Paywalls vs Open Access

Opening Statements:

Open Access education and research are not only legal and beneficial, they are also somewhat necessary; considering the influence of corruption that is a tendency in centralized organization. Paid access to the collective wisdom is no exception either. In the vast majority of cases, researchers double pay for access to study. They pay for the study to be conducted, as their tax dollars are likely to be part of that funding; and they then have to pay for access to the resulting literature. It's clear that this is overreach by institutions; yet the market is still organized in that manner. This is in times where many countries have gratis higher education. We see education not only as a staple of modern society, but also as a necessity. This is the value of Open Access study. It removes the barriers between the less fortunate in a population and a necessity for upward mobility. It may be the most important factor in mitigating the class stratification that educational pay walls promote.

Education and Stratification:

It's no secret that higher education has a tendency to lead to higher paying jobs. Here in the US, higher education has become more and more expensive, as the economy borrows more and more from the future. Student debt is a larger and larger strain on the younger generations; and there is no end to that in sight. The projected economic effect is a continually shrinking middle class. This is a trend that goes back to about 1970 or so; with the end of the Post WW2 Expansion. The increase in disparity has resulted in tensions between the working, middle and upper class. Even the upper class is now divided into the 1%, .1%, .01% and even .001%. The disparity is a clear divisor in general organization; and the tensions are clear influences in social unrest. Though this observation has not been ignored, it has however not been solved for. The recent, necessary emergence of Open Access models have the potential to address and mitigate this to a substantial degree; but it must first gain traction in social acceptance.

Extrapolation:

With more general, social acceptance, a movement for more gratis higher education becomes more probable; not only in the institutions, but also in grass roots movements. More free of charge higher education would be likely; and more self and community taught academic study is likely. It not only addresses the financial walls to education, but also the Authoritarianism and Credentialism. Many here in the far west currently, understandably may feel that it's unfair for them to be carrying heavy financial debt for their education, while so many others do not. This model has failed the younger generations; and is robbing them of their earning years. Even if that weren't the case, it cannot go on like this anyway. Costs of living that increase at rates that surpass the rate increases in income would doom any system; as it wears away at the purchasing power of the consumer, and thus the profit margins of the economy's component businesses. It's not just a strong indicator of economic decline, it's a strong influence in the propagation of it. With the information society and the attention economy in full swing, a need for higher education is increasing. There are a lot of understandable concerns about the flow of information and how it can negatively affect the collective consciousness. The current, main stream methods of dealing with it are centralized, censorship models. The less common are decentralized, democratic models that aren't necessarily any better at sorting wheat from chaff. They would merely test values against each other; in the absence of access to higher education. With disparity in access to higher education, there would be disparity in advantage with democratic models; as seen in the society that we live in. General access to higher education is a no brainer for the 21st century.

Institutional Influence:

The educational institutions have become targets of political division. The bureaucracies, campuses and media outlets have become platforms for political division; and that has too been a hindrance to access to higher education. Centralized models are weak to such influences; and decentralized models are probably the best solution for checks and balances. The fear mongering toward decentralized models are hypocritical arguments that ignore the danger of authoritarian influence in centralized models. Higher education should not be a conditional right; and that is the path that too much of the West has taken... and that is likely to be a weakness on the global stage. The information moves and emergence forms so quickly that institutionalized higher education may not be capable of keeping pace. The procedures of institutions are hurdles to forward momentum that more agile organizations do not have. By the time studies are done, and literature is put into curriculum, distributed organizations can have major breakthroughs. This should be expected to accelerate as AI tools become more accessible.

Resources for Upward Mobility:

We've known since the time of "give a man a fish" that handouts are expensive, pseudo solutions that don't tend to have the general positive effects that we hope for. In this century, higher education is essential to not only higher paying jobs, but also understanding much of the information that is passed around main stream and social media. In these times, there is a growing need for general public understanding of the concepts that are addressed in political and social discourse. It's no longer just about getting a job that will pay the bills. It's now about understanding the systems and institutions, in order to make informed decisions about how to vote and engage. The growing influence of decentralized models has created a Participatory Democratic aspect of the Representative Democratic system; and general access to that is better served with general access to higher education. This isn't something that is likely to come from primary, public education; and even if it were, it would likely be unable to keep pace.

Closing Thoughts:

Decentralized educational resources not only appear to be a necessity in the 21st century; they are becoming a part of the decentralized organizational structures that are emerging. The members of communities are currently educating each other and working together; outside of the educational institutions. This is because they are working with models that haven't existed before; and trying to apply existing concepts to them. Ground is being broken, where there are no experts, at the rate of distributed intelligence, with little to no procedural lag; because it's an immediate feedback loop between community and community leaders. Not all projects aim to scale to a duopoly of centralized organizations... only two of them do. The rest are quietly revolutionizing and testing organizational structures.