face to face. The crude analogy I would make is between learning and sex. Technology can greatly improve, broaden and diversify what we define as the sexual experience, but in the end it’s about intimacy and human contact in real time. That’s the case with teaching as well. For all the improvements technology has brought us – in the end, those are all just tools behind the human social character of learning.” — Leon Botstein
I recommend this Q&A with C.M. Rubin and President of Bard College Leon Botstein. It’s a familiar refrain: no matter what technologies come along, the stuff of real value requires human labor.
