Imagine that! Now, I’m all for people being able to pursue abstract, theoretical constructs and even to pursue careers along those lines. But the educational burden on people trying to do innovative work is unsustainable – the article mentions that the average age for first-time recipients of federal (NIH) funding is 42. Such funding is essentially a requirement for people trying to achieve tenure in the sciences, meaning that many smart people will train until they are nearly 50 years old before they either find out that they can make a career of their specialized knowledge and skills, or need to start over doing something new.

I suspect we will start to see more and more institutions like BGI. Indeed, I suspect that this trend towards more relevant and practical education will be accelerated by open education, which will eventually come to encompass not just the resources (OER) but also the support structures, mentors, and pathways to competency and accreditation. And I believe that these changes will save the liberal arts institutions, despite their best efforts to destroy themselves. Perhaps I will even see the day when our academic institutions return to their roots: encouraging education for education’s sake, supporting basic research and humanist inquiry, and catalyzing innovation and change not to support institutional aims, but to support the betterment of humanity.