Earlier this week, in the context of discussing what the traditional university provided that crowdsourced and open options did not with my students, I got an interesting mix of the usual suspects and some answers that I hadn’t heard framed in exactly that way before. (And yes, I am always impressed when students are thoughtful about complex issues.) Here are some of the reasons to go to college despite the increased availability of alternatives:

Credentialing

This is no surprise, of course. One of the reasons to go to an accredited university is for the transcript and the diploma. Long after other structures do learning better (if, indeed, such structures or institutions emerge), the university will maintain a stranglehold on students because of its ability to print educational currency in the form of a transcript. For me, this serves as a good reason to loosen that grip.

When MIT jumps on the badge bandwagon and people start talking about Thrun credits, we might argue that this imperative has already been diminished. But does a MOOC that is not a Stanford course hold the same kind of value? I doubt it. Personal brads do matter: that’s why Howard Rheingold and Edward Tufte, among others, can draw paying students to their seminars. But I wonder how far their letters of completion or endorsement carry.

For the time being, if you want to brand yourself as a graduate, you have to go to a university. And completely regardless of the quality of the instruction at that university, the name must be recognized and valued.

Structure

A university tells you what you should be doing, and not just in the classroom. One of my students was open about the fact that if she didn’t have to go to class she wouldn’t: the university in some sense provides a structure of discipline. (Another student disagreed, saying she would get bored without being able to go to class, and was motivated to attend on her own.) This extended beyond the classroom, though, to “life skills.” For many people this is when they are becoming independent, both living on their own and becoming their own thinkers.

Now, I worry that in some places, universities do a poor job of this, extending adolescence well beyond what might be ideal. Many of our students are too scaffolded, and unwilling or unable to put themselves in the driver’s seat of their own learning career. But it was an interesting suggestion: the university provides a needed structure for learning, and frees the student from some of the “meta”: what’s important? when should I study? what are we doing in class today?

Expertise Curation

I thought one of the more interesting answers was that it was hard to find the right people to teach the right things. Yes, there were a lot of self-styled experts out there, but when you don’t know anything about a field, the university provides a faculty that is presumably made up of people who know what they are doing. Perhaps because I’m not as confident in the ways in which universities filter people, this was never one of my top picks for the reason universities exist, but it is an interesting one. For open alternatives to thrive, they need to present a compelling case that they are providing access to experts, and that can be a difficult thing to do.

In some ways, I’m interested in the model of the European Graduate School, which boasts a star-studded faculty. Where else do you find Derrida and John Waters in the same list? Or Peter Greenaway and Donna Haraway? But it is an interesting question: how do you distinguish expertise when you don’t know anything about a field? You don’t. You leave it up to an institution that can act as a filter, and you trust that they hire the cream of the crop.

Guaranteed Skepticism

As an institution, skepticism is built-in. One of the students noted that faculty are willing to expand the conversation by taking positions they may not agree with, by raising questions, by placing skepticism and inquiry in an exalted position. Now, I am sure there are other institutions that do this, but it was heartening to hear this from students: one of the values of the university is a professoriate that is not married to the status quo, that takes nothing for granted, and that encourages a community of inquiry.

Virtuous Community

Because you are–in many cases–sharing the same physical space and bound together in a community, there is some feeling that you are expected to serve other students. Showing up to class unprepared isn’t just a personal failure, but in some way a letting down others in the community. Of course, you can get virtual communities where similar social capital is built, but it is much harder to achieve in the one-off networked class, where dropping the ball (or the course) might have very little effect on other parts of your life. The investment of time in an undergraduate degree means that you are all in the same boat.

Alt-U

I’m a fan of efforts like P2PU. But I also am not quite ready to give up on the university. I don’t think our only choices are the university as it is today or no universities at all. In fact, those two may be exactly the same thing: the university that does not rapidly change to fit the new environment is likely to be buried by the forces of history. As I’ve said before, we are about to go through a sea change in the way universities work that will make the newspaper shakeup seem tame by comparison. The mountain of student loan debt (some of which I continue to carry) constitutes an educational bubble. When universities find themselves having to contract, the outmoded tenure system will make that difficult.

But I also think that this will force some universities to rapidly innovate their way away from failure. It will be a painful process, but part of that process is figuring out what the real value and strengths of a university are. I think relying on the current hold on the credential is a very short-sighted approach.

In the medium term, one of the best solutions is the liberal arts college / research university hybrid. I also suspect that a successful model exists in universities and university towns merging. The walls of the university are coming down, and with them the distinction between student and faculty and worker. I suspect one model of the future university feels a bit more like a small town with a really good library and really good schools, and the four-year program leading to a slip of paper will slowly fade away.

But I am also interested because they are engaged in new ways of thinking about assessment and certification. As the name implies, learning in the program is largely peer-to-peer, and assessment needs to follow that model. At the same time, employers and others want to know whether someone is qualified, and we need to have a way of indicating that someone who has been through the school knows their stuff.

This plugs into a larger issue I have with the potential for experimentation in academia. The School of Webcraft is an exciting exception, but it’s really hard to start a school. Much harder than, say, starting a business. Part of the reason for that is that learning and education are hard to do. But there are also some pretty big barriers to entry and these are tied directly to accreditation of learning.

First, students don’t want to go to a school unless they feel pretty comfortable with the quality of the education they will receive. Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of good metrics for this. Accreditation from a traditional accrediting body is one of these. But these bodies tend to be very conservative and focus on process, not on outcomes. I might have a high school or college that can produce much more capable graduates, but if it isn’t accredited, there isn’t an easy way for potential students to know whether their time is well spent.

Equally importantly, the switching costs for students are extremely high if the school isn’t accredited. In other words, not only are they taking a risk on the quality of their education while at the school, even if the quality is great, another school is unlikely to accept their “credits” if it isn’t accredited.

And perhaps the biggest problem of all is the idea that the 4-year degree, in higher ed, is your accreditation to work. It doesn’t even really matter what the degree is in. Wouldn’t it be more sensible–and more fun!–if you could make up your own degree? Yes, many universities have individualized degrees, but what that really means is that you can choose which 40 courses you want to take at that single institution. What if you decide you want to learn how to sail for a year? How does that fit in with your degree? What if you have a natural talent in programming and want to be recognized for that without sitting through ten courses.

I recognize students don’t always know what they need to know, but I think this is only barely a defense of four-year programs designed to teach a “model student” who doesn’t really exist.

So, yes, open educational resources are important, and all sorts of experimenting both inside and outside of traditional institutions is important. But the real power comes when learners can seamlessly move among institutions, building personal learning histories that not only improve their abilities, but make those improvements visible to others.