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MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”

tech.mit.edu

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Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”

#241

Post by crpatino »

melted wrote: post #231
crpatino wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I am hearing is that, as long as you do "something with computers" and it does not cost any extra money, you'd be happy to exchange 4 years of your time for a Bs in CS? What about getting - gasps, the horror - and actual job as a data entry clerk? You know... something that pays you money instead of making the dean richer with your efforts?

Compared to what, though? To paying tens (up to over a hundred for top schools) of thousands of dollars for the same thing but without practical skills? Ideally, people would be leaving school with something to show for it: open source code, launched projects, co-authorship on research papers, stuff like that. Or better yet, leave as cohesive teams, ready to rip in the public sector. Or even better: leave as a part o…

So, now you want to write open source code, launch projects, co-author papers,... not on my watch, kiddo.

Now go put your nose down on those damned spreadsheets. Copy from column A to column Q - no, no macros, thankyouverymuch - but convert everything to UPPERCASE, and fix typos please, unless that was not a typo, in which case don't.

And remember, the Dean already cashed the check I sent him, so you better hurry up. I want no less than 100 rows per hour. Otherwise you flunk the semester, and while you don't pay tution your parents are going to get tired of having to support your lame ass if you do not start to bring a wage home one of this years.

Is that "practical" enough for you?

Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”

#242

Post by WalterBright »

bobby_9x wrote: post #229
rndmize wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people are passive. They want a teacher to lead them and guide them through the learning process. Bull. Most people have any interest in learning beaten out of them by our crappy factory/prison like educational system. Because you know what's not conducive to learning? Having no choice as far as subjects; having no choice how long you spend on them; having no choice on who to learn from; having no choice who y…

"Bull. Most people have any interest in learning beaten out of them by our crappy factory/prison like educational system. Because you know what's not conducive to learning? Having no choice as far as subjects; having no choice how long you spend on them; having no choice on who to learn from; having no choice who you learn with." Most people don't really want to choose and if given too many choices, will be overwhelm…

The trouble with learning things like math is it requires effort, work, and persistence. By default, the vast majority of people simply will not learn it (including me).

But without knowing math, you'll never get very far in science and engineering. You'll never get a chance at the fun stuff.

Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”

#243

Post by NamTaf »

samstave wrote: post #219
melted wrote: post #159

I think what we need are apprenticeships. I.e. a prominent research group hires kids after the remedial first two years of traditional college curriculum (or something like it plus a couple of years in an entry level job), and has them work on the actual problems at hand, filling the knowledge gaps as needed. It is no longer possible to know much of anything, so we should specialize and diversify at the same time, me…

Startup idea #4096 --- A YC apprenticeship program that combines internships with YC companies with trade classes from various resources including techshop, crucible, and others. There are so many creative people in the world that simply need mentors and resources. The Bay Area can really provide all of this! There are likely tens of resources I am glossing over, but if the YCcommunity is to prove that we can solve t…

How do you gel the 'move fast and break things' ethos with an internship / mentorship role? The former requires existing domain knowledge to hit the ground running and achieve large things quickly, whereas the latter requires going more slowly, explaining the reasoning behind decisions, allowing mistakes as learning processes, etc.

edit: Unless you mean established former YC companies who are no longer in the startup mindset. I didn't consider that originally but then why limit yourself to YC companies if you can snag some sort of vetted supply to the Facebooks/Twitters/etc. of the world?

Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”

#244

Post by rtkwe »

nostrebored wrote: post #121
wfo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intro courses are the same (calculus and basic chemistry are calculus and basic chemistry) but once you get past anything more difficult than 101 you see a wild disparity in difficulty across different universities (some universities will have material as junior-level undergrad that others have as graduate). Community colleges don't even try to teach the vast majority of courses taught at the smallest least prestigio…

I went to two different state schools. 4000 level courses at one were 2000 level classes at the other, and vice versa. I lost 30+ hours transferring, because courses didn't meet the rigor, or they weren't even courses at the better university. For instance, a 4000 level linear algebra course counted as half of a calc 2 credit.

That in and of itself is a weird equivalence to draw. Calc 2 and Linear Algebra are radically different courses...

Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”

#245

Post by seanp2k2 »

melted wrote: post #217
totalrobe wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In SDLC terms, college is an education delivered via the waterfall method whereas the workplace requires a continuing agile process.

Not really. I would argue that today college is little more than a weeding out process that weeds out far too many. You sit in classes and solve bullshit problems with known answers that will have very little bearing on the realities of your professional life once you graduate. For the most part people go to college to have a piece of paper that says they went to college and had enough stamina to tolerate this bullsh…

Stamina to tolerate bullshit and get things done despite thinking they're totally idiotic is valuable skill set in many industries. The piece of paper is also proof that you can follow directions well.

Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”

#246

Post by ylem »

melted wrote: post #159

I think what we need are apprenticeships. I.e. a prominent research group hires kids after the remedial first two years of traditional college curriculum (or something like it plus a couple of years in an entry level job), and has them work on the actual problems at hand, filling the knowledge gaps as needed. It is no longer possible to know much of anything, so we should specialize and diversify at the same time, me…

I think internships are extremely useful! I went through a lot in high school and college trying to figure out what exactly I wanted (or didn't want to do). Now, I have a number of interns and some of them have gone on to graduate school in physics. Others have decided that physics isn't for them and have decided to do computer science or math. I try to give them a chance to have a self contained meaningful project.

Do any of you have any suggestions for remote interns? I tried it once and though both the student and I were motivated, the time difference was a killer. Also, I rely a lot on random interactions with my interns. I think it would require a lot more structure to pull it off...

Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”

#247

Post by melted »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #245
melted wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. I would argue that today college is little more than a weeding out process that weeds out far too many. You sit in classes and solve bullshit problems with known answers that will have very little bearing on the realities of your professional life once you graduate. For the most part people go to college to have a piece of paper that says they went to college and had enough stamina to tolerate this bullsh…

Stamina to tolerate bullshit and get things done despite thinking they're totally idiotic is valuable skill set in many industries. The piece of paper is also proof that you can follow directions well.

Getting shit done is valuable. Tolerating bullshit is absolutely not.

Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”

#248

Post by melted »

crpatino wrote: post #241
melted wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to what, though? To paying tens (up to over a hundred for top schools) of thousands of dollars for the same thing but without practical skills? Ideally, people would be leaving school with something to show for it: open source code, launched projects, co-authorship on research papers, stuff like that. Or better yet, leave as cohesive teams, ready to rip in the public sector. Or even better: leave as a part o…

So, now you want to write open source code, launch projects, co-author papers,... not on my watch, kiddo. Now go put your nose down on those damned spreadsheets. Copy from column A to column Q - no, no macros, thankyouverymuch - but convert everything to UPPERCASE, and fix typos please, unless that was not a typo, in which case don't. And remember, the Dean already cashed the check I sent him, so you better hurry up.…

I'm not even going to dignify this with a proper response.

Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”

#249

Post by rubicon33 »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #83

This sounds overly dreamy. At the very least, their new "university" should bother to award degrees when specific breadth-and-depth levels of knowledge are adequately demonstrated.

Do you have an email address I could use to get ahold of you. I have a question about a post you made a few years back.

Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”

#250

Post by gravypod »

solipsism wrote: post #188
gravypod wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I get into my classes at my university I get the textbook, read into the book a little and say "ok, I remember learning about this from X, Y, and Z project I've worked on". I then go on to goof off in every class, as I am doing right this moment. Nothing I have learned is of substance in my algorithms, computer science, or programming classes that I did not already know before I enrolled. I'm bored, and I want t…

Understanding the material from the lower level courses in whatever university you attend in an afternoon is not even remotely comparable to picking up any of those topics fully in an afternoon. Are you under the impression that after you've been through your 200-level algorithms course you've now exhausted the topic and have nothing left to learn? If you haven't even taken 300 and 400 level courses, how would you kn…

If you read my reply to "brodawg" I agree, I say "I don't mean you can understand the full depth of each topic in an afternoon or two, I mean at a working level you could get an understanding of the topic".

I don't mean to imply that someone should be teaching courses after an afternoon of flipping through a textbook.

That being said, do you need to have a PhD to be a good computer scientist? Most of the skills needed are basic analytical abilities. Sure, someone might not know all the terms that we use and might even think some of the ways we talk about problems are flat out wrong, but it is those individuals who truly leave a mark.

I'd argue that the best in our field have just been random people who have stumbled in and said "This looks cool, let me see what I can do with this".

Here is a list of people who, in my opinion, fit this category.

* Donald Knuth - Do I even need to describe him? (Is a PhD in Mathematics, not CS)

* Brian Wilson Kernighan - The Practice of Programming, The C Programming language, The Unix Programming Environment (All books), and first Hello World

* John Carmack - Or even him (Dropped out after the 2nd year)

* Douglas Crockford - JSON

* Carl Sassenrath - REBOL

* Bram Cohen - BitTorrent

* Michael Widenius - MySQL AB and MariaDB

* Larry Wall - Perl

I'd love to see you sarcastically mock these people for not having the correct pedigree to even approach understanding our field.

I know for certain that since he dropped out of college and does not have a degree in CS John Carmack has no valuable input to give when discussing optimization or algorithms.

I don't know honestly. All I can say is that someone can definitely succeed as a computer scientist if they do not have a degree in computer science, and I don't think publishing papers has anything to do with professing your knowledge (mainly my gripe is with how corrupt and obtuse that entire system is). What I do know is that it is extremely unlikely that I will get a job if I don't get a piece of paper from a place that promises it will teach me something.

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