stimulant

At my school, students will be responsible for the upkeep of the campus. There are plenty of issues implementing this (scheduling tasks, training students for various jobs, etc.) but I’m confident that I can make it work. I’ll write more about my thoughts on the problem at some point.

But right now, I want to talk about a fundamental shift in the way we think about the products of an education, beginning with a recent idea of mine: using a school’s resources (specifically money, a captive audience, and the public eye) to support a technology that needs customers more than it needs allies: electric/hybrid/biodiesel/sustainable cars.

Imagine a university that maintained a fleet of sustainable vehicles, maintained and driven by students. Students would be trained in their care and maintenance by a few (one?) person, and then go on to pass on that knowledge. This fleet would be open for use by the community. Every time you needed a car, you’d go, give it a pre-drive inspection, drive it, and come back. If a problem is found in the inspection, the last person to drive it and the person looking to drive it come in and fix it together, with help, if needed.

Insurance is provided for by the university (more on that at a later date, too). Given that cars would be constantly maintained, they’d last the way they’re supposed to. And students would learn simple, useful skills. And the university would be taking significant steps toward not only raising awareness, but capability, feasibility, and likelihood. Every student would leave (presumably) as a converted and ready customer for alternative transportation.

In general, this model of using a communal model of resources to manage the cost and risk of integrating students with real world tasks seems like a pretty strong model. Particularly exciting is the prospect of drawing on the community to build and maintain the school’s infrastructure, given that those are precisely the types of experiences I’d love to provide for.

Consider developing an audio lab or a model for a cheap, robust, high-quality studio. Instead of purchasing everything, engineer it in house, and build it in house. The labor is itself educational and fun, and the product is a more maintainable, more robust community resource.

Of course, all of this leads very naturally to another idea I’m awfully excited to explore: continual redesign and reimplementation of lab equipment, in house. Scientists (particularly in the life sciences) seem further and further removed from their tools. What if instead, they built and engineered their tools, and in the process improved not only their design, but their economy and scalability? These all seem like natural steps to take toward opening up science and breaking down the compartmentalization of knowledge-creation in the sciences. Right now, companies and universities do that. Why is all that structure necessary? What if more energy were expended toward developing things like a $10 PCR machine? What if the barrier to doing high-quality science wasn’t the years of schooling you “need” to be part of the club, but a few hundred dollars and some curiosity?

And this is that “fundamental shift” I mentioned. Right now, we think of schools as producing students. Research universities produce graduate students and research. But what if education were the byproduct of producing valuable and important things that the world needs? Whether this is research or low-cost lab equipment or a scalable system for communal transport — what if we were to shift the focus from who students were (what they know) to what they do?