Surprising Things About School • Hacker News Board

Re: Surprising Things About School

#91

Post by randomdata » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 4:04 PM UTC

carlmr wrote: post #13

I disagree with #6. I always felt like getting a degree is such a huge waste of time, but I need to jump through this hoop to get a job for which I didn't require much more knowledge than the programming knowledge I had after high school (self-taught). But then again I went to school in Europe with cheap tuition, so time is the biggest investment here.

I find it interesting that you felt that programming had hoops to jump through. It has always seemed like a very accessible career in my experience. I started working as a programmer while I was still in high school and just kept with it. I have yet to meet an employer who has even asked about any particular credentials.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#92

Post by dpark » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 4:07 PM UTC

hodl wrote: post #67

fwdpropaganda wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I always felt like getting a degree is such a huge waste of time" is a humblebrag. There, I said it.

I don't think its a humblebrag. I take it as someone who wants to get on and code but the system requires a hoop to be jumped through.

It really is. It's kind of "I'm so awesome that I learned nothing of value in 4 years at a university". Which is a sad waste of time if true.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#93

Post by BatFastard » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 4:11 PM UTC

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #15

"17. People rely mainly on their parents for advice on what to do about education, and that has to be among the worst places to go for educational advice" This one certainly hits me hard. With a mother who dropped out of university and a father who didn't go myself and my sister both have good degrees (she's a newly qualified Vet and I'm a startup's birth and death out of uni), and nowhere to get decent advice. I kno…

My advice to my kids "Find a career in something you enjoy. If you love it, it is not work".

What did they do instead? Both went into CS!

Re: Surprising Things About School

#94

Post by walshemj » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 4:16 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #76

walshemj wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

err this is level 2 technician stuff

I agree. I also think that knowing cosine and sine are unit circle X and Y coordinates is at a similar level for university math majors.

Maybe it wasn't clear I meant this is L2 plane mechanics tech i.e. year 2 of a 3 year to BTEC in no way a university level maths

Re: Surprising Things About School

#95

Post by randomdata » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 4:20 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #89

randomdata wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the clarification. I'm still most interested in the results of the 'failures'. What did the people who failed to compete the MOOCs end up doing? How about those who succeeded with the mini live classes, but did not continue into your full program?

I don’t have a good sense for what the “failures” went on to do, they fall off our radar.

That is unfortunate, although I understand the practical reasons for why that is the case. However, how do we resolve the bias of only looking at the success stories? What if all of the 'failures' also went on to $90k average development jobs within the first month of quitting the MOOC? $90k developer jobs are not exactly difficult to come by in the current market to anyone who has expressed an interest in programming. The fact that they were willing to try a code bootcamp MOOC puts them miles ahead of the general population.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#96

Post by d0mine » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 4:24 PM UTC

artimaeis wrote: post #79

> "Nearly everyone recognizes that MOOCs are by and large a failure with ~2% completion rates, but they make us feel good because now it’s the students’ fault not they’re not learning, not the school’s" I understand the context the author is approaching this from - but it discounts the idea that MOOCs can be used the same way we use books. I've utilized about a dozen different MOOCs and I've _never_ completed a singl…

I wonder do MOOCs 2% in absolute numbers exceed the number of students in traditional universities e.g., Coursera had "over 22 millions enrollments" (2014?) http://tdlc.ucsd.edu/about/about-Learning-How-To-Learn.html

2% from several millions is more than the number of students enrolled in any UK universities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_universities_in_the_Un...

Re: Surprising Things About School

#97

Post by dandersh » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 4:25 PM UTC

"1. Students’ brains are broken by our existing system. We’ve been reworked purely for extrinsic reward and forgotten how to learn entirely. The most frequently asked questions we get are “is this required?” and “donwe get a certificate for this?” It’s sad"

That's because they are responding to the incentives that have been placed before them. Learning, when it happens, is done so in the pursuit of some form of achievement/validation (grades, test scores, etc.) Yes, properly evaluating learning capacity and knowledge accumulation is difficult, evidenced by the popularity of algorithm/fizzbuzz whiteboard problems. However the major issue is that culturally there is a lack of passion towards accepting ignorance and trying to learn ("We'll fix the problem with common sense"!), as well an open hostility by some towards those that are educated.

"9. 99% of people, when left long blocks of time alone to work on something without anyone to be accountable to, will watch Netflix."

This is caused partly (if not mostly) from issue number 1: Self direction and self control is absent from schooling. When no one is around to tell you what to do and yell at you when you don't do it, it's no surprise then that people lack the interest and discipline to pursue self-education when it is available to them.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#98

Post by zanny » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 4:26 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #28

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incomes have remained stagnant because of productivity capture, not because of education. The whole point of OP is that education does not correlate with achievement, because there are any number of showstopper issues - mostly lack of up-front cash, and/or debt, often in really quite small amounts - that keep talented people from achieving a much more productive and rewarding life. The bigger issue is that social cla…

> Incomes have remained stagnant because of productivity capture, not because of education. Not because of education. The education is simply irrelevant and has no bearing on income. The market doesn't value that output. Nobody goes to the grocery store and pays more for produce that is certified as grown by university educated farmers. Why would they?

General consumers are not the customers of education, employers are. And you can bet your bottom dollar that when HR is hiring at Purdue they take the ag science BS grads over the high school grads.

Not necessarily because they know what they are doing, but because they have that option - there is no practical reason to not hire a college graduate for almost any job nowadays because there are so many of them looking for work at any rate beyond part time minimum wage.

Even if their degree is wholly inappropriate for your job, and even if your job has no reason to expect a college degree, just the fact they have one means two things - A. they can put up with rote bullshit while having the choice not to for years, and B. they are almost always indebted and thus are going to be more loyal to the paycheck.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#99

Post by mnx » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 4:27 PM UTC

artimaeis wrote: post #79

> "Nearly everyone recognizes that MOOCs are by and large a failure with ~2% completion rates, but they make us feel good because now it’s the students’ fault not they’re not learning, not the school’s" I understand the context the author is approaching this from - but it discounts the idea that MOOCs can be used the same way we use books. I've utilized about a dozen different MOOCs and I've _never_ completed a singl…

I can also confirm I've had this experience. I learned a lot from MOOCs I never completed. That's why I like Khan Academy's model for educational content - aligned in paths, and with some gamification around completing, but ultimately made to be searchable, and relatively easy to pick up in the middle. And that's how I've used it as well - I probably have only a module or two completed, but I've watched many videos just trying to get a better grasp on one concept that wasn't well enough explained in a book I was using, or just to refresh my recollection.

Re: Surprising Things About School

#100

Post by tsumnia » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 4:27 PM UTC

artimaeis wrote: post #79

> "Nearly everyone recognizes that MOOCs are by and large a failure with ~2% completion rates, but they make us feel good because now it’s the students’ fault not they’re not learning, not the school’s" I understand the context the author is approaching this from - but it discounts the idea that MOOCs can be used the same way we use books. I've utilized about a dozen different MOOCs and I've _never_ completed a singl…

Not knocking your own choices, but its more the backlash to the 2013 "MOOCs are the greatest thing ever! KhanAcademy/EdX/Coursera! Wooo!" Personally, I love them and would love to work with those companies. In fact, when I started teaching, I used many of the aspects I saw MOOCs using in my traditional classrooms.

However, there is a truth to the statement. Almost no one finishes a MOOC (some never even log in to take MOOCs they register for), and predictive models can determine whether someone will complete the MOOC as early as the 2nd week (if not sooner). Some people do grab what they want and leave, but that is not the case for everyone. If we then look to justify why bother, its a little hard to warrant hosting costs, etc. if you aren't seeing anything come from it. If I ran a MOOC with a 95% fail rate, how can I label it successful.

We are unable to do meaningful research on MOOC strategy effectiveness because we are too busy trying to understand why people never log in in the first place.