We Don’t Need No (Formal) Education: Social Media and the Edupunk Initiative

Once upon a time, we finished high school, graduated from college, and started a job that supported our families until retirement.

Then we woke up.

And plugged in.

The global financial crisis brought forth the rise of the digital entrepreneur from the ashes of corporate America. However, at the same time, many people chose to return to college and many recent graduates remained in the academic world via grad school in lieu of facing a daunting recession era job hunt.

Historically, this has been a common trend for those waiting out tough economic periods. However, the international community is currently in the longest and most widespread recession on record while the U.S. unemployment rate is at a 26-year-high. To account for inconclusive recovery data, some economists have reported that a “double-dip” recovery will occur, causing recession-like symptoms at the end of the official recession. It looks better that way on paper.

But that’s about the only thing that looks good on paper, including degrees and associated fees. In August, a former student filed suit against New York City’s Monroe College after being unable to find work post graduation. She sued the college for $70,000, the amount of her student loan debt. Although most jobless graduates would not consider going to such extreme measures to recoup what might now classify as damages, student loans are arguably the new form of indentured servitude.

A traditional college degree, be it from a classroom or an online extension program run by an accredited university, is not all that it was once cracked up to be.

No longer can a general degree catapult a graduate into a higher class in society based on the intrinsic value of the degree itself. Likewise, the sheer number of degrees being churned out has diluted their worth to the point where they hold little more value than the high school diploma of yesteryear. Many jobs for which graduates will attempt to enter upon graduation may not even exist at the time in which they enroll.

There is, however, a plausible solution to this problem in the entrepreneurial and social media spirit.

There must be a collective rejection of the desire to reward degree holders during the hiring process based on the theoretical nature of their degrees rather than for their presence, autodidactic skill set, and drive as individuals.

We can take cues from information sharing via social media and open source educational outlets. If schools such as MIT make their lectures and coursework available to the public and individuals find ways to master that information, why should they be deemed less qualified than an applicant who possesses an official degree?

Information sharing via social media is a means to equality by disbursing information from the hands of the few to the heads of many. Even the leader of social networks, Facebook, went from being a closed Harvard networking portal to an international base of information storage and sharing. To keep in step with burgeoning technologies and to prevent young people from donning the shackles of debt, the brick and mortar caste system that many still fight to defend must be put under enough pressure to crack at the foundation.

The edupunk movement consisting of wikiverisites, YouTube classrooms, and online hybrids such as Neeru Paharia’s Peer2Peer University should allow for ability and initiative to count more than theory without practice.

The original members of a group that laid the foundation for what would become NASA all the way down to the founder of one of the biggest social media news sites in history were all talented, ambitious, and made revolutionary headway sans degree.

Social media needs to influence the leveling of the playing field in the edupunk spirit, rather than perpetuate the system of honoring kudos handed out on the scholastic conveyor belt. If NYU can offer a course on Guitar Hero at upwards of $1,000 per credit hour, there is no reason why social media and open source resources cannot be seen as legitimate educational tools.

This the dawn of the age of new web-based media and information sharing. It shouldn’t have to look good on paper