The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age • Hacker News Board

Re: The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

#31

Post by mikece » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 1:38 PM UTC

dougmwne wrote: post #16

I was having another one of those moments yesterday where I was questioning the value of higher education while reading a HN thread about teaching yourself CS. There was a healthy debate about whether the typical CS curriculum helps a modern software engineer at all. Some thought the degree was stuck back in the 70's. Others thought there was value, but had trouble articulating it. It seems that when the information…

One of the benefits of a college setting would be the gathering together of young intelligent people and exposing them not only to new ideas but how to evaluate, value, and compare ideas for their relative worth. I wonder how much open and free debate of ideas even exists anymore, having given way to the inculcation and indoctrination of "correct ideas." I have long believed that the best way to eradicate racism is to allow racists and anti-racists to have open Lincoln-Douglas style debates on college campuses: allow racists to explain their ideas and positions and the tenability of their position will be exposed for the naked fear and hatred that it is. While not quite as crucial as the previous idea, debates of ideas, languages, operating systems, etc can and should happen as part of a CS curriculum. Regardless of the field we end up in, the need to be able to state one's position and defend it against a counter-proposal is something common to all fields (not just law).

Re: The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

#32

Post by dleslie » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 1:39 PM UTC

I still buy CDs and rip them to MP3s.

They work when cellular data isn't available, they have excellent sound quality, they're easy to organize, and there's no vendor lock-in who's spying on my listening habits.

Re: The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

#33

Post by battery423 » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 1:39 PM UTC

ubercow13 wrote: post #11

battery423 wrote: post #3

Obviously right? I mean look at the state of universities today: Around the globe every semester a professor is standing in front of a class, presenting material and they will do this again and again. Every professor is doing it a little bit different but the main message is the same. In Math its probably even closer between universities while history or social studies might be further appart. Where is our central /…

How would you scale assessment of exercises further than eg. coursera already does?

Coursera is not the central learning platform, its a course platform.

You don't log in to see your learning graph which will give you the CS Bachelors Degree. You need to choose a course which will give you a CS Bachelors Degree.

Imagine you log into Coursera and you want to have a comparable Degree. You would choose courses to learn 'nodes' of your learning graph. But you could choose which one. You could learn the security topic from a course from someone from harvard and you could learn security topic from someone in germany.

You choose your language, you choose your medium. Might be that a lot of text + 1-2 explain videos help you more then a 2h lecture.

Might be that you can choose between implementing a program or do a presentation.

It might even be required for you to listen to a presentation from other students. Or create your own small programming tasks for others.

This could become the best curated/crowd created biggest collection of educational material in the world.

Re: The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

#34

Post by leoedin » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 1:43 PM UTC

stinkytaco wrote: post #24

dougmwne wrote: post #16

I was having another one of those moments yesterday where I was questioning the value of higher education while reading a HN thread about teaching yourself CS. There was a healthy debate about whether the typical CS curriculum helps a modern software engineer at all. Some thought the degree was stuck back in the 70's. Others thought there was value, but had trouble articulating it. It seems that when the information…

I've hired people, but wouldn't say I have a great deal of experiencing in the area, so here's an honest question for you: do candidates with a college education perform better at their jobs? In my (limited) experience the answer is definitely yes. Not only do they have more exposure to the concepts we need them to understand (if not necessarily the specific tools), we have just had better luck with them as employees…

This may be the case, but it doesn't mean that those skills came from college.

There's a strong selection bias at work - people with good administrative skills and communication skills are much more likely to go to college in the first place. We need to be asking if those people needed to go to college to develop those skills.

In my experience at university, mostly the people who were the strongest - the people you wanted on your teams - were strong right from the start. They had some inherent skills which university developed and honed, but didn't create.

Re: The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

#35

Post by mattmanser » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 1:43 PM UTC

stinkytaco wrote: post #24

dougmwne wrote: post #16

I was having another one of those moments yesterday where I was questioning the value of higher education while reading a HN thread about teaching yourself CS. There was a healthy debate about whether the typical CS curriculum helps a modern software engineer at all. Some thought the degree was stuck back in the 70's. Others thought there was value, but had trouble articulating it. It seems that when the information…

I've hired people, but wouldn't say I have a great deal of experiencing in the area, so here's an honest question for you: do candidates with a college education perform better at their jobs? In my (limited) experience the answer is definitely yes. Not only do they have more exposure to the concepts we need them to understand (if not necessarily the specific tools), we have just had better luck with them as employees…

I've worked with a fair few different people over the years, I've never seen a correlation between a CS degree and skill.

I'm biased in some ways as someone with a philosophy degree, but I've easily run rings around CS grads, and seen some who have absolutely no capacity to program. Most of the non-cs programmers have A degree, just not a CS degree. Often technical, I've known chemistry degree, engineering, architecture.

I think you're right in guessing that it's your culture pushing out the good non-CS grads rather than they're better. Be interesting to hear if you do the typical American white-boarding algo nonsense that YAGNI.

This generation might be different as CS became an obvious choice for the sort of people that may previously have chosen a wider range of subject. I think it's a shame as ultimately I see a CS degree as a waste of time, I've studied the concepts myself thinking myself deficient and never actually found any value to the lessons apart from intellectual curiosity.

Re: The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

#36

Post by dleslie » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 1:44 PM UTC

jkhdigital wrote: post #4

Not the right analogy, but the article is mostly on point--higher education is in the process of being "unbundled". > I need no convincing of the value of campus life and in-classroom education. I recognize that online platforms can’t perfectly replace what we deliver on campus. But they can fulfill key pieces of our core mission and reach many more students, of all ages and economic backgrounds, at a far lower cost.…

Is it even the mission, or has it ever been? Universities aren't so much about identifying and fostering talent as they are about molding the manner in which individuals approach the world, while giving them the tools necessary to navigate and succeed.

And yes, campus life is part of that. It is similar in purpose to Rumspringa: the freshly-minted independent adults are given a taste of freedom in a controlled manner, while surrounded by reminders of the path they are on.

Re: The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

#37

Post by jancsika » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 1:44 PM UTC

In that the people producing the content-- adjunct instructors and grad students-- don't get paid much, but they get paid a helluva lot more than they'll get in whatever hairbrained disruption scheme Silicon Valley comes up with for the university?

Re: The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

#38

Post by battery423 » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 1:44 PM UTC

orbifold wrote: post #13

battery423 wrote: post #3

Obviously right? I mean look at the state of universities today: Around the globe every semester a professor is standing in front of a class, presenting material and they will do this again and again. Every professor is doing it a little bit different but the main message is the same. In Math its probably even closer between universities while history or social studies might be further appart. Where is our central /…

I think you have a fundamentally wrong conception of what it takes to learn advanced concepts. In most cases you can't autograde or award points for everything, it also isn't what University education should be about. It is sad enough that during the Bologna reforms in Europe University education was "industrialised" as much as possible (ECTS points, core modules, etc.). In the best case a University education in a S…

I have studied for a year next to my job.

My biggest challenges was to find material which explained to me certain concepts. Stuff like 'why can you transform this mathematical notion to this short form? How do you know that? Oh i learned that in the gym' YouTube helped, other students helped but it was time consuming.

It would have helped me much more if i would have had a proper central source of high quality material. That would have allowed me to understand it easier and better and with less effort for others around me.

THIS then should free up those people to do more 1:1 supervisions (which might be common in Cambridge but is not everywhere the same). It should also allow those people to optimize how material is explained.

And this allow more people to get education which is key.

And i don't think this should just start at university level. Why not start with when you are baby for your parents?

Re: The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

#39

Post by nemetroid » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 1:47 PM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #35

stinkytaco wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've hired people, but wouldn't say I have a great deal of experiencing in the area, so here's an honest question for you: do candidates with a college education perform better at their jobs? In my (limited) experience the answer is definitely yes. Not only do they have more exposure to the concepts we need them to understand (if not necessarily the specific tools), we have just had better luck with them as employees…

I've worked with a fair few different people over the years, I've never seen a correlation between a CS degree and skill. I'm biased in some ways as someone with a philosophy degree, but I've easily run rings around CS grads, and seen some who have absolutely no capacity to program. Most of the non-cs programmers have A degree, just not a CS degree. Often technical, I've known chemistry degree, engineering, architect…

> I think you're right in guessing that it's your culture pushing out the good non-CS grads

The parent post didn't mention computer science.

Re: The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

#40

Post by enriquto » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 1:50 PM UTC

> The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

And that is a good thing! A great deal of the most interesting music is not available on streaming. Thanks to CDs (and the people who pirate them) we can still have access to unique recordings.