In a world of AI and free information like Wikipedia, we need to take another look at how higher education is set up

So much of higher education being force fed information you can find online, and then being able to memorize that information and regurgitate it on exams. It worked 200 years ago when access to information was difficult when you’re learning something and when you’re applying it as well.

But the world changed at a rapid pace. Anything you can learn from a textbook, you can also read about online. If something doesn’t make sense, there are hundreds of videos on youtube explaining exactly what didn’t make sense to you instead of a professor explaining vague details to hundreds of students at once.

The world changed, but education didn’t. We still follow the same archaic process from hundreds of years ago and don’t utilize the advances in technology to make education more effective.

Instead of strict schedules and forced attendance to classes where a lecturer just reads bolded lines from the textbook to hundreds of students at once, we need to embrace the new methodology. Define exams for each class and let kids learn on their own. Give them guidance on what they need to learn. But also give them a chance to learn as much as they can on their own and THEN get a human professor involved. Make interactions between professors and students personal, even if short. A student should come to a professor with pointed questions about what they don’t understand instead of a professor repeating information to a large group that they could have read up on.

This whole thing needs a new approach.

Submitted February 16, 2026 at 12:27PM by Patient_Air1765 https://ift.tt/sMeIKBd