Hi Yves,
Glad you could join us and no need for late apologies.
Yves Simon wrote,
You are right, many successful people including leading scholarly thinkers who have had a major impact on the world did not have a PhDs.As a matter of fact most of the successful people in the materialistic world don't have those credentials and there are many autdidacts in the academic world. It is time to change those myths and I think that should pass by the open education movement.
A PhD is a rite of passage in the apprenticeship of knowledge production within a particular epistemology and understanding of knowledge. Openness is deeply rooted in the traditions of this form of knowledge production. Any traditional research worth their salt knows the finding the answer to a perplexing research questions begins with a literature review or study on the current state of thinking. In other words we build on the open ideas of others in the pursuit of new knowledge. That said, a conventional PhD is but one path of knowledge acquisition is not necessarily better than any other paths of knowledge pursuit and anyone who holds a PhD will know this (even thought they may not be prepared to admit is.)
So I do agree with you -- in the 21st we must go beyond the conventional forms of knowledge pursuit and societies recognition of how knowledge was acquired and credentialed.
I must concede that the OERu network is working within our own limitations -- We will not be able to resolve or find answers to all the questions and suggestions you raise. Of necessity, given government legislation and requirements for credible credentials, a conservative market and society we are restricting our level of innovation to what we can realistically achieve achieve in the formal sector -- its not to say what we are doing is better than anything else, but think of the OERu concept as our contribution from the formal sector to the rapidly evolving context of alternative learning for the 21st century.