“Virtually all the content of this course is so basic it can be self-taught.” Says one student, and I feel the same about the subject I teach. I teach basic engineering principles for designing sound systems, so that what is said over a PA can be understood. Yet I see countless very expensive PA systems fail in this, their basic task. And I keep failing students. Perhaps what is easy for some students to self-teach, is difficult for others to learn even with guidance.

Social media has become one of our biggest recruiting tools for prospective students. I’m glad that some people here have made the effort to self-teach, but I can understand that a “credential” might be useful for applicants to replace these geeks, because once they go we will need new people with the same skills. I read a discussion recently about dealing with problem individuals on social-media networks, and it was established that a number of the solutions recently implemented on big-name networks were invented to cope with the problems of California computer bulletin-boards in the ’80s. So there is already a history of several decades in the engineering practice of social-media forums.

Douglas McKinnie