Small institute of higher learning

[rancke]

I have a colony with a population that has grown from its initial 9000 people to 64000 in the last 50 years. The colony is prospering and there has been no loss of written knowledge. I'm wondering what sort of higher education (post High School) they would have. How many students, how many teachers?

(Going away to university on another world is theoretically possible, but much too expensive for most people.)

Also, if the population grows to 225,000 over the next 50 years, how much would the number of people involved with higher education grow?

Any ideas?


Hans

 

[DaveChase]

Ancient Greek model.

They have a library and study areas along with small lecture halls.

Students are self taught and have those with the greater knowledge telling how it is, having debates, and provide encouragement to continue to grow/learn.

There are some limited classes on Science/Tech because most are just too busy working to actually teach anyone.

Another idea is if the winters (or summers) are extremely bad, and most do not go outside for work, then that is when classes are. Time for family and learning.

Just some thoughts

Dave Chase

 

[Murdoc]

I'd say that a lot of what they do depends on two other factors: the TL and their economic model. The TL will tell us how much they are able to automate the learning and teaching processes. The economic model will show how much of the world's economy is likely spent on things like education. For example, a kleptocratic model would likely put nothing into education for any but the "elite", although it probably wouldn't be much given such a small population (such a model would most likely burn out such a small group in little time, and since you say they are prospering they are likely at least more centrist than that (free market or mixed economy)). A more socialist model would make education available to everyone (or at least most, politics could also play a factor in who), and thus you'd have a better educated population, meaning an easier time supporting higher levels of education.

 

[Enoki]

Given the tech levels available it would be easier to import courses on electronic media. You might have holographic displays that allow a lecturer to present them. But, in any case some sort of portable electronic media with lots of options would be the easiest, cheapest, and most comprehensive means of getting this to a small community.

If you needed or wanted some local assistance you'd only need one or two people taking attendence, checking student work, etc. They wouldn't necessarily have to be experts in the field of study as that is what the electronic courses are for. They just need to be proctors and assistants to the students.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

I like DaveChase's idea. It's different and can be used for some really nice local flavor.

As for taped/holoed/whatever learning: it is adequate for some things, but true learning often comes from the give and take between student and professor. If you don't have local 'experts' you will have trouble getting anyone to more than a mediocre level of learning in some areas. There are also plenty of folks who have a different enough learning style that automated learning doesn't work - they *have* to have the interaction so the instructor can figure out how to approach their needs.

None of that is to say it won't be a method used - or even the primary method. But, it will be mediocre learning accomplished mostly.

 

[Enoki]

All of that is true about most electronic learning systems, at least as they are today. But, given the original premise, a population of 60,000 or so on a world is going to be spread pretty thin unless local conditions and such force them into urbanization.
With a spread out population you won't have much choice and a poor one is better than none. In the urban model it might be possible to have a small college / university going.

Of course, it might be easier to find the means to import talent rather than develop it locally at that point too.

 

[rancke]

All of that is true about most electronic learning systems, at least as they are today. But, given the original premise, a population of 60,000 or so on a world is going to be spread pretty thin unless local conditions and such force them into urbanization.

The population of the original colony and its surroundings is 36,000. Another 28,000 live in landholds scattered across the continent. There are some other small colonies on some of the other continents, having been dumped there by the Imperial Navy during the Pacification Campaigns, but the 64,000 is the population of the "catchment area" (The colonists don't begin to settle the other continents in any real numbers for another 100-150 years). Students from the outlying settlements travel to the capital to study and live in student housing. The electronic education would, IMO, be more for the elementary education of outlier children.

I wouldn't dream of saying that I'm not interested in the qualitative suggestions people have made, because I am, but what I really need are some concrete numbers.


Hans

 

[Murdoc]

I wouldn't dream of saying that I'm not interested in the qualitative suggestions people have made, because I am, but what I really need are some concrete numbers.

Which you're not going to be able to get unless we look at a lot more about the world. As I said, TL and economics are going to be big factors. While it would be true on any world, it would be more so with such a small population that you have to figure out how much of the population could be devoted to the education industry. If 99% of the population is toiling away 12 hours a day farming or mining, you're not going to be able to support any kind of education infrastructure. So factors such as the environment, economy, richness of local resources, how it fits in in the interstellar economy, etc. are all important. Imagine for instance they are poor in most resources, which would suggest a poor colony by itself and thus not much education available, but they were rich in one natural resource that was useless to them (e.g. lanthenum, or zuchai crystals), but of major worth to other nearby worlds (in the previous example, worlds high on industry and shipbuilding), then they would be getting a huge amount of money from out-system that they can spend on a rich lifestyle (think about countries like Kuwait here). TL will tell us how much they can automate the process, because with so few people, there won't be a lot to devote to university-style education because of all the tasks that need performing, from logistics, to administration and bureaucracy, teaching, research, teaching assistants, etc. (think of all the universities that have a bigger population than your entire world). The more they can automate this (or any other jobs really), the more education they can provide and to more people. Of course, even with available tech, they still need to be able to afford to spend it, hence why the wealth of the colony is important, and even then, the economics and politics will decide how wide-spread such education is. Is it available to all for free, or for a price? Are there different qualities of institutions based on how much you can afford? Can only the elite get a good education? Do they want the masses to be illiterate so they are less likely to rebel? Are there restrictions based on gender, or race, or species, or caste, or clan, or hair and eye color, or what political party you belong to? How about crime, is it a huge drain on the economy? Non-existent? Or is it a rebellious underground teaching people to read and write illegally (thinking of Rifts RPG here)?

So either you come up with all this stuff first to try and derive somewhat realistic numbers, or you leave it up in the air and just pick those numbers arbitrarily.

 

[Enoki]

I wouldn't dream of saying that I'm not interested in the qualitative suggestions people have made, because I am, but what I really need are some concrete numbers.

I tend to agree with Murdoc here. The biggest single factor will be tech level. If the world is say a TL 6 there is really little need for "higher" education. Most people wouldn't benefit from it at that level of technology. Development of basic infrastructure requiring mostly numbers of workers with a trade skill would be a better choice.
At TL 12 and up it may be an absolute necessity to have higher education to get a trained and useful workforce. So there would now be an emphsis on getting something in place.

Economics would play a role too. Can the colony afford to pay for the infrastructure and people to make such an institution worthwhile? Murdoc uses Kuwait as an example. There is a nation with lots of money but the vast majority of the people living there are not getting an advanced education and the university structure available is nothing to brag about. This is due to the country making most of its wealth off a basic resource that doesn't require massive amounts of educated people to extract. What people are needed are more easily imported than home grown.

The sort of government and law that the colony has will also effect this. As the colony becomes more dictitorial and oppressive the chances of establishing institutions of learning diminish.... or at least ones that are really productive rather than propaganda and indoctrination mills for the next generation of appratchiks the government needs to maintain power.

 

[Garyius2003]

I would use the US military off duty education system as an example here. A few full time faculty and staff for a base area, and mostly part time adjuncts. Classroom/lecture halls located in different areas, a building with dedicated labs for learning, and very little grad school or research opportunities.

65k people on a whole world would just be a little more spread out.

Maybe have labs centralized in one area with small dorms so people could fly in for 5-8 days of all day labs after having lecture/online learning class for a term.

http://www.ed.umuc.edu/general-info/locations/germany/airforce/kaierslautern-kapaun.html

 

[Enoki]

I would use the US military off duty education system as an example here. A few full time faculty and staff for a base area, and mostly part time adjuncts. Classroom/lecture halls located in different areas, a building with dedicated labs for learning, and very little grad school or research opportunities.

65k people on a whole world would just be a little more spread out.

Maybe have labs centralized in one area with small dorms so people could fly in for 5-8 days of all day labs after having lecture/online learning class for a term.

http://www.ed.umuc.edu/general-info/locations/germany/airforce/kaierslautern-kapaun.html

The downside to that system, having experianced it, is that it is very much hit and miss. While you can generally get the basics it rarely offers... particularly in person.... the specialized classes needed for a full degree. For most people it would be difficult to obtain a timely and useful full education from such a system.

I would say any system would have to be tailor made to the world it is operating on with respect given to tech level, economy, population distribution, needs of the world in terms of trained persons, and cost. No one system will work best in all situations.

 

[rancke]

Which you're not going to be able to get unless we look at a lot more about the world.

I'm sorry my original post was too vague. I had thought that the mention of the colony prospering and the lack of comments to the contrary would imply that 21st Century Western nations would be a good source of inspiration. I was hoping someone would know about student and teacher ratios in the Real World.

The knowledge TL is 12, but the relatively short time to build infrastructure (50 years) probably mitigates against a full exploitation of TL12 technology. So maybe rich TL7 countries of contemporary Earth will not be the worst possible analogy.

Mind you, even figures from Kuwait could be useful, as long as I knew they were from Kuwait and could take the difference between it and my fictional colony into account.


Hans

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Well, Hans, here's some numbers:
Most secondary school educators seem to think 30 students to a teacher is the largest possible class, with some of them pushing for 15:1, but most settling on 20:1 as a "good" ratio. It depends on how much education in educating they have had - more training invested in fuzzy courses on teaching tends to produce a drive for a lot fewer students per teacher.

As far as colleges go (your question), it depends on the course. Some of the most basic courses in math and science and things like literature can have a ratio of 100:1, though 50:1 is probably true in smaller colleges. (The 100:1 is found in the monster state schools with a student population the size of your whole colony.) The courses more oriented on degree-related information are often 20-30:1. The courses on really esoteric information or involving a very laborious project (a multi-thousand page thesis or building a humaniform robot or whatnot) often have ratios of 5-10:1.

Now, of course, you have to add in administrators. On a colony you probably don't need a special recruiting office, nor a sport scouting office, nor a Bureau of Redundancy in Homogenous Diversity Department. If your population curve has approximately 10,000 in the college demographic, and you assume only 25% of the population attends.... You could probably get away with only a hundred administrators or so. (That includes all the staff, excepting teachers.)

BTW, if you only have 2,500 students at any one time, across four years of schooling, you will probably gravitate to the low end of all the ratios above. As the demographic expands, the ratios will grow as the teacher population lags behind the student population. Then you will have to decide if the character of the college changes and it goes with the higher ratios or if it expands its teacher faculty enough to return to the lower ratios at which it began.

 

[rancke]

As far as colleges go (your question), it depends on the course. Some of the most basic courses in math and science and things like literature can have a ratio of 100:1, though 50:1 is probably true in smaller colleges. (The 100:1 is found in the monster state schools with a student population the size of your whole colony.) The courses more oriented on degree-related information are often 20-30:1. The courses on really esoteric information or involving a very laborious project (a multi-thousand page thesis or building a humaniform robot or whatnot) often have ratios of 5-10:1.

Thanks, Fritz, that's just the sort of help I was hoping for.

Now, of course, you have to add in administrators. On a colony you probably don't need a special recruiting office, nor a sport scouting office, nor a Bureau of Redundancy in Homogenous Diversity Department. If your population curve has approximately 10,000 in the college demographic, and you assume only 25% of the population attends.... You could probably get away with only a hundred administrators or so. (That includes all the staff, excepting teachers.)

A ratio of 20:1 would mean 125 teachers and a ratio of 100:1 would mean 25 teachers. Perhaps around 100 would be reasonable?

2500 students is more than I had guessed. I wonder if there would be room for more than one such institution? I have the Athenaeum, as the colonists call it, the most prestigious (or only) institution, built near the Town Hall (colony headquarter) around this time (50 years after founding) and the building moved to make room for a new wing of the Town Hall about 50 years later, but a building that can house 2500 students would be bigger than what I had in mind. Though perhaps this could just be the main building with various annexes spread around the town. It wouldn't be a very big town at this time.

BTW, if you only have 2,500 students at any one time, across four years of schooling, you will probably gravitate to the low end of all the ratios above. As the demographic expands, the ratios will grow as the teacher population lags behind the student population. Then you will have to decide if the character of the college changes and it goes with the higher ratios or if it expands its teacher faculty enough to return to the lower ratios at which it began.

I would imagine some provisions for some of the students getting more than four years' worth of higher education.


Hans

 

[SpaceBadger]

I would imagine some provisions for some of the students getting more than four years' worth of higher education.

Might that require travelling offworld to find the necessary grad-school program and knowledgeable faculty to help the student w grad level research etc?

 

[Garyius2003]

The downside to that system, having experianced it, is that it is very much hit and miss. While you can generally get the basics it rarely offers... particularly in person.... the specialized classes needed for a full degree. For most people it would be difficult to obtain a timely and useful full education from such a system.

I would say any system would have to be tailor made to the world it is operating on with respect given to tech level, economy, population distribution, needs of the world in terms of trained persons, and cost. No one system will work best in all situations.

I agree with the weakness you stated. However, given the total pop of 65k, spread out over a whole world, a campus for learning does not make sense. Distance learning supported by off world plug and play software, lecture stations, and learning labs does make sense, though.

I think you get what classes can be offered under the University of Maryland Military model, or the student goes off world.

 

[rancke]

Might that require travelling offworld to find the necessary grad-school program and knowledgeable faculty to help the student w grad level research etc?

Perhaps, though the nearest world where that can be found is about twenty parsecs away at this time. I'm inclined to believe that research would be difficult to do and that higher education would be mostly restricted to acquiring more advanced knowledge without discovering new knowledge themselves.

Mind you, since Traveller tech levels tend to stay the same for centuries on end, research is perhaps less of a factor in the academic communities of the 3rd Imperium, even on worlds with a population big enough that it could, theoretically, support major research functions.

Anyway, that's moot in this case, since 64,000 people most certainly can't.


Hans

 

[rancke]

I agree with the weakness you stated. However, given the total pop of 65k, spread out over a whole world, a campus for learning does not make sense. Distance learning supported by off world plug and play software, lecture stations, and learning labs does make sense, though.

Spread out across part of a continent, as mentioned above.


Hans

 

[DaveChase]

Some of the higher learning would not all be universities.

Some with be tech colleges, art colleges and I want to learn something but I don't know what 2 year schools that would cover the basics (ie more than they learned in high school).


So with that in mind, you might have 3 or 4 colleges and 1 university scattered between a few of the larger settlements.

Or 5 colleges that in the near future will turn into a university.

An example in the United States that I am familar with, is Kansas State Univeristy. When it started they even taught blacksmithing and horse shoeing. Which in today's world would be taught at a tech school or specialized college of arts.

They taught sciences and farming side by side, which today they still do but now they call it Ag Engineering.


Dave Chase

 

[Enoki]

If you look at the Western world today about 1 person in 3 has a full four year degree. That works out to about 20,000 people in the colony at most. Now, since only some would be getting that degree each year dividing by 50 gives us 400. So, one might expect that 300 to 800 students per year is about all you are going to have at this institution of learning.

That works out to maybe 30 or 40 instructors at most. So, the content is going to have to be pretty specific to the colony's needs, or just some sort of general studies degree is offered along with a handful of speciality courses.

It might be cheaper for the colony to use the Kuwait model. Send selected colonists off world for their education and try and recruit people from off world who have the needed education and skills rather than try and develop them locally.

This, of course, would depend on what's nearby in the galactic neighborhood for education. The cost of a couple of mid-passage jumps to a nearby world and the student subsidized might be cheaper than building a small college and staffing it.