221–230 of 449 posts
“I feel committed to being the person who’s there to help millennials, the next generation, go on to become critical thinkers,” Said the person unable to use critical thinking to avoid becoming a prostitute.
> an adjunct professor of Romance languages > precarious academic jobs > a teacher of English composition > teaches history > teaching English composition and critical thinking > began teaching English composition > published a poem > with one novel under her belt, is working on a second I see a pattern. I think those jobs are not much in demand.
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> most universities have moved to act more and more like for-profit entities. At my alum mater, the state cut support to the state universities to practically nothing. Voters saw how much money the big universities were making on college football. They consistently voted to cut the money to the university system. Only problem? Most state supported universities did not have a football program. My university: * turned…
You basically typed out what I would have typed, but got lazy and just said "reasons are complex." There's something of a joke/quote in university circles about how universities went from "state funded to state supported to state located." When you get Also, you forgot the Saudi Arabian nationals whose govt fully funds their US education (though this program is becoming more restrictive in recent years with the Saudi…
I'm just curious, could you elaborate on this? Are you referring to them not being able to cope up academically? Or the cultural difference or racism.
I've known a couple of these students back from my college and they seemed to be doing alright.
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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 If you get a degree, lots of what you learn will be outdated fast.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…
The 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.
Then why do they require a degree at all? What specific skills will a degreed applicant have that a high school grad won't?
Say 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…
Teaching salaries are low relative to education level because lots of people are socially pushed toward teaching (obvious example: many people's mentors are teachers). Programming doesn't have this dynamic.
I'm not opposed to unionization - I joined the new grad student union when I was getting my PhD. But I think you should focus on programmers' specific problems, like long hours and low vacation time, not on problems from other jobs which have low relevance.
The 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…
Same for other "liberal-arts" degrees.
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I'm not sure why you're downvoted. This is a real problem that is palpable for anyone that has worked in higher ed since the 1980s as most universities have moved to act more and more like for-profit entities. The reasons for this move are complex, and one result is a rise in well-paid administrators and low-paid adjuncts with a decline in tenured faculty. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/mar/30/academic-b.…
> 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…
My experience comes from presbyterian churches which have some highly analogous features to corporations deriving from theology and predating by thousands of years the modern corporation. Thus there is a annual "Congregation and Corporation meeting", which is really two meetings for convenience held at the same time but which are formally started and ended separately. Participation is almost identical save that the "Congregation" can have communicant members that are minors and therefore not legally voting members of the earthly corporation.
With companies no longer requesting university degrees, online learning (like watching Harvard courses) becoming more popular and in some countries university being outragous expensive, the future of universities is bleak because people will stop going there. And that of acadamics teaching is even worse. The internet will cut all middleman, and teachers being the middleman between you and knowledge, or gatekeepers to…
Many courses and students benefit from learning in person across many subjects, CS included. Sometimes it's the push they need, sometimes it's the value their classmates bring, sometimes it's the value the professor brings. Online courses are great, but they don't replace everything. I don't think the future of universities is bleak. The explanations above considering that we have a surplus of Ph.D.'s seems to be a l…
The MOOCs don't work well because they are 100% virtual. What they need is a bit of in-person, human touch. I'd like to see a system where online courses are being supervised by "educational coaches" who are not necessarily experts in the field, but experts in motivation and maximizing results.
Imagine a remote location, where there are no universities. A number of people could take completely different online courses there, monitored by the same coach. The role of the coach is mostly to witness the effort of the student (great for motivation) and counsel the student as to how to apply his effort most efficiently. The coach could help organize local study groups as well, if there are enough students. Technical questions could be handled by online forums and the MOOC staff. The training of the MOOC counselors could be a MOOC course itself, to spread the system organically.
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> I'm surprised more high-tier universities don't supply tenured PIs with dedicated grant writers, or at least easy access to them. Who would pay them?
Presumably they'd pay for themselves because the universities would bring in larger future grants, because the output would be increased, because the academic staff would be better utilized.