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MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

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Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#411

Post by nostrademons »

an-allen wrote: post #407
nostrademons wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there is no refund being offered for the content shifting online from in-person, why have in-person at all? There isn't really a good reason other than some people being more disciplined when there's a human instructor that they see face to face every couple days. Plenty of people self-teach from MOOCs, MIT OCW, or just buying the textbooks and working through the exercises and get just as good an education. Whe…

This is perhaps one of the more ignorant comments on this thread. > When you go to an elite college, you're really paying for the degree. In many cases, you go to an elite college to pay for the experience to learn from, engage with, and collaborate with the world's best scientists, thinkers, engineers, and professors. In some cases, like Rice, if your parents make less than 130,000 a year - you don't pay a dime. Und…

I have a degree from an elite college (Amherst, #1 liberal arts college in the country at the time I went). I took a gap year before and worked as a professional software engineer, where I learned a massive amount. Then I spent 3.5 years taking a variety of interesting courses that have been utterly irrelevant to my future career prospects, before flunking out of my physics major, switching to CS, and completing that major in a semester using the knowledge I learned while working as a professional software engineer.

You're paying for the degree. If you want to take interesting courses, learn cool stuff, socialize with intelligent students, and meet Nobel-prize-winning professors, most professors will let you audit their course even if you're not a student at the university, particularly if you seem genuinely interested in the material. (Hell, I'd taken half a dozen college courses as a high-school student before I even got to college.) It just won't count toward the degree, because the colleges know that their business model is selling a limited credential that the rest of the world values very highly.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#412

Post by akhilcacharya »

marcinzm wrote: post #339
akhilcacharya wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are probably only a handful of MIT undergrads that are actually underprivileged per year (its unlikely enough with a middle class upbringing). I doubt this will be much of an issue, at least as much of an issue as it would be if my alma mater did this. They'll be fine.

Top private US schools provide very good financial aid packages and are a very good choice for underprivileged students if they can get in. Schools in turn want such students for diversity and metrics.

> if they can get in.

These questions are framed in the wrong way. The filter isn't cost, it's getting in, and people from middle class and poor families are at a disadvantage in terms of accomplishments.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#413

Post by unishark »

chmod775 wrote: post #326
iokanuon wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Moreover, in our dorms, we have effectively no way to eat if the dining halls close down. That sounds crazy to me, in Poland there's a multitude of cheap restaurants full of students close to every university campus. There's a big demand because universities are packed with students that don't cook for themselves. Why hasn't the same happened to the US then?

> That sounds crazy to me, in Poland there's a multitude of cheap restaurants full of students close to every university campus. As a rule (non fast-food) restaurants are very expensive in the US compared to most places in Europe. Poland is on the extreme end when it comes to high quality food being extremely cheap. In Berlin it isn't terribly hard to get a healthy and large meal for 4-8 euros at a restaurant for me,…

> As a rule (non fast-food) restaurants are very expensive in the US compared to most places in Europe.

This depends how you define fast food. Which by the way is already a massive segment in the US versus other places. There's a whole range of restaurants in the middle that serve cheap food that you stand in line to order, often serving working-class people, but aren't technically fast food. Maybe not so many in the expensive gentrified area adjacent to a big university of course.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#414

Post by samatman »

an-allen wrote: post #382
samatman wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the value of an elite education is signaling: it proves the student had what it takes both to get into MIT, and to graduate. If MIT switched to an online-only format, that would erode the value of the latter (which, remember, is social proof, not something which is notoriously rational), while open enrollment would obliterate the former. A semester of remote teaching won't damage the brand.

Categorically disagree with that. The most valuable aspect of an elite engineering education IMO is getting to participate in a culture of elite professional academics. The spirit and energy which you learn to tackle REALLY ABSURDLY HARD problems is the most important thing I learned from my Rice EE education. Being able to find folks who were putting probes on Mars and Titan and being able to work with them to help…

This is a mistake on my part which I should have seen coming.

I said "value", and that conflated value to oneself with value to and as perceived by others.

Which are definitely not the same thing, and I was referring to the market value of a degree from MIT.

I don't happen to think half a semester of working remote is going to do much to dampen the intrinsic value of an elite education, either. It will mark the cohort as remarkable, having shared the distinctive experience of being Extremely Online together.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#415

Post by rockmeamedee »

smallgovt wrote: post #94
PureParadigm wrote: post #50

I think large decisive moves like this may seem to some to be an overreaction, but it will prove to be the correct decision in hindsight (like the early travel bans). Exponential growth is real, and anything we can do to slow the rate of infection will save lives. As a current undergrad at UC Berkeley, they've moved all classes here online [1], and exams are either being postponed or converted to take-home assignment…

Actually, I think it's likely going to be seen as an overreaction in hindsight by the general public (even though it may not be). If these actions are successful in curbing the virus' spread, most people won't appreciate how bad things could have really gotten.

It's a common thread in Incident Response & "Resilience Engineering" that preventative measures that reduce the blast of incidents are always blamed, especially if they work. Whatever ends up working to fix the incident, you should have done it sooner or it was too drastic a response. (No matter the fact that it _did_ fix the incident, outsiders will blame you that way).

One example is the Knight Capital trading disaster, where they eventually noticed (I don't remember the exact number) X minutes after the runway trading bot had been put into place, and shut it down, but got blamed for not shutting down the trading soon enough.

Can't find any links about this right now though :(

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#416

Post by preommr »

tekacs wrote: post #68
aquova wrote: post #22

I can see why the university is taking the actions that it is doing, but on the other hand, if I were still and undergrad, and suddenly told that I had to pack up all my stuff and move within the next 3 days, I can only imagine the chaos that entails. Every student on campus now has to suddenly not only find a place to stay, but also a way to move everything on short notice.

They’re providing packing materials and helping with the move. Financially, they say: > We understand that being asked to leave campus may pose a serious financial hardship for certain individuals. Students will receive a follow up communication on this matter. It’s unclear what their solution is, but they seem to have thought about it...

This is what institutions say right before they decide to fuck someone over. I've been burned too many times by people saying they'll do the right thing, because otherwise it wouldn't be right, only to later shrug and wash their hands of the matter.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#417

Post by IAmGraydon »

simonw wrote: post #133
IAmGraydon wrote: post #122

The real reason behind such a move is the culture of litigation in the US. Someone made your coffee too hot? Sue them. Someone stepped on your toe? Sue them. In this case, everyone is ducking for cover because they don't want to be the focus of a lawsuit that claims they didn't do anything to prevent the spread of the disease. The people who make these decisions at MIT are not unintelligent. They have all the resourc…

I'm certain that's not the case here. This isn't about avoiding litigation. It's about flattening the curve. https://www.flattenthecurve.com/ Universities are taking this extremely disruptive step because they have a very large influence on how quickly this disease spreads, and they know it.

That’s quite a nice sentiment. Unfortunately, “flattening the curve” is not what propels the world to action. People getting what they want is. It always has been, and that’s not changing for Covid-19.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#418

Post by FPGAhacker »

Larrikin wrote: post #403
aatharuv wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What dorms don't have kitchens? Certainly when I went to MIT, most (if not all) dorms at least had kitchenette's, 20 years back. Shared, of course, which is the main problem.

I've never seen a true dorm with a kitchen, the transition apartments owned by the university for juniors and seniors had them but freshman and sophomore dorms I've been in tend to have microwaves and thats it. Its the right decision in my opinion since the largest number of fire alarm evacuations I've had to do were in those dorms because 18 and 19 year olds living away from their parents can't even figure out how t…

burnt popcorn used to be a way to cover the smell of pot.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#419

Post by rndgermandude »

unishark wrote: post #413
chmod775 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That sounds crazy to me, in Poland there's a multitude of cheap restaurants full of students close to every university campus. As a rule (non fast-food) restaurants are very expensive in the US compared to most places in Europe. Poland is on the extreme end when it comes to high quality food being extremely cheap. In Berlin it isn't terribly hard to get a healthy and large meal for 4-8 euros at a restaurant for me,…

> As a rule (non fast-food) restaurants are very expensive in the US compared to most places in Europe. This depends how you define fast food. Which by the way is already a massive segment in the US versus other places. There's a whole range of restaurants in the middle that serve cheap food that you stand in line to order, often serving working-class people, but aren't technically fast food. Maybe not so many in the…

Speaking as another German, fast food is used synonymously with "junk food" here, referring to either fast and unhealthy food (burgers, fries, "fish and ships" in the UK, Currywurst, everything greasy/fatty, etc), or food with large amounts of problematic additives, or fast and low quality stuff.

E.g. there is a tiny Vietnamese place around here that's very fast, but also very tasty, very fresh and reasonably priced (6-10 EUR). They are fast as "fast food", but lack the other "qualities" of junk food, so nobody around here would refer to them as fast food.

Döner (kebab) shops are somewhere in the middle. They offer unhealthy stuff (tons of - depending on the shop, low grade - kebab meat on a Döner for example) as well as a range of veggies and less greasy meals.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#420

Post by qchris »

fwipsy wrote: post #264
PureParadigm wrote: post #50

I think large decisive moves like this may seem to some to be an overreaction, but it will prove to be the correct decision in hindsight (like the early travel bans). Exponential growth is real, and anything we can do to slow the rate of infection will save lives. As a current undergrad at UC Berkeley, they've moved all classes here online [1], and exams are either being postponed or converted to take-home assignment…

So far, I've heard that UCSD, UCSC, UC Davis, and Stanford have taken similar precautions to Berkeley.

UCSB has joined that list as well.
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