A new online business, called SkillShare, wants us get over the idea that a college education is the only legitimate path to a career. What’s the point of going to college and taking on mass quantities of debt, only to graduate to a job that requires the skills and knowledge you had when you finished high school, ask SkillShare’s founders. And who decided that you can only learn in a traditional classroom from professors with Ph.D.’s, tenure and a bunch of obscure, published papers?

SkillShare’s aim is to democratize education—allowing anyone who wants to learn something to learn it from anyone who wants to teach it. No transcripts, SATs, teaching credentials or ivy-covered buildings necessary.

SkillShare describes its core principles this way:

We believe that people care more about real-world skills than antiquated accreditation systems. Our communities are filled with these people who are great at what they do, whether it’s delivering a fantastic speech at a conference or baking a triple layer chocolate cake. Our vision is to unlock this knowledge and allow people to share their skills with those who want to learn them.

1. Everyone is a teacher, and everyone has valuable knowledge to share.
2. Learning should not stop when you graduate from school.
3. Learning should happen in communities around shared interests and passions.
4. Everyone has a lifelong right to enjoy learning new things.
5. Learning should be fun and interesting!

So, exactly what does SkillShare do? It matches up people who know something—say, how to make a Chinese dumpling, or draw on an iPad, or take great food photos—with people who want to learn that skill. The teacher suggests a course, posts it on SkillShare, and sells a limited number of tickets to the class, whose price he/she sets. Many classes charge under $20 per ticket, but some are considerably higher. Teachers pay no fee to list their classes, but they are responsible for arranging and paying for a venue, such as a coffee shop, community center or bookstore. Skillshare makes money by taking a portion of each ticket sale.

One course that you might sign up for in May 2011 is called “Lady Luck: Poker 101 for Women.” A ticket to the class costs $15. Its teacher is Michael Karnjanaprakorn, who happens to be one of the founders of Skillshare. He also happens to be a semi-professional poker player with 15 years of experience and is the founder of  World Series of Good, which encourages poker players to donate a percentage of their winnings to charity. His class description makes it sound like a pretty good bet, if you’re a woman who feels the need to out-poker a bunch of men:

Ever want to sit at the poker table but don’t really understand how the game is played? Come learn from two semi-professional poker players on how to play the game and put anyone in their poker place. Many people assume that poker is a “men’s game” but that’s not true. Join us as we host a class geared specifically for women. This class is geared towards the beginner poker player, and features an integrated curriculum which includes a live lecture, Q&A and interactive gameplay. In this class, we will go over the following:

• Texas Hold ‘Em Gameplay
• Rules & Etiquette
• Poker Lingo
• Hand Values
• Basic Poker Strategies
• Handling Overly Aggressive Opponents
• Chip Tricks
• Secrets Behind Winning Professional Players

Other courses offered at this writing include: “5 and Under: Restaurant-caliber food with less than 5 ingredients,” taught by a New York City chef;  “Spy School – The Seeing Lab.” where, for $40 you can “learn how to notice and read facial micro-expressions;” and “Visual Means 101: Strategies for Beginning Photographers.”

The project currently operates only in New York City, where Skillshare has amassed a “venue database” that helps teachers find workable, affordable locations for their classes. Next up: San Francisco. In the meantime, Skillshare encourages community teachers in other areas to start thinking about classes they might want to lead and even to propose them as listings for Skillshare.

An idea worth watching. What’s in your skill set?

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One of the most interesting revelations of Charles Ferguson’s movie Inside Job was his exposure of the ways in which academic economists contributed to the economic meltdown. Ferguson examines how Ivy League business schools neglected to challenge dangerous trends. Glenn Hubbard, Dean of Columbia University Business School (pictured above), was one of the academics who benefited from aiding and abetting Wall Street in its reckless activities. He also contributed to, and benefited from, the deregulation of the financial industry.

We are used to politicians being unduly swayed by corporate campaign contributions and the promise of high paying lobbying jobs after they leave office. We have watched them over the past decades shape legislation to benefit corporate and banking interests rather than the average American. But who knew that academics are cashing in as well, giving their corporate clients the biased research and reports they wanted, while their institutions, including prestigious ones like Harvard and Columbia University, look the other way.

American universities used to be the envy of the world, but there are signs that corporate money is having a growing, and pernicious influence on academia, threatening the values that once made them great institutions. The once admired liberal arts education is no longer the focus of the new revenue-centered university, and the results are fast becoming socially disastrous. The concept of the independent academic professor engaged in the pursuit of “truth’” is becoming as quaint as the idea of “Mr. Smith” going to Washington and actually making a difference. Likewise, the ideal of a well-rounded liberal arts education seems old fashioned and naive.

A slew of books in recent years have commented on this troubling trend of the encroachment of corporate money and influence on the academic world.

• “Secretive connections between private industry and the academy have begun to undermine the foundation of public trust on which all universities depend,” according to Jennifer Washburn, author ofUniversity, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education. In her book she cites examples of academic research that was suppressed or altered in support of greater corporate profits.
• In his book, Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education, Derek Bok, an ex-president of Harvard University, focuses on medical schools and university teaching hospitals that are entrusted with essential public responsibilities but are now endangered by commercial incentives. He demonstrates the risks inherent in the growing liaison between medical schools and the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.
• Frank Donoghue, in his book The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities, laments that the number of students attending American universities has surged in recent decades, but the number of humanities professors has dwindled. He sees a troubling trend in higher education where classes are focused on corporate needs and administrators think more like business executives, than liberal-arts scholars.
• In her book Wannabe U: Inside the Corporate University, Gaye Tuchman offers a cogent analysis of the corporatizing forces reshaping U.S. universities by highlighting a small state institution that tries to enter the big leagues using a corporate managerial style.
• In their book Academic Capitalism and the New Economy: Markets, State, and Higher Education, Sheila Slaughter and Gary contend that as colleges and universities become more entrepreneurial, they focus more and more on knowledge as a commodity to be used in profit-oriented activities, rather than knowledge as a public good.
• Finally, Christopher Newfield, in his book Unmaking the Public University: The Forty-year Assault on the Middle Class,connects the conservative culture war with the economic war on the middle class that has seen their wages diminished and their political influence weakened. Unregulated market forces have chipped away at the benefits of the typical graduate. The democratizing mission of the public university and its ideal of egalitarianism and vision of a knowledge society, have been deeply undermined by conservative influences.

These are but a few of the growing chorus of voices alarmed at the disturbing cooptation of our institutions of higher education by moneyed interests, be they corporations or foundations with an agenda. Like the corporate takeover of our political institutions, this is a dangerous development that is threatening our democracy and quality of life.

So what can we do? If nothing else, monitor developments at your local and state funded institutions of higher education. When changes happen at your state university or your community college, such as the introduction of corporate funded curriculum, or the dropping of humanities classes, or the raising of tuition beyond what working and middle class families can afford, or that professors are selling their research to the highest bidder or aiding and abetting the destructive activities of corporations, write your congressman or senator or, better yet, write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. Education is a public good that must be protected and professors must be held to a higher standard than they are currently keeping.

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