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I’ve been to at least one of the institutions on both sides of the comparison (undergrad at an IIT, grad school at MIT), so I’ll take a stab at answering:1) Students studying science and technology because they love it and are driven by it. Arish summarized this point accurately (http://qr.ae/pKesz, being a space nerd, I'd endorse it for the video alone) so I’ll skip the verbosity. I will add that having an etched-in-stone entrance test (IITJEE) is partially to blame because it cannot test engineering creativity and, furthermore, tests analytical ability only in a very specific exam environment. The IITs lose out on many candidates who could not balance creativity, analytical/computing speed and specific exam preparation. In the long run and with Moore's law, the latter two seem less important. I've addressed a corollary in #6. IITM’s Director gave a pretty candid interview on the topic here: Q&A: IIT Madras director on entrance tests and another post by a current IITB faculty member: What are some things you dislike about IIT?2) Students studying other fields because they love those instead. Note that among the universities you brought up, most offer reputed degrees in law, liberal arts, music, etc. Students doing those are there doing them because that’s what they relate to, not because they ‘did not get 90% in their boards’ as most of statistical India would like to believe, so naturally they do them pretty darned well. It’s passion, motivation and drive again, as it is with science and tech.[Edit, because I don't want you to brush it off thinking you're the calculus folks, why'd you care?] This is important for techies as well for two reasons:The close interaction with non-techies gives them the perspective, context and ability to work together to solve problems. The world's most important problems, be it human genomics or climate change, are not technical problems alone.Being in a mixed environment with proportionate rewards allows IITians to retain the feeling of unique contribution to hard tech problems that they reveled in during their JEE days and tend to lose when lumped together with 3000 others with similar tech skills, exam scores and other such mundane metrics. Spending months on management of fests provides useful social skills is good. But at the cost of cashing in on their most valuable (analytical tech) assets which managerial peers (who can beat 'em at any schmoozing race) in a random metropolis may not have? Nice email at the bottom here to remind you: Page on Berkeley3) Emphasis on teamwork. You cannot build a rocket, fly it to the moon, land a human and bring him safely back on your own. While creativity and analytics is of great importance, the most complex engineering projects in human history from the International Space Station to the Deepwater Horizon oil rig have critically hinged on team dynamics and leadership. Top schools in the US have a lot of team-based classwork and projects to instill these capabilities (e.g. communication, work splitting+combining, team diversity, etc.). The IITs, sailing on blind competition, severely hinder students’ abilities to cooperate and collaborate effectively outside of techfests, robotics competitions and the like.4) Relatively (and pretty extremely) high resources per student capita as a result of endowments worth billions of dollars with relatively miniscule siphoning/corruption, a few more centuries of time and low population. This brings a lot of goodies including but not restricted to:Really good and cutting edge faculty members who can actually engage the country’s brightest as well as serve as role modelsFaculty-student ratio to enable healthy interaction and the ability to know each other beyond GPANew and challenging question papers/assignments to prevent rote learning. Students from universities above are very bright. To have them laze in an academically under-challenged environment for 4-5 years may bore, annoy and delude them for a long time about the 'system'Ability to enforce plagiarism penalties very strictlyLab equipment for project-based assignments and hands-on learning and generally a feel-good workplaceCollaborations with national labs, research institutions and industry R&D sectors for student involvement during term, internships during holidays and possible recruitment after graduation. NASA sponsors thousands of US citizens through their Co-Op programs and other programs right from middle school. Not sure about now, but when I was in undergrad, ISRO did not have any opportunities for IIT undergrads to do even internships on their campus. It's a very big pity because ISRO has a LOT going on, for example, a robotic Mars mission that is indigenous from design to launch to operations: India to launch mission to Mars this year, says presidentResources to travel for work (conferences, internships, public service, etc.) to increase exposure to new tech/science/other cultures and work with others different from yourself. Travel aways adds value, e.g. An educational journeyGood hostels and access to healthy food that represent the socio-economic strata that students statistically come from so that they feel at least somewhat at home for the 9 months that they spend there after classes. I'm not talking about 5 star quality, I'm talking decency that does not "shock" alumni when they come to visit, for e.g. Interview with Dr. Harish Hande (the last few is what people mean when they say "infrastructure")Career counseling and counseling in general because kids at 20 are bound to be crazy confusedAccess to alumni gatherings, receptions, one-on-ones and other such interest-based networksAdequate information availability on courses before enrolment.. I’ll add more as I recall themAll of the above contribute to informed choices, intellectual development and technical education.5) Mostly as a result of #4 but also because of a liberal mindset, very high flexibility in selecting majors/courses and, more importantly, to be able to modify their selection any time in their student life. Each student in the Ivy Leagues is treated individually and special attention is given to help him/her select a more-or-less unique set of subjects. As a result, a student’s major and skill sets correlate strongly with what he/she enjoys, is good at and wants to do and further as a result, more students end up pursuing this specialization for at least a few years after graduation. The story in the IITs is very different: most are frustrated with the field they’ve been locked into and want an ‘out’ as soon as they can.6) The ability to think beyond judging a person’s ‘aptitude’ based on an objective number, be it IITJEE’s All India Rank (AIR) or CGPA. I’m not blaming anything or anybody here because for a population and corruption framework like India, I can’t imagine the chaos a non-objective system would cause. I’m just pointing out that it is unfortunate that a child’s ability to study mechanical engineering is greatly dependent on his scores in organic chemistry, obtained through an hour’s o-chem test amidst years of possible passionate pursuit of mech-e. And it is even more unfortunate when his/her neighbors, teachers and other whatnots point that out in discouragement of his/her ‘abilities’.7) A supportive social ecosystem around the campus. This includes an innovative science/tech environment and a healthy sex ratio. The IITs were set up in relatively rural regions in the hope that they would grow an entrepreneurial environment around themselves, thus truly dedicated to the service of the nation. While it happened in Bombay and Madras, it certainly did not in Kharagpur and Kanpur. As a result, you have bright eyed, bushy tailed 18 year olds trapped in backward, alien villages who do not speak the same language, with no tech culture whatsoever, no social entertainment and nearly no socially similar women of their age. For e.g. Kharagpur, i.e. the town around the IIT, did not have a movie theater or a mall until 2008 and the number of women in my class/batch/JEE-entrance-year was 5.2%. I’ve heard arguments like lesser distraction to studies, but I tell those folks to please look up Maslow's hierarchy of needs and rationalize what implications it has, statistically, on thousands of men (and women, yes, the social and related environments can get pretty hostile for us too), thrown together in such an environment. There's only so much one can do within the campus, which is why the ecosystem outside it needs to make up. There's a lot of social improvement even the campus interiors could use especially on the topic of moral policing and its repercussions on academia, gender and mental peace, but that's more of an 'India' issue than just an 'IIT' issue so I'll defer that for a more relevant post.8) During placements, access to industries that actually want tech-smart-passionate people, not just back end analysts or number crunchers, and are willing to 'pay' for them. Pay includes challenges, environment, respect, benefits, etc. over and above the hard cash. We lost most of the tech-folks at the IITs through #5, and the precious few that are left are then subject to the training and placement drama. I skipped placements at IIT but have done a pile of internships abroad during my student life, so from that + my friends' experiences, I think the problem is beautifully summarized here in the eyes of a student: How can the brain drain be prevented from other engineering courses to IT in India? and here in the eyes of an ex-student and current faculty member: What are some things you dislike about IIT?9) Education as a lost Opportunity Cost needs to be self-justified. A degree in the US costs a load of money, e.g. a year at MIT costs $75k or at least INR 38 lakhs by direct conversion and INR 8 lakhs by Purchasing power parity conversion. Undergrads have to pay up this money every year and graduate students on scholarships earn less than a third of what they would have if they worked instead. Every student who's not Richie Rich, therefore educates himself and eventually graduates only if he thinks the cost is worth it. That's why Steve Jobs and Bill Gates dropped out. Obviously then, most of the senior students (and alumni) don't completely hate what they did and encourage the pre-frosh into science/tech.IIT cost us INR 55k per year or $1k by direct conversion and the government paid for those who couldn't 'afford' it through MCM scholarships. The initial indifference (#1) or peer-induced skepticism/complexes (#2), followed by a relative letdown of expectations that the 'IIT Dream' had set for many (#3 to #7) and ending in most of the 'better' jobs being outside of science/tech (#8) creates a vicious cycle of many senior students getting disillusioned and discouraging junior students from the T in IIT, while continuing within IIT themselves because they can afford to. Personally, this peer pressure did not affect me much + it's not an independent event (more a result of all of the above), but I've heard lots of complaints and full fledged fights about this one so I added it.For more, you might also want to check out the following question which asks something similar: How does the quality of engineering graduates from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) compare with Ivy League schools in the US?and this one which does not ask something similar but people have brought up relevant reasons to compare the quality of students: Are IIT students smarter than MIT students?After that long monologue, if you're still reading, I would like to point out that overall academics aside (overall because there were a hand-countable number of classes that were really good), my IIT days were the most powerful 5 years in shaping who I am. IIT has lots of very intelligent, talented and passionate (about at least something) young people with lots of time on their hands. No really, sometimes it felt like we lived in a vacuum in time, maybe thanks to #4 and #7. We spent this time and energy in knowing each other, making very powerful friendships, reading and watching a ridiculous amount of information on nearly anything, discussing social change, life, meaning, ourselves, abstractions, refining the art of constructive argument, many extra-curricular activities in spite of the extremely limited resources and understanding ourselves. And I still carry all that with me wherever I go.

The Five Percenters are a fascinating sect, in my opinion. Their cultural influence in urban America is far more widespread than actual knowledge of the movement, so I think it merits exploration.So buckle up, you Eighty-Fivers, and prepare to be civilized!(I promise that will make more sense by the end of the answer.)The religious sect commonly known as the “Five Percent Nation” or just “Five Percenters” is officially titled The Nation of Gods and Earths, and is an offshoot of the better-known Nation of Islam (NOI). In order to understand the movement and its influence on urban Black culture across the country, I think it is important to first understand its origins.It should be understood that I am both White and atheist, and as such my analysis of the NOI will naturally not be the same as what you would be told if you asked an actual NOI member. At the same time, I will endeavor to do the movement justice and acknowledge the value of the vision they presented, even though I disagree with it. When we get to the Five Percenters, I should be able to let them speak for themselves, though I will also explain their history and outline their philosophy to the best of my ability.So before we get started, let’s take a brief look at the Nation of Islam, which laid the foundation for the Five Percent Nation.The Nation of Islam (NOI): A Brief OverviewThe Nation of Islam was a religious movement that began in Detroit in 1930 and grew to prominence during the 50s and 60s, especially with the public persona of Malcolm X, along with the conversion of Muhammad Ali.But instead of going into the specific facts of NOI history, I want to look at its message and outlook as I think that’s what it is most important to understand.In my view, the conundrum of the NOI was that it took a deep and profound Truth that spoke to many people suffering under the yoke of racial oppression and conflated it with elements of bizarre mythology. In that respect it is quite a bit like all religions, in my atheistic view at least. Religions that are not our own almost always look absurd in a way that our own superstitions or faith-based beliefs do not.With that in mind, I ask you to open your mind for a moment and to try to understand the appeal that NOI doctrine would present to a new convert, without regard for the historicity of its claims or the more remote implications of its creeds. Such intricacies are, after all, seldom in the mind of the newly converted, and usually only come with time and study. To the fresh convert, religion is all about a new identity, an new community, and a new basic Truth.To those of us too young to remember the days of Jim Crow, it can be difficult to understand the degree of oppression that Black people have faced in America over the course of centuries. White America seems largely to have bought into a belief that the abolition of slavery undid at least 85% of racial injustice, and Martin Luther King took care of another 20%, leaving Black Americans somehow 5% ahead of Whites, despite their being poorer and more frequently imprisoned. This belief has almost become religious in many White communities, and its primary fruit is a deep and abiding faith in the idea that any kind of welfare that is “given” to Blacks by the same government that deprived them of so much is somehow an unearned handout meant to hold them subservient. And that is just talking about today.In 1930, the year that the NOI was founded, the century-long campaign of terrorism carried out by the KKK was still going strong, with 20 lynchings of African Americans carried out that year alone, an average of about one every two-and-a-half weeks. From 1882 to 1922, an average of 1.5 lynchings of African Americans were carried out each week for forty years.[1]The dominant religious narrative at the time included the “Curse of Ham” mythology, which still persists to this day in some denominations, and which holds that Black people were/are the descendants of Noah’s son Ham and of his son Canaan. In the 20th Chapter of Genesis, Noah gets drunk and passes out naked in his tent, and his son Ham sees him in that state, while his brothers go in with a blanket and overt their eyes to cover their father. As a result of having seen him naked, Noah curses Ham and his descendants to be slaves to the descendants of his brothers.[2] As utterly absurd as it is, this story was actually held as the core biblical foundation for the practice of chattel slavery, often paired with another myth holding all Black people to be the descendants of the Egyptians whom God had scattered through the continent, and praised African Slavery in America as God’s righteous retribution for Egypt’s ahistorical enslavement of the “White” Biblical Jews in Exodus.By the early 20th century, Christian doctrine had a strong hold among African Americans, and many had found ways to accept these stories that held their suffering under the chains and whips of slavery to have been part of God’s divine plan, just as many had been pressed into viewing their own race as somehow inferior in the eyes of their God, and saw nothing awry in the White face of Jesus to whom they sang gospel songs imploring the Lord to wash them to be white as snow. At the same time, the narrative of the Exodus found a place in the heart-of-hearts of the African American community, and many Black Christians strongly identified with the Israelites in Egypt, meekly bearing the scourges of slavery through the faith that one day God would see fit to end their suffering, and allow them to his table of pure-white perfection.This was the world in which the NOI emerged, and turned this absurd racism on its head.It is not hard to understand why Black people in this world of rampant terrorism and oppression found the message of NOI Founder Wallace Fard Muhammad and of Elijah Muhammad (who took over leadership of the NOI after the founder’s mysterious disappearance in 1934) compelling. It took the same racial theology of the Curse of Ham, but turned the tables entirely.The NOI proudly announced its revolutionary call to prayer: God is Black, and man was created Black in his divine image! Your dark skin is not the shameful mark of a curse that renders you subservient and inferior, but rather a badge of honor, marking you as one of God’s chosen people! Allah, the one true God, created Black people to be his disciples, but the slavers have stolen your true religion from you along with your true names and all knowledge of your noble heritage so that they could keep you in bondage. But rejoice, for you are God’s chosen people, not your enslavers, and Allah is now recalling you to his side!While Christianity taught that subservience and meekness were what God wanted from his servants, the NOI spoke to Black people of strength and nobility, telling them that they should be proud because of their blackness, not in spite of it.It was this call that brought the likes of Malcolm X and Clarence 13X (founder of the Five Percenters, to whom we will return momentarily) into the fold. Many African Americans were tired of praying to any God who had given his blessing to the oppression they faced, and were eager to be leaders of their own people without needing to wait for Whites to get on board.Unfortunately, as so often happens with cults, the appealing message became tied to unhealthy exploitation. The NOI demanded that its participants pay large portions of their meager salaries to its leaders, and even prohibited its followers from eating more than one or two small meals per day. Gaining weight was grounds for expulsion, as was any engagement in extramarital sex or even smoking a single cigarette, and those who faced discipline for misconduct were coldly shunned by their communities. All the while, Elijah Muhammad made millions of dollars and had clandestine sexual affairs with many of the women that the NOI employed as secretaries, fathering numerous illegitimate children.In time, the call that had brought many of the true believers into the fold was no longer strong enough to overpower the hypocrisy they saw at the top, and many of the Nation’s foremost voices went their own ways to explore their new religion outside of Elijah Muhammad’s reach. Malcolm X’s departure in the early 60s and conversion to mainstream Sunni Islam directly resulted in his assassination by a team of NOI operatives in February, 1965.Clarence 13X and the Birth of the Nation of Gods and EarthsSo now that we have a sense of the soil from which the Five Percent Nation grew, I think we have the proper context to understand its beginnings.Clarence 13X had converted to the NOI following his wife, who had converted while he was serving in the Korean War, and was a member of Mosque Number Seven in Harlem, of which Malcolm X was the minister. He left the NOI following his realization of the level of corruption among its leaders, but didn’t leave all of its teachings behind. He came to the belief that the fundamental message of the NOI had indeed contained strands of the Truth, but that it had been twisted by the greed of its leaders.So it was that Clarence began a mini protestant reformation that sprouted from the NOI, and which took the most powerful aspects of its message and combined it with a profound strain of humanism that helped it to reach a broader audience.As part of his religious transformation, Clarence 13X changed his name once again, but this time the change was a bit more jarring. He assumed the name of Allah instead. Now even for those unfamiliar with Islamic doctrine, it should be easy to understand that a man referring to himself as Allah is generally considered as about the worst form of blasphemy, and he took the name in the full knowledge that it would cause a stir in the Black Muslim community. But at the same time, he paired it with a new doctrine of Black humanism that allowed the very waves he caused to wash more followers his way.His new religious movement taught that mankind was God incarnate. While the NOI taught that God was a Black deity and created a Black man in his image, from whom the Black race had sprouted, he now taught that the creator and the God of the universe was not a Black man but was in fact Black man, in the collective sense. He taught that the original man was the “Asiatic Black Man” whom he called “the maker, the owner, the cream of the planet Earth, the father of civilization and God of the universe,” and held that his descendants shared fully in this divine lineage.Now I expect that—given the nature of both Quora and dominant White culture—most readers will focus in on the fact that he saw divinity as coextensive with the Black race and fixate on the racial supremacy of his message while missing the most powerful elements of his humanism. But the world into which this movement was born was a world already separated by race, and the most important element to understand is the claim that God exists within mankind. That new prophetic message was the whole heart of his movement.Of course, the context in which the movement progressed through its early days is just as important to understand as the soil from which it grew. This new reformation was born in Harlem and nurtured in other urban Black Neighborhoods. Within its native habitat, nuclear families were far less common than in White America, and this absence was frequently used to justify the second-class status of Black Americans.As a result, this new movement, like the NOI that it had sprouted from, leaned into an extremely patriarchal vision of the family. It told men that they were called to be the head of the household, to provide for and protect their families. This calling helped its message speak to young men who had never known their fathers, and most of its initial converts gave from that demographic. Before long, Clarence was known as Allah the Father to his followers, especially because “many of them were the products of broken homes and this was the only father they knew.”[3] This new call for Black men to assume their divine status as the sun at the center of their solar systems spoke to a new generation of fatherless Black men, and in its earliest days, the sect neither sought nor entirely accepted female converts.Soon, however, Allah the Father recognized the important place that women would play in his new humanist social cosmology. Just as men, as Gods, were the suns of their own solar systems, women were the planets that brought forth life. Women were Earths, the fertile soil that nurtured the seed beneath the light of the sun. So the Nation of Gods and Earths—the Nation of empowered men and fertile women—came to be.The term “Five Percenters” or “Five Percent Nation” came as a result of the one of Clarence’s new doctrines. He taught that the people of the slave diaspora—and eventually expanded this to all mankind—were divided into three mutable classes, referred to by the percentage of their prevalence in society:The 85%—The vast majority of people fall into this bracket. These are the common and unenlightened masses, who wander the world spiritually blind in search of something to believe and someone to follow. They generally prefer comforting lies to harsh Truth, making them easy to lead in the wrong direction and difficult to lead in the right. They are not evil or sinful only ignorant, but they are not condemned to remain so. By teaching them the truth of their internal divinity and true potential, they can become civilized and enlightened. Essentially everyone begins here.The 10%—Also known as the Rich Bloodsuckers of the Poor, these are the partially-enlightened who have some knowledge of some portion of the Truth, but who use it to deceive the 85% into following false religions for their own profit. It is likely that Clarence viewed Elijah Muhammad, who was using the NOI to force followers into giving him money and selling his newspaper, as the archetype of the 10%, though essentially all leaders of organized religion and politicians are here, as is anyone who runs a business with predatory practices.The 5%—Also known as the Poor Righteous Teachers, these are the enlightened who do not believe in the false teachings of the 10% and who know of their Godly status and accept their duty as fathers of civilization to nurture knowledge, art, and culture, and to spread enlightenment and civilization to the ignorant masses around them. The church therefore came to be known as the Five-Percent Nation.In order to preach his new message, Clarence/Allah took another controversial step away from the rigidity of NOI life: believing that his mission was to teach the 85%, he went to seek them out, smoking weed with them and shooting dice with them in alleys. He began to circulate in the very same circles of iniquity that the NOI had taught them to view with contempt, all the while preaching his message. He called these young Black men who had been deprived of hopes and dreams to stand up and be Gods, to take control of their lives, and to become masters of their divine inheritance. It’s not difficult to understand why many found his message so compelling.Clarence also adapted some of the customs of the NOI to assist in broadening his reach. He felt that the use of the greeting “as-salaam-alaikum” was misguided, as the people to whom he now preached had no connection to the Arabic language. Indeed, he felt that the expectation that Muslims who spoke no Arabic should still use Arabic greetings with each other was yet another instance of cultural imperialism of foreigners over Black people. as such, he replaced the phrase with the basic concept behind it translated into English, the single word “peace.” As such, because Five-Percenters recognize one another as Gods, the most common greeting when two meet is simply “Peace, God.”As a result of this unconventionally worldly proselytization technique, his religious following became strongly related to another blossoming cultural movement that emerged in the late 20th century from those same worldly circles: Hip-Hop Music, and it is through that medium that I will relate the rest of this answer.Five-Percenter Hip-HopFor those readers who have ever heard of the Five-Percenters before—and I am guessing that many haven’t—I would bet money that your first exposure to the group was through Hip-Hop lyrics. Indeed the ties between Rastafari—another religion of Black nobility with some remarkably similar elements—and Reggae.At the start of the answer, I said that I would try to let the Five-Percenters speak for themselves, and through Hip-Hop lyrics and interviews I will do exactly that. But before diving in, I want to look at a couple of Five-Percenter terms that have become so ubiquitous in Hip-Hop music and culture that many people have heard them without knowing their origins and assumed that they were just “Hip-Hop slang.”Cypher—One of the tools that Five-Percenters use to teach their philosophy is what they call Supreme Mathematics and the Supreme Alphabet. These are symbolic frameworks in which each digit from 0–9 and each letter of the alphabet are given a corresponding word and idea, usually starting with that same letter. One exception to this initialistic trend is that the letter O represents the cypher, or perfect circle. A Five-Percenter should be focused only on his own circle or sphere of influence and responsibility. Instead of worrying about what he cannot change, he should become master of his own cypher. It’s perfect circle also represents enlightenment and completion. As Hip-Hop took to the streets, the word cypher came to refer to the circles that would form around stereos or turntables, where individual participants would improvise flows together over the beat, and is often used today to refer to any kind of freestyle rapping, such as Eminem’s now-famous BET “Freestyle Cypher” in 2017.[4]Dropping Science—From the beginning, the Five Percenters heavily identified with science, often referring to themselves as “scientists.” Within Five Percenter circles, “dropping science” refers to spreading knowledge to the unenlightened eighty-fivers, but it was rapidly assimilated into general rap terminology, featuring heavily on songs like “The Sounds of Science” by the Beastie Boys.[5]Now those are just examples of Five Percenter slang that became widespread. There are also many rappers who converted to the Five Percent nation and who rapped about its teachings and philosophy extensively. So, without further ado, I figure I will hit you with some Hip-Hop to elucidate further.It should be noted that as the Five-Percent Nation branched out through the veins of Hip-Hop, it let go of much of its dogma. Many rappers who identify as Five Percenters are not necessarily members of a particular congregation. In many cases, you have people who have never been affiliated with any organized church structure or codified creed but find the basic ideas of God as Humanity and the mission of spreading knowledge as profound and meaningful, and developed their own slightly unique creeds around the Five-Percent core. As such, the views expressed in the following songs should not necessarily be seen as those of all Five-Percenters, but rather individual informed interpretations.While he wasn’t the first, it seems like a good place to begin would be with the man who essentially invented the sound of Rap’s Golden Age. Rakim (pronounced rah-KIM, not rah-KEEM) might be the single most influential rapper of all time, and his 1997 track “The Mystery (Who Is God?)” provides us with an excellent summary of Five Percenter cosmology and beliefs. Parenthetical notes are my own additions, as is the bolded emphasis.The Mystery (Who Is God) by RakimHook:If you can, see if you can solve the mysteryThe answer revolves around your historySo carefully, I drop this degreeScientifically and realistically (x2)In eternal blackness, in the midst of the darkest nightProteins and minerals exist within specks of lightSolids liquids and gases, and sparks of light withinInfinite lengths and widths and depths and heightsNo beginning or ending, with seven dimensionsEnough space for more than a million words and inventionsTo travel through time within enough room to be the wombOf the most high’s great mind which he will soon make shineWith intelligent elements insight that he will gatherIn the realms of relativity electricity struck matterEnergies explode he reload and keep releasingAtoms by the millions ‘til the numbers increasing‘Til it was burning he kept returning himself to the sourceThe hotter his thoughts it gave the center more forceHe gave birth to the sun which would follow his lawsAll caused by his mental intercourse, who is God?HookHe began to explain his craft, the master in the atticHe dealt with measurements, his language was mathematicsHis theoretical wisdom of the numerical systemThe complete number nine, which mean “born” or “existin’” (Supreme Mathematics)He gave birth to all planets, inorganic, and organicSo you wouldn't take it for grantedThey rotated their own distance around the sunAnd fully submit to the existence of oneAnd each one was promised everlasting perfectionIf each one keeps spinning in the same directionTo the East, and each speak the motion of peaceAnd harmony, and each show devotion to teachThe universe is to come, the whole world must go accordingKnow your galaxies and mirages stars start fallingSo stay in your orbit maintain safe and soundLike the planets each cypher remains perfectly roundHookFrom unconsciousness to consciousnessBy knowledge and his wisdom his response is this:An understanding, which is the best partHe picked the third planet where new forms of life would startHe pursued show improve every move in orderBack to the source he let off his resources in the waterClimb his climax, where the climate is at, high degreesSee he start to breathe deep in the darkest seasAnd the plan is, to lay in the clays to form landAnd expand, usin’ the same clays to born manIn his own image our origin begins in the EastCulture rise to breed, with the powers of peaceDeal in equality nature's policy is to be GodBuild or destroy positively born life like AllahAnd each one was given everlasting perfectionIf each one keep living in the same directionAnd life was life, and love was loveWe went according by the laws of the world aboveThey showed us physically, we could reach infinityBut mentally, through the century we lost our identityLife start and ending, we got trife and started sinningLost touch with the beginning now cyphers stop spinnin’And what was once easy became confused and hardWhich brings us back, to the mystic question, who is God?Sixty-six trillion years since his face was shownWhen the seventh angel appears, the mystery will be knownCheck Revelations and Genesis, St. Luke and JohnIt even tells us we are Gods in the Holy QuranWisdom Strength and Beauty, one of the meanings of GodG.O.D. you and me Gomar Oz DubarKnowledge Wisdom Understanding Sun Moon and StarMan Woman and Child, and so is AllahHookOutro:Bear witness to Allah, gave birth to allFor Allah was all, and therefore, life itselfAnd the universe gave birth to manThe universe was man, and man was the universeAnd the universe was always existingAnd existence was lifeAnd life is AllahAnd Allah had no beginning because he is what always wasRakim AllahPeaceNow who is God?I promise that I won’t type out all of the lyrics for every song that I cite, but I think this one provides a sufficiently far-reaching illustration of Five Percenter philosophy that the whole thing merits a look. We see the symbolism of the solar system compared to mankind and the family structure. The analogy of Sun, Moon, and Star as Man, Woman, and Child is a motif that we will see repeated many times. Furthermore, just as the stars and planets rotate in their orderly cyphers, divine man is also called to act out his nature and complete his cypher.(It is interesting to note that this song focuses on evolution as the means by which Allah brought forth the biodiversity of Earth, while some Five Percenters are more skeptical regarding evolution. We should remember that the theory of evolution has been heavily used to prop up racist ideas through the idea that Blacks were somehow less-evolved and closer to apes than Whites. In this regard, it is not difficult to see why some Five Percenters would come to view it as a tool of oppression, especially in the belief that Mankind was Allah made flesh and therefore not descended from lower imperfect life forms. In short, we see the diversity of views even within the Five Percenters on this particular point.)Moving on, I will turn my focus next to the group that really brought the Five-Percent Nation into the centerstage: The Wu-Tang Clan. While certainly not the first Five-Percent rappers, they put its message at the core of a lot of their music and adopted its slang completely. Their habit of all addressing each other as “God” is ubiquitous through most of their recordings, and their albums hare littered with Supreme Mathematics and Five-Percent Slang.Perhaps the most shocking example of just how deep their ties ran, on their second album, the colossal Wu-Tang Forever, their opening track featured none of their nine members, but was instead dedicated to two of the Five-Percent affiliates explaining the core beliefs of the movement. Here we see an unfiltered glimpse of what most in the movement believe. The track is quite long and a bit rambling, so I will only include those lyrics that I consider especially illuminating:Wu-Revolution by Wu-Tang Clan (featuring Poppa-Wu and Uncle Pete)We have original man, the Asiatic Black manThe maker, the owner, the cream of the planet EarthFather of civilization and God of the universe…Arise you Gods, it's the time for the Revolutional WarThat's the mental warThat's the battle between God and DevilTake the devil off your planeTake him off your mental mentality, take him off your brainLeave all the cigarettes and guns, the alcohol and everythingThats the mental devil that exists within your bodyThat's destroying and decaying your mindThe mind controls the bodyEverything within must come outDon't look towards the sky cause there's no heaven aboveDon't look down beneath your feet, there's no hell belowBut heaven and hell exist withinHeaven is what you make it and hell is what you go through…It was a hundred percent of usThat came on the slave shipsEighty five percent of our people was uncivilizedPoison animal eatersThey're slaves of the mental powersThey don't know who the true and living God isAnd their origins in the worldSo they worship what they know notAnd they're easily led in the wrong directionHard to be led in the rightAnd now you got the ten percent who are rich slave makers of the poorWho teach the poor lies that make the people believeThat the all mighty true and living God is a spook in the skyAnd you can't see him with the physical eyesThey're also known as blood suckers of the poorAnd then you got the five percentWho are the poor righteous teachersWho do not believe in the teachings of the ten percentWho is all wise and know who the true and living god isAnd teach that the true and living god is a supreme being: Black man from AsiaOtherwise known as civilized peopleAlso Muslims, and Muslim's sonsPeaceNot all of the members of Wu-Tang have remained Five Percenters (I know that Ghostface Killah at least has transitioned to mainstream Sunni Islam), but their guiding Abbot, RZA, has remained one of the most poetically outspoken voices of Five-Percent philosophy in the world.On their 2007 album 8 Diagrams, Wu-Tang included a song called “Sunlight,” which is notable for being solely performed by RZA. On it, he provides a deep and mellifluous overview of his own interpretation of the movement’s philosophy. It strikes me as reminiscent of Bob Marley’s interpretation of Rastafarianism, keeping the poetry and philosophy while letting go of the more anti-White elements (though RZA does seem to make a reference to the comparative rapidity of visual aging among Whites as a sort of punishment). This song is one of my favorite ever written, and I couldn’t remove any part of it, so I will include its full lyrics as well, though I will skip the Kung-Fu excerpts at the beginning and end.In order to understand the opening image, I should show you the emblem of the Five Percent Nation:[6]Sunlight by Wu-Tang ClanI’m the seven in the center of the sun, I keep shiningMy inner light will turn my baby’s teardrops to small diamondsThat be twinklin’, while my love be sprinklin’We stay young while y’all old wicked faces be wrinklin’Allah’s the most gracious, he made the universe the most spaciousSeen and heard in all places, but still appear facelessEmbraces all races, all castes, and all casesIn every speck of life, he’s the substance of all tracesThe answer to all questions, the spark of all suggestionsOf righteousness, the pathway to the road of perfectionWho gives you all, and never asks more of youThe faithful companion that fights every war with youBefore the mortal view of the prehistorical/historicalHe’s the all-in-all, you searchin’ for the OracleA mission impossible, it’s purely philosophicalBut you call him on your death bed when you layin’ in the hospital(Note: in the preceding lines, RZA is comparing the common conception of God as an absent-or-hidden oracle/power who becomes more relevant after death to the divinity-within and rejection of the afterlife by Five Percenters.)And as you play all day like the grasshopper, we work and toilLike armies of ants, carrying stones and soilBuilding a home for themselves, and storing foodAt night we praise Allah and adore the Moon(Note: The moon is heavily identified with the feminine in Five Percenter teachings, just as Allah is heavily identified with man. Therefore, the act of sexual intercourse between a loving and committed man and woman would be an example of “praising Allah and adoring the moon”)It seems like the Flow of the Nile, the growth of a childOnly fearing God, we meet a ghost with a smileThat which is Spirit is Spirit, which is Flesh is FleshMeaning Life has no partnership with DeathYo, I been highly misunderstood by those that met usThey had ears of corn, and heads of lettuceMentally dead, essentially ledBy the false teachings, and eventually pledgedTheir allegiance to that which was against themThen exempt them from the Truth, then juiced them and pimped themTo giving in tithes, so the Church could riseWhile your baby’s home, hungry, covered with fliesBzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt!(Note: The preceding lines refer to the abuse an manipulation of the 85% by the 10% through false religions.)Trying our hardest to win,Allah’s the father from without and withinOn Christ’s return, who will announce him?Every tree is numbered, but who can count them?The name of all things in this world, who can pronounce them?Allah is the Father of all, why do you doubt him?I won’t pretend to understand every part of RZA’s exposition here (the bit about Christ is especially confusing), but I think it gives a solid idea of the way that Five-Percenters view the world, and repeats some of its beautiful analogies.Returning for a moment to the symbol above the video—the “seven in the center of the sun”—we can see many images combined. In Supreme Mathematics, the number 7 represents God, and the Sun, Moon, and Stars represent Man, Woman, and Child in the core family unit. The symbol itself pops up even with people who don’t openly talk much about being Five-Percenters. One notable example would be Jay-Z, who sparked a bunch of queries about his religion when he began openly wearing this chain:[7]Indeed, now that you know what it looks like, you will likely see it more frequently than you might expect in the future.Returning to Rappers who identify as Five Percenters, the New Orleans-born emcee Jay Electronica briefly relates the story of his own conversion while homeless in New York in his breakout release Exhibit C:Exhibit C by Jay ElectronicaI ain’t believe it then, nigga, I was homelessFightin’, shootin’ dice, smokin’ weed on the cornersTryin’ to find the meaning of Life in the Coronas’Til the Five Percenters rolled up on a nigga and informed him:"You either build or destroy, where you come from?""The Magnolia projects in the 3rd Ward slum""Hmm, it's quite amazing that you rhyme how you doAnd that you shine like you grew up in a shrine in Peru"Question Fourteen, Muslim Lesson Two:Dip-diver, civilize an eighty-fiverI make the devil hit his knees and say the "Our Father"Indeed, the term “civilize an eighty-fiver” has become widespread even beyond the confines of Five Percenters. In the opening track of his monumental album All My Heroes Are Dead, champion underground White rapper and definite non-five-percenter R.A. the Rugged Man includes the line:Society despiser, grind of a violent viking fighterVibin' to the violence inside ya, the suicide survivorCivilize an eighty-fiver, mind of Malcolm and ElijahTiger-manimal hybrid, island of Dr. Frankenheimer[8]So the idea of “civilizing an eighty-fiver” has become a widely-used synonym for speaking Truth to the ignorant. References to “eighty-fivers” “eighty-five percent” or even just “eighty-fives” also turns up throughout the rest of Wu-Tangs repertoire:From Impossible:Innocent black immigrants locked in housing tenementsEighty-five percent tenants dependent welfare recipients[9]From Lab Drunk:Innocent drive-bys, eighty-fives shoot to overthrow usBut they love us like babies once they get to know us[10]From Bong Bong:You eighty-fives eatin’ swine like that?We ain’t tryin’ to beef, cause y’all blind like that[11]And so forth. The last reference reminds me that another common element of the Five-Percenter Movement is an adoption of a vegetarian and/or vegan diet. All members of Wu-Tang Clan are or were at one point vegetarian, and Ghostface has specifically mentioned in interviews that the choice to abstain from eating flesh is rooted in a greater belief in nonviolence, saying “I don’t even kill insects.” If you look back to Wu-Revolution, you will see that the 85% are identified as “poison animal eaters.”While Wu-Tang may have broken the Five-Percent Nation fully into the mainstream, they were not the first, and it should be understood that the Five Percenters had a place in the Hip-Hop community from the beginning. The rap group Brand Nubian is an earlier example:Brand Nubian by Brand NubianMy inspiration is the Five-Percent NationEveryone who has played GTA: San Andreas is guaranteed to have heard that song at some point, which brings me to my more broad-reaching observation: even those readers who had never knowingly heard of the Five-percent Nation have almost certainly heard its language and its slang before if they have listened to Hip-Hop, they just didn’t know it yet.I realize that I have gone on for entirely too long in this answer already, but before I go, I want to drop the poetry and let you hear a Five-Percenter just talk about his beliefs for a second. I could keep going with hip-hop references all day, but this seems a good way to conclude.I present to you Busta Rhymes explaining the Five Percent Nation in an interview:So there you go.In Conclusion: the Nation of Gods and Earths, also known as the Five-Percent Nation is a religious sect that began in Harlem and which is centered around these core beliefs:That God exists not as a distant or hidden entity but as a force within mankindThat there is no afterlife, but that we are called to build our heaven on EarthThat the world is divided into the ignorant, the deceivers, and the enlightened, and the righteous path is to spread knowledge to the ignorant and to deny the teachings of the deceiversThere are numerous other teachings and slangs associated with it, but those three points define its core. This religious movement found a powerful voice through Hip-Hop music, which it helped to shape from its early days.Thanks for reading, all you former-eighty-fivers.Consider yourselves officially civilized.Peace, God.Disclaimer: Tom Robinson is not nor has he ever claimed to be a Five-Percenter. He is just an atheist dude who likes Hip-Hop and philosophy and has too much time on his hands because of Quarantine. Don’t take his fake proselytizing too seriously.Footnotes[1] Lynching Statistics by Year[2] Bible Gateway passage: Genesis 9 - New Revised Standard Version[3] In the Name of Allah Vol. 1 a History of Clarence 13x and the Five Percenters.[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LunHybOKIjU[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtdKvEpl-Uo[6] What I Learned from the Five Percenters[7] White People Outraged By Jay Z’s Five Percent Nation Medallion[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbCV24IHWOY[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp-0-I1uUgs[10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkQdMJPJNjM[11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb91C6QaRJQ

Kevin Carey’s recent book, The End of College, starts with a great story. He introduces us to one of the most famous professors in the world, Eric Lander. His background is about as impressive as it gets. He’s a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine, led the Human Genome Project, and has expertise in his field that only a few in the world can even hope to approach. But aside from his accomplishments with the genome, he is also known as one of the best teachers at MIT. His class, introduction to Biology, is mandatory, and legendary. He has adoring fans gather around his desk after each class. More importantly, at least as far as the thesis of the book, his class has reached thousands of people around the world, for free, as a MOOC.Massively Open Online Courses were, a few years ago, trumpeted by companies like Udacity and others as the death knell of traditional education as we know it. Carey, like Malcolm Gladwell in his books, knows that we are wired for stories more than for data and overviews of research. While these latter things are what should be used to ‘prove’ his thesis, Carey’s book depends largely on profiles of the people in Silicon Valley, Cambridge, and a few other places who are at the forefront of the MOOC revolution. Sebastian Thrun, who was one of the first to create a MOOC, famously said that in 20 years there would only be a few dozen colleges and universities left.Since then, the death of traditional brick and mortar education has received a lot of comment from pundits and educators. Most think, as the cliché goes, that rumors of their death have been greatly exaggerated. Instead of MOOCs heralding a Gutenberg-level revolution, most see them as yet another set of bells and whistles that will help some people around the world get exposure to a huge range of topics and subjects, but won’t make much of difference to the way education works in the US. Colleges and universities will continue to bring students to campus and train them for the job market and for graduate school, perhaps with some implementation of MOOC technology, but not much will happen to force schools to either join the on-line revolution or sink into oblivion.Carey’s book attempts to show how they are wrong. His first chapter is instructive in several senses of the word. Carey himself takes Lander’s MOOC and earns a certificate for completing the same work as first year students at MIT. He has completed all the challenging problem sets and passed each of them. He has reached out to the TAs online for help and participated in online chat rooms with other students from all over the world. To put it simply, he has demonstrated mastery in a challenging MIT class and has a certificate to back it up. He even takes time to visit the class in real time — and comes away thinking online is better. Online, he can hit the pause button during the lecture to write notes in a more complete way than trying to write down words as they stream out in real time. He can concentrate on the class in a quiet way in the comfort of home, instead of being distracted by the student next to him who is focused far more on his phone than what is going on in class. He can hear Lander better and has multiple camera angles to see what he does, instead of seeing him a long way away at the back of a lecture hall.Carey convinces me that this particular class teaches students the material in ways that are even better than if he were there taking it in person. In addition, Carey also underscores how the new technology, combined with the discoveries in the fields of neuroscience and education science about learning, can help to individualize the experience of taking MOOCs.I advise anyone who is primed (the last word as it is used in neuroscience) against MOOCs to read this first chapter and then come up with reasons why Carey's experience does not convince you that this class is as good or better than taking the exact same class at MIT. I think if this chapter stood alone as an article it would get many to question their assumptions, and I think this is great. His interview for US News, “It's the End of College As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” is a good introduction too.Much of the rest of the book unfolds in chapters that introduce us to some of the early leaders of the online education revolution. We hear about wonderful professors who have made their work accessible, for free, to people around the world. To give just one example of what this can mean, there is a person in Nigeria who has taken more than 250 MOOCs:Jima Ngei. Ngei, who lives in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, has completed and passed 250 MOOCs, all through Coursera, since September 2012. His self-styled education has included courses in English common law and Chinese history, data science and Latin American culture, social epidemiology and the life of Thomas Jefferson, to name a few.Of course Mr. Ngei is at the very far end of the bell curve of MOOC takers; he has taken and passed more courses than it would take to earn 5 undergraduate degrees. The data shows that people around the world, with neither the opportunity or the money to attend traditional schools in the US, can become “educated citizens” (to use Thomas Jefferson’s phrase).Another way that Carey sees education changing in the not-too-distant future has to do with the way colleges and universities will use deep data to select students in ways that some forward thinking businesses currently do. Jeffrey Selingo, whose own book, College (Un)Bound should be required reading for anyone who wants to get informed about data and education, has this to say about Carey in The WashingtonPost:In a compelling new book about higher education, The End of College, its author, Kevin Carey, lays out a future where admission to a college is based on the massive amounts of data and information already collected on students from an early age rather than a snapshot made in one moment in time for an application deadline.“Instead of waiting for applications to arrive, colleges will be able to conduct extensive searches of data that students and parents choose to make available,” writes Carey, who directs the education policy program at the New America Foundation.Under such a scenario, admissions would become something more akin to how employers now search LinkedIn and other online databases to recruit talent to their organizations rather than wait for an application to arrive in response to a job advertisement. LinkedIn already has lowered the minimum age to join the professional network to 14, partly in an effort to persuade more students in middle school and high school to begin building their profiles. As more students do, the day might not be that far away when a LinkedIn profile becomes the foundation for a college application or the place where admissions officers search for their next class of freshmen.Both Carey and Selingo believe that looking at a student’s data over many years — not just at transcripts, a set of tests, and an essay — is a far better way to predict success in college. If this all sounds unrealistic, I will simply add a quote from a very smart counselor who shared this with me in a discussion about this issue: “I spoke with an Eli Lilly exec the other day who told me that they almost solely hire from LinkedIn and MOOCs now. Try explaining that to high school students who have never heard of either.”In some cases, companies are hiring people who do not have a college degree but have the skills they are looking for — coding being one that many are searching for. I know a high school student who was brought in as an intern at Google based upon his MOOC certificates and recommendation from his MOOC professor. I am not saying that admissions will change dramatically in the next year or two, but schools are already using data to predict yield and to recruit prospective students. If they find that these alternatives will help them enroll more and stronger students, then the way students apply to schools may change radically in the next decade.While I like much of what Carey has to say as he tries to convince readers that colleges and universities will be falling by the hundreds (or even thousands) in the next several decades, he does not convince me that he has proven his thesis. He marshals a lot of evidence to make his case, but he also leaves out at least 5 things that will, I think, undercut any relatively fast transformation of the education landscape in the US.Habits and beliefsMany hold a deep and longstanding belief that the US education system — and our way of giving students access to great centers of learning — is the best in the world. It is part of the American Dream, something that many (rightly, I think), hold up as a shining beacon on the hill. The number of students who have flowed in from the rest of the world over the last two decades demonstrates that it isn’t just those in the US who believe the best schools in the world are here, it’s common wisdom. (For those who read much of what I write, you know I always use this last phrase as a way of turning the conversation in a new direction away from the common wisdom.)We are all guided by habits and beliefs to interpret the world through ideological and experiential frames. There are some (like Dan Ariely and Yuval Noah Hariari), who think that we think most of what we do with anything but rational approaches to issues.I mention this as most people I know think that traditional education, on a campus, is invaluable preparation for the real world. Some talk about the importance of liberal arts; others about the networking and career building skills that are a part of being in and out of classes among faculty and students and administrators. For many, then, it is "common sense" that on campus experiences make for a much deeper and fuller preparation for what will happen after graduation.Even if they are confronted with data (for example, over a third of students graduating from college today have no increase in critical thinking skills after 4 years and a degree—see the book "Academically Adrift" for the research on this), there is still the feeling that college should happen on a campus. We are slow to change the way we view things even if confronted with data. There are a majority of US citizens who think that evolution is not the best way to explain how we as humans have come to dominate the planet. I think the evidence is compelling but they do not. My citing data has virtually never changed someone’s mind on this issue. I am not sanguine that a few ‘experts’ who believe that the current way many receive an education today needs to change will be enough to shift the paradigm anytime soon.Schools ThemselvesIf Carey believes that the thousands of traditional colleges and universities will embrace the changes he proposes in education lightly then he too is not approaching things rationally. Some do not like to say that higher education is a big business but the way things run at most schools these days it is hard to find out why they think this. Larger and larger administrative bodies tightly run schools. They oversee budges, enrollments and fund-raising. The largest increase in hiring over the last decades has been on the administrative side as schools recognize that they need to be business savvy to keep things afloat. Many schools are already struggling. A few have closed already. What Carey proposes is yet another huge challenge to many school’s survival. As with any business under threat from competitors, there will be efforts to dismiss the data that Carey uses and efforts to undercut any big changes in the status quo. Everyone who works at a brick and mortar school has a stake in on-line options not gaining a large market share. There will be faculty, administrators, alumni and students who will all be on the side of the schools. They will be passionate advocates for what they offer. There will be media blitzes, studies released, and lots more to critique on-line education. Trying to separate the "signal from the noise" (I use the phrase that data guru Nate Silver uses as the title of his great book on this topic) among competing data will be difficult at best. There are billions of dollars at stake, untold thousands of jobs, and communities that will be in trouble too should local schools close. Will schools go the way of the newspapers? They were for many years the traditional way that many found out about the world. With the exception of a few strong brands, on-line resources have largely replaced newspapers.Seminars and LabsWhile I agree with Carey when it comes to the effective dissemination and evaluation of students on-line in introductory classes that are, by and large, lecture based, he does not address how students would complete labs, participate in seminars, or do individualized research on-line. I do not know how some of the things that require hands on activities could be reproduced on line—at least not yet. The labs, equipment and other resources are simply not there for student located all across the globe. Likewise, there is something special that can happen in a small seminar that cannot happen in a large lecture. If what I have said it accurate, then it may be that on-line education will permit student to learn something but that student will still need to travel to traditional campuses to take advantage of the resources there. Student may be able to earn credit and graduate in 2 years and there are some majors and areas of study that could be done completely remotely. But the technology is simply not there yet to give students who are not actually doing experiments and not actually doing group work with others on case studies etc. that have been created that have any data to back up that they are good enough to match what happens on a real campusTesting CompaniesIt may not seem readily apparent why testing companies would have a stake in caring if on-line classes earn credit, but they will stand to lose a huge market should this happen. The College Board is responsible not only for the SAT I and 2 tests, but also for the Advanced Placement program. As ETS has lost its market share to the ACT over the SAT I, they have needed to do a number of things to keep their business, non-profit as it is, getting students to pay for tests. The AP program has been increasingly important as many colleges and universities use AP classes and scores to determine admission. Schools all over the US and the world now offer APs. Each of these tests costs over 100.00 dollars so taking 5 or 10 (the typical number for students applying to selective schools) adds up to a lot of money. If student could take MOOCs instead either free or for a lower fee, and get credit for them and be looked at as equivalent or better than APs then the College Board would have another huge challenge to address. In addition the International Baccalaureate program also costs a lot to implement within a school and then they charge for the tests themselves. If student could take MOOCs instead of IBs and these ere also looked at as good or better, the number of student ad schools choosing the IB might drop at well. Like the schools themselves, the testing companies have a vested interest in trying to keep things the way they are and they will have people doing research to try to prove that there exams are better than MOOCs.SecurityThe last issue that I think is the one that represents the biggest challenge for giving credit for MOOCs and other on-line learning options centers o security. As the College Board has found in the past several years making sure tests are secure and that cheating isn’t going on has become an issue they still have yet to solve. Student, especially in Asia, have found ways to beat the test and score well. For MOOCs there is currently no way to assure that someone is not hiring an expert to take the MOOC for him or her. While this has not been an issue to date that is only because there is not a credit issue yet. Should schools move toward giving credit there will have to be a great deal of work done to create a way that ensures colleges and universities that the certificate students earn for courses represent the work of each individual challenge. I see this as the biggest problem of all the ones I have cited, as I do not know how security can be assured remotely. If the College Board has problems with people on-site taking the tests I cannot begin to guess how this issue will be solved simply or in a cost-effective way. Given this I would imagine that many schools would use security as the issue to refuse to grant credit.***********************************************************************If it seems I have now proven that the revolution has been hyped and that the status quo will continue along as it stands with just a few minimal changes then I need to also address how there is some evidence that Carey may be right about the transformative power of MOOCs.From the fall of the Berlin Wall, to 9/11 and its aftermath, to the sad outcomes of the Arab Spring, almost all pundits have missed the biggest changes headed our way. Taleb calls them Black Swans and I agree with you that we do not have the ability to predict what will happen years from now (let alone this afternoon). On the other hand, I do agree with William Gibson too (who was right about a lot of the things that have come to pass in technology --except he did it as so many visionaries have—through fiction/art): “The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.”Now that schools are offering degrees on line for masters programs the door is open for schools to start offering credit for undergraduate courses. A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education outlines how these programs are already in place at a number of elite schools:Paid online courses for professional graduate programs.Yale University recently unveiled a new master’s program for aspiring physician assistants, offered through its medical school. The program will also involve a lot of fieldwork, but much of the academic coursework will be delivered online. It is the second program Yale has created along these lines; the other is a partially online doctoral degree in nursing, which the university announced in 2011.Degrees in fields like health care and teaching are in high demand, and many lesser-known players have grabbed big chunks of that market online by assuring prospective students that they can go back to school without upending their lives. Yale is not alone in its effort to claim its slice of the pie; graduate schools at the Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, the University of California at Berkeley, and others have also started offering online versions of their professional master’s programs.Online does not fundamentally threaten the appeal of professional programs, where the "student experience" is not as sacrosanct as it is at undergraduate colleges. Most people who enroll are working adults who already went through dorm life and student organizations and late-night philosophical chats with future members of their wedding parties. They are now mainly interested in learning a trade.One well-respected school, The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has just announced it will offer an MBA degree via MOOCs. How this will work out and whether this model will be implemented by other schools is something that has yet to be determined, but it does signify that at least some places are taking the MOOC options seriously:"As with any MOOC, the content is available for free. Learners who wish to earn a credential but have no need for academic credit can pay a small fee, $79 a course, for an identity-verified certificate. Students can also apply to the College of Business and, if accepted, pursue the full M.B.A. degree. Finally, students can choose to take the courses individually for credit, postponing a decision about whether to go for a degree until they are well into the program."More significantly, at least as far as the large term effects on on-line education versus MOOCs, the first major university, Arizona State, has just announced that it will give a year’s worth of undergraduate credit for MOOCs The President of ASU, Michael Crow, put forward a number of radical changes in his recent book, "Designing the New American University". He has now opened the door for other schools to follow his lead in offering a lost cost option for students to earn credit for their first year of college. This move represents a significant challenge to the education establishment:Arizona State University, in partnership with edX, this fall will begin to offer credit-bearing massive open online courses at a fraction of the cost of either in-person or traditional online education.ASU’s faculty members will create about a dozen general-education MOOCs, the first of which -- an introductory astronomy course -- will launch this August. Anyone can register for and take the MOOCs for free, but those who pay a $45 fee to verify their identity can at the end of each course decide if they want to pay the university a separate, larger fee to earn academic credit for their work.By fall 2016, ASU anticipates it will offer enough MOOCs so that students can complete their entire freshman year online through what edX and the university are calling the Global Freshman Academy.After completing the courses, students can receive a transcript from ASU showing that they have earned enough credits at the university to transfer to a different program or institution as sophomores. Since the university stresses the MOOCs are just a new form of delivering courses it already offers, the transcripts won’t specify which type of course -- in-person, online or massive online -- students enrolled in to earn the credit.“What this does is it really opens up new pathways for all students, no matter where they are in the world,” edX CEO Anant Agarwal said in an interview. “There are no admissions requirements -- no SAT scores, no GPAs, no recommendation letters.”One would think that many in education would be thrilled to hear about this low-cost way for students to earn full credit for introductory courses. The transcript for these courses will look exactly the same as for those who take the courses on campus. Student can earn credit, skip introductory classes and possibly graduate in 3 years. The savings to them would be substantial, and given the student debt crisis it would seem to be a wonderful yet daring innovation.The reaction to this move has been swift, but not the way I would have thought. Questions about accreditation and whether such courses should count have already been raised. Some educators have already gone on record as calling this attempt to give credit “retrograde”.Paul L. Gaston, a Trustees Professor at Kent State University and author of Higher Education Accreditation: How It’s Changing and Why It Must, nevertheless called the Global Freshman Academy a “retrograde action” for an institution he praised for its innovation.“It’s a kind of compromise with the values that they have demonstrated in terms of clear learning outcomes and creating exciting environments for learning,” Gaston said. “I do think it represents a shift in the character of the kind of commitment that ASU has been known for.”The move by ASU and the reaction represents the conflicts that will be fought in the near and long term. Should MOOCs be incorporated as part of earning credit for degrees not just at ASU, but at many other schools, then things will change I n at least some of the ways Carey predicts. If the education establishment prevails and ASU fails to prove these courses prepare students for success, then MOOCs will still exist as a part of graduate programs and as a way of students and others from around the world of learning skills like coding and learning about an huge range of topics and subjects. They will not, however, become a threat for most of the colleges and universities who see the current model of brick and mortar education not as an outdated paradigm, but as what has made the US system of education the best in the world for the generations.Carey’s book does repeat itself in its unswerving allegiance to the transformative power of MOOCs. By the last chapter the tone earns the phrase 'religious fervor'. He himself wants MOOCs to become a sort of religious cathedral that will draw acolytes from all over the world. (The religious trope is his not mine.) They will learn from the scripture of the sciences and reason and a new dawn of humankind will begin. Ok, I am exaggerating a bit here, but not by that much. He does invoke religion and belief and that seems a bit over the top.But if the histories of religious differences throughout history are any guide, the war, at least of words, credit and cost will not be settled without causalities. If I had to guess the changes at the margins that are happening now would have to be embraced by the public at large perhaps based on the inability of most in the middle class and below to afford traditional education on campuses without incurring significant debt. Whether the casualties that may result are the colleges themselves or the MOOCs, is, for me at least, too hard to predict.***********************************************************************In the interest of full disclosure, I should add that I have taken a MOOC and learned a great deal from it. I have also had some debates with educators who think MOOCs are not useful in comparison to teaching students in a classroom. I mention this as I do not wish to pretend that I can approach this topic with anything approaching pure objectivity. All of us have cognitive biases.REM: the end of the world as we know it