Formal education and social capital
You don't go to Harvard for the Education. You go to Harvard for the Connections! - someone from my past (I don't remember who). The other day a long-distance friend and colleague posted an interesting blog post pondering (or positing?) that Social and Cultural capital are the main problem in online education . A very engaging twitter thread and discussion ensued (which I am having trouble locating at the moment), but I thought I'd let the dust settle a bit and collect my thoughts on the matter first. It is a little self-serving too because I wanted to get back into the habit of writing and this seemed like a good opportunity. As I was thinking about where to start untangling this thread the quote at the beginning of this post came to mind†. As I was thinking about this I interrogated some of my educational experiences, both undergraduate, and graduate, and free-range learning (like MOOCs). Most of my education was residential in nature. Although I do prefer di