Why tons and tons of online course are not making any difference to how University works ?
Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars
191–200 of 449 posts
Re: Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don't even know if "don't go to college" is good advice for the long term (15+ years) in software engineering, let alone the fact that you're completely forgetting about other fields. Seems incredibly short-sighted to me.
Unless maybe you are going to a top 1% CS program, there is little need for a degree in software engineering. Even if you go to a top 1% school, it's unlikely you will be taught by anyone remotely as good as this guy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdAfILoJWcI And his lectures are available for free. If you get a degree, lots of what you learn will be outdated fast. The most important things you learn will be on the…
>> We don't even know if "don't go to college" is good advice for the long term (15+ years) in software engineering
> Unless maybe you are going to a top 1% CS program, there is little need for a degree in software engineering.
I think you missed what I just said. You say there "is" little need. But I'm not looking at the present. We still don't know if we do for the long-term. (Well, lots of people think they do, but they're only guessing, not going on evidence obviously.)
Note that it's simply not true that people would learn the same material independently that they would learn in a classroom. Yes, it is theoretically possible, and some people can pull it off, but it's not at all universal or even common. A lot of people need the environment to learn better. Online lectures just don't cut it for everyone. So yes, "you need to go to college" can be true regardless of how good online lectures are, and we still don't know if what people get out of a CS degree will on average give them an advantage compared to those who don't get one in the longer term (though I don't really have statistics for the shorter term either).
Re: Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars
#193Say it with me friends and colleagues, Union. This is the future for all of us, when programming becomes commoditized just as teaching has. When our salaries are pushed to the bottom. We are not owners, we are not capitalists, we are not bosses, we are people with a skill you can learn on the internet and a corresponding talent for it. Either a) this will happen to us as programmers, b) we have credentialing and gate…
e) You will no longer be able to call yourself a "full stack" developer that can work in any field. Employers will only look for developers that are good at programming, and a expert in a niche field. For example, bioinformatics.
Re: Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars
#194The fact that the article features an English professor is unsurprising. This is a supply-side problem--liberal arts degrees are in relatively low demand, but institutions continue to graduate students at unsustainable levels. No one is telling the students that they're spending 4-12 years getting an education which is worth less than what they're paying for it. For the most part, the only jobs that hire for English…
> For the most part, the only jobs that hire for English and other liberal-arts degrees are universities and schools This is such nonsense. Most jobs don't care what degree you have as long as you have a degree, and with an English degree you can apply for 90% of jobs. You could graduate and go on to be anything from an advertising executive, to a soldier. Most jobs don't care - it's technology that's unusual.
That's largely true for an undergrad degree. For a graduate degree, and a PhD in particular, there aren't a lot of alternative employment options. I've been told that having a PhD in those fields makes you less employable for positions in general (because why are you applying for this job, and it is uncomfortable to hire an older person with a PhD for an entry-level position).
Re: Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars
#195Yet another case for universal basic income.
Re: Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars
#196The explosion of administrative staff is crazy universities keep cutting teaching positions and increasing admin.
It seems like there should be a market for low overhead small schools with high paid teaching staff.
I believe this is the model Olin tries to follow. In general, institutions that don't offer graduate programs can afford to focus on undergrads. You can see this with the small liberal arts colleges, although they generally fail at low overhead and tend to succumb to the donor-industrial adminstrative complex.
Re: Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For the most part, the only jobs that hire for English and other liberal-arts degrees are universities and schools This is such nonsense. Most jobs don't care what degree you have as long as you have a degree, and with an English degree you can apply for 90% of jobs. You could graduate and go on to be anything from an advertising executive, to a soldier. Most jobs don't care - it's technology that's unusual.
You can be a soldier without ant college education (and qualify for a direct path to Officer Candidate School with a two-year degree or equivalent credits, IIRC), so giving “soldier” as on option with 4-year English degree is literally suggesting that it is worth the same as no college education at all.
That's what I'm saying though - most degrees aren't career-specific, and most careers don't need a specific degree, or any degree at all as you say.
Re: Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars
#198The explosion of administrative staff is crazy universities keep cutting teaching positions and increasing admin.
I work for a university and while I think there's some justification for increases in some roles - many universities desperately need internal equivalents of an 18F/US Digital service type entity among other things.
Other situations are complex - grants/external funding impose substantial administration requirements (while being larger and larger shares of revenue) or require substantial administrative expertise, often require things like outreach programs which PIs don't want to deal with, etc.
But at the same time, I think administrative salaries are frequently unconscionable.
Re: Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
> most universities have moved to act more and more like for-profit entities. I think this reflects a larger trend. Most institutions are taking on the rituals of the dominant organizing principle in society: the corporation. I believe this is why church groups are having "annual general meetings" and that formerly not for profit institutions are mimicking the organizational structure of corporations: meetings, hiera…
Isn't that just how large organizations are run? How else would you run a large organization except with layers of hierarchy and meetings?
Our largest organizations don't have pervasive hierarchy and meetings which break down at extreme sizes. Markets for example are self organizing around price. Countries may or may not be even larger scale organizations.
You can find smaller scale versions that operate on similar principles. https://hbr.org/2013/11/hierarchy-is-overrated
Re: Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
In parts of Europe there the expression: "That's Texas." It roughly means "That's crazy." but with a 'Murica flavor to it. Lately, I've been finding myself frequently thinking: "That's Texas." Let me get this straight. Take a course load of 4 double semester courses per year with 200 hours of class time total in the given year. Let's double it to 400 hours just to be safe to include exam marking and office hours. A s…
> In parts of Europe there the expression: "That's Texas." It roughly means "That's crazy." but with a 'Murica flavor to it. According to this article [1] in Washington Post, the first occurrence of Texas as "crazy" in Norwegian dates to 1957. Makes me wonder if it's used this way in other European countries too, and whether or not the etymology is independent. It's worth noting that unlike the term "Amerikanske tils…
Never heard it here in Sweden.