A National Skills College?

You’ve got to sympathize with folks who try to change education from positions within federal (U.S.) government.

I was again reminded of this while reading Scott Jashik’s Inside Higher Ed article called U.S. Push for Free Online Courses. The article is based on “discussion drafts” of an Obama administration program proposal that would broaden access to community colleges and, in particular, to basic job-related training.

I’m not certain within which audience the discussion was meant to occur, but it is certainly wide-open now. Perhaps that was intended. I don’t know. It’s also pretty difficult to comment intelligently based only on the fragments of information that an article can contain.

So I’ll reserve comment except to say that the notion of a National Skills College might be an interesting idea depending on how it’s intended. Reading between the lines of Jashik’s article, I’d guess that the new Skills College will be another unimaginative effort to assess learning.

But suppose that we cared more about what learners can actually do rather than what they can momentarily remember during an examination? And suppose that there existed a new entity like a Skills College where learners might present what they can actually do (as portfolios?) … and where this might then be translated into various equivalencies (course, credit, degree, job skill, etc) that are the currency by which higher education is mostly valued?

There is a vast rich learning web out there. Much of it is already free.