Does anyone remember the dotcom bubble?

If he/she does, does he/she also remember what happened in March 2000?

This is a very short history lesson through the years between 1995 and 2001.

Everyone and his cousin was gung ho about the internet, and I am talking about netizens (never mind that such citizenship came along later), venture capitalists, hedge fund pooh bahs, and any citizen who had a penny to invest in companies in the technology sector.

The bust followed the boom, not a whole lot different than what was to happen in 2008, with the housing bubble.

Now there seems to be another bubble, though at orders of magnitude less than the housing bubble in 2008, because education is just not as important as housing.

Just now I finished reading an article in a newspaper the strap line of which says, “The online and blended learning models now being adopted by education institutes are likely to endure even after the pandemic ...” – to be truthful, my stating it as the strap line may not be valid as it is a statement from an edupreneur.

Now to avoid any accusation that this post is plagiarized extensively without mentioning the source, I am giving you the following details: The Hindu, Education Plus, “Tracking the transformation”, Madhumitha Srinivasan, 2020-07-13.

I have more than a few comments on what I have read.

“...edtech is the buzzword in the education sector.” (Italics in the original). What is edtech? Technology promoted by edupreneurs. Who is an edupreneur? Any entrepreneur who makes money through the instrument of education.

The article at places feels like a promotional piece for Coursera, with enviable presence in India – 7.9 million learners. Check that. Learners? Just because someone opens to a particular topic, be more or less a passive listener, and she gets a certificate after passing exams, has she learnt anything? Can’t say.

More importantly, even if Coursera asks for and gets feedback from those who enrol for its courses, does the company ever learn? If during an interaction between a student and teacher, if the teacher does not learn anything, it is a wasted session for both the teachers and learners.

One top-notch researcher-he died of cancer in 1986-had said that if he was offered a position for doing research without the opportunity to teach he would reject it. As one teaches, his/her brain works in the background, and the results are astounding.

Steven Pinker, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University writes in the Preface to his book “How the Mind Works” that he is indebted to “...many teachers, students (my emphasis) ...”.

Indebted to students? Would Coursera ever be indebted to its students? I doubt that severely.

I am not unaware that it is human teachers (sleeves rolled up, chalk dust on dark pant, suits and saris, writing on screechy boards, or ink from sharpies (refer to Donald J. Trump)) that are behind what any online education platform projects to the participants. But, just think for one minute – would any such company ever admit that its lectures have been leavened by its employees. I am not talking about a nano-sized chyron, but a readable, humble admission of the value of the work teachers have put in. I would say, NO. This just does not fit into the business plan of the company. It is better that when any platform offering online courses, and is interacting with its audience, it definitively does not bring out the above point. The stage is not yet (will never be) to open the screen.

Has AI developed enough to create courses for online teaching, I wonder. If this scenario is realized, there is no need for the above mentioned chyron! And, AI will not care two hoots...

The point I am making is teachers learn while teaching. There is nothing stopping from this happening while teaching through online (note that within a short period, on-line has shed its hyphen! The new normal is without hyphenation) teaching, except business metrics – “How many pages of notes did you cover today? Only two pages ... sorry, you have to speed up. Shape-up or ship out.”

One of the catch points online teaching companies make is education is being democratized – “...democratising education...” I would be laughing heartily, if this were not such a serious lie. The implication is if you do not have a net connection, sorry you cannot afford to take part in democracy! This would be curtailing democracy, if you asked me, from within, the proverbial fifth column.

Where is the democratic Government of India on this? “In India, the government’s decision on online learning programmes speaks volumes about the gradual integration of online learning in the Indian education system,” says Coursera management. That is, the government is in cahoots with these online teaching companies in de-democratising governance. Logical conclusion.

Online education connects students to “career outcomes”. Go a level lower than the surface to see this would have been the motto of vocational education institutions, like ITIs. I am not too romantic about education, but I do think education has a role beyond making one employable. I think I am unfit to live in these times.

“The future of learning and the future of works is (sic) converging.” I need not elaborate on this, just follow what has already been said.

“High-quality, relevant and curated content is readily available,” it is claimed. Who curated the content? The industry would suddenly go deaf and mute, not even sign language can help.

I can go on and on, parsing for meaning of each sentence. But, that is not the purpose of this post. Of course, you can remind me that the arguments I made are reminiscent of when India went ahead and launched color TVs - Luddite’s argument. Not so.

I have proof on my side. I have taken classes online; I am preparing class notes for the upcoming semester. It is just that, I am not sure I would learn anything from teaching online. Perhaps, time for me to get out of education.

The connection to the opening lines of this post, talking about dotcom boom and bust, we already see that many online teaching companies have sprouted, selling their wares to the public, from during pregnancy (educating the foetus, a la what happened to Abhimanyu) to during employment, and all stages of learning in between.

There would be consolidation (just as there was when private airlines were given free reins to run their business the way they saw fit about two decades ago), a monopoly or at best a duopoly, as government will not let go its business (Yes, education has become a business for the government).

Customers (parents) will be beguiled into forcing their wards into choosing what is at that time (the time of entry into higher-education) is connected to the dominant industry of that time (not any projection of what would be four years later). And, most importantly, there would be no education (on line and face-to-face in well established streams of engineering, not to speak of mathematics, physics, chemistry) without which all that Business, Technology and Data Science will have to go bust. It somehow never registers that all of IT and bio-tech are founded on sciences. One ignores science at the peril of societies dying.  

It will not be dotcom bust, but “a learning online” bust before a rebound. Rebound there will be, I guarantee. But only after people remember,

You cannot bite into a bit!

Raghuram Ekambaram