By Joy Merlino

“Good-morning, Fool…/Three times a week/You Hold us helpless while you speak, /Teasing out our thirsty souls with the/Sleek ‘yeas’ of your philosophy…Tune up, play on, pour forth…we sleep.” These lines, from a poem in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel This Side of Paradise, characterize the modern view of education. It is something to be endured. The poem continues to speak of the “Eager Ass,” a classmate who is quick to sing the professor’s praises, and the elite professor who coyly responds.

In Fitzgerald’s view, higher education is often treated as a game, and those who play it correctly do so to secure a heightened position in society, not to secure a heightened education. However, postmodern society rejects the view that education is solely a means to an end, and instead, the current educational trend, as characterized by online education, is a correction to the exclusivism and pretention of modern educational institutions. The trend in online education is a postmodern solution to problems in a largely modern institution (of course universities started centuries ago), and is a starting point for a more pervasive ideological shift in higher education.

The postmodern movement involves a redefining of merit, with the end goal of ridding society of hierarchy and exclusion. Postmodernism is a reaction to modernism, which values clearly defined systems of merit. In the essay, “Postmodernism and Higher Education,” author Harland G. Boland states, “Higher education assumes that community is good, that some fundamental set of values, some basic accepted rules of conduct, and some sense of limits are good.” Further, Marilynne Robinson, in the essay “Imagination and Community,” claims that higher education is based around models of community. She states, “We choose our colleges, if we have a choice, in order to be formed by them and supported by them in identities we have or aspire to.” Further, she states that “if the graft takes, we consider ourselves ever after to be members of that community.” In this model, higher education is a method of branding, and a placement into a position in society.

However, the cost of higher education is rising, and institutions of higher education can no longer offer the credentials to ensure a middle-class job after graduation. Online education is a practical solution for both students and universities: universities are able to hire fewer professors, and students are granted access to educational tools at a lower cost. Massive Open Online Classes, or MOOCS, allow students to take classes from prestigious universities, possibly enabling low-income students to earn an elite education, regardless of their economic situation. Students of online universities are able to live at home and find employment, further lowering the financial burden of higher education. This will widen the demographic of those seeking higher education, embodying the desire of a postmodern society to eradicate exclusion.

This causes a fundamental shift in the definition of community at these institutions. Community can no longer be defined by shared location, or even shared experience. Rather, it’s defined by shared ideas. This may cause a redefinition of community outside institutions of higher education, since graduates are no longer graduating into a social strata defined by their educational institution.

This shift of focus to the community outside of the institutions themselves has caused a heightened attention to the quality and methods of educations. In the article, “Tech Mania Goes to College,” David L. Kirp states, “No one anticipated what may be the most consequential–and positive–impact of the new technology: professors are discussing how they teach, something that seldom happens at research universities like Berkeley.” Therefore, the consequence of this trend is not only a change in form, but also a change in substance. In the next several decades, this shift could cause a decrease in available teaching jobs, since fewer professors will be needed. However, this will cause a heightened caliber in the lectures and educational resources that are available, since only the most qualified candidates will be hired.

The shift in methods of education is a reflection of the shift in society. Like Fitzgerald’s character in This Side of Paradise, postmodern society has become cynical of the elite universities. There is a growing desire for education, solely for education’s sake. Online education offers this opportunity. Decades from now, a traditional 4-year college education may no longer be a requirement for job placement. Niche certificates and less traditional methods of job training may replace institutions of higher education, as the foremost method of placement into a career, and ultimately into placement in society. Online education opens the door for discussion on the best methods of higher education, and ultimately will spark an ideological shift in education policy.

Joy Merlino is a student at The King’s College in New York City. She wrote this essay as an assignment for a persuasive writing and speaking course. Find her on Twitter @JoyMerlino