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The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

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

#51

Post by dougmwne »

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 never shied away from interviewing a person without a degree, and honestly tried to never count that as a mark against a person since making it in the professional world without a degree is a challenge that I think shows a certain character. A lot of doors are just closed by default and that can be tough on a person's sense of self-worth.

That said, I think the degree holders were better candidates usually, but I strongly suspect it wasn't because of the education. Colleges attract people who are good at carefully following complex instructions, have a healthy respect for authority, and can delay gratification in the extreme. They are also experts at navigating a system from within. The degree acts to filter out people who are too independent to fit well within a hierarchy.

I don't think I ever noticed much difference between different kinds of degree holders aside from a broad separation between analytical degrees and humanities degrees, which again might have had more to do with the initial filter than anything taught in the classes.

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

#53

Post by II2II »

Societies tend to see the most progress when a greater number of people gather together. While we may find a way to accomplish that through online instruction, our current attempts to do so have been spotty at best.

One of the reasons brought up for online education is likely one of the things that hinders it: the idea of being able to study where ever and whenever you want. As liberating as that may sound, it keeps people apart in both space and time. Granted, social factors probably play a greater role. For some reason, people don't seem to form the same types of connections with each other in the digital world.

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

#54

Post by PragmaticPulp »

stevefan1999 wrote: post #15

I think vocational education could have been better conveyed online, but with perfect pre-recording and editing. Coursera and Edx are a good example for a forerunner though. As a college student myself, this year, this semester is the worst for me -- I felt really lazy without any faith to keep me going, that with face-to-face activity I feel like I'm motivated to engage. But I hope this semester really is the except…

> As a college student myself, this year, this semester is the worst for me -- I felt really lazy without any faith to keep me going, that with face-to-face activity I feel like I'm motivated to engage.

The in-person energy of a University environment isn’t given enough credit in these discussions about the relevance of Universities in modern times.

Physically going into a building dedicated to education and sitting among peers who are also there to learn is a strong motivator for learning. The social cues of seeing your peers pay attention helps align everyone toward learning. Being among your peers is a good reminder that taking the education seriously is important for remaining competitive in the workforce after graduation.

Contrast that with online courses, where students utilize the same device they use for gaming, social media, and browsing the internet to also view remote lectures. No one will notice if you’re chatting with your friends during the course, or browsing Reddit the whole time, or if you have the TV on in the background. Sure, some people are good at sitting down, focusing, and paying attention, but many others struggle without the context shifts, social cues, and social pressure of a traditional learning environment.

HN has been having heated conversations about how self-teaching and free online courses are going to replace expensive universities for as long as I can remember. Yet in all of my experience interviewing candidates with an extra emphasis on giving self-taught and non-traditional applicants extra attention, I’ve never seen any self-taught candidates who come close to their University educated peers. I’m sure there are great self-taught people out there, but on average it appears that a real, in-person University education really does something extra to prepare people.

I think there are a lot of intangible or hard to pinpoint aspects of a University education that won’t be replaced any time soon by pure online courses.

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

#55

Post by panzagl »

nemetroid wrote: post #39
mattmanser wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As another humanities degree undergrad they really let the side down, didn't they?

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

#56

Post by [deleted] »

battery423 wrote: post #38
orbifold wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mater…

[deleted]

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

#57

Post by GaryNumanVevo »

mikece wrote: post #31
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 t…

The “debate” on racism was lost a long time ago. I would hope it’s well understood it’s a net negative for society. I don’t think debating it over and over again as if there’s merit to racist ideas is remotely a good idea.

It’s like letting the flat earthers continue to teach science classes even though we know the earth is round.

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

#58

Post by [deleted] »

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 /…

[deleted]

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

#59

Post by mikece »

GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #57
mikece wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

The “debate” on racism was lost a long time ago. I would hope it’s well understood it’s a net negative for society. I don’t think debating it over and over again as if there’s merit to racist ideas is remotely a good idea. It’s like letting the flat earthers continue to teach science classes even though we know the earth is round.

"having a debate" != "teaching a class"

> The "debate" on racism was lost a long time ago.

When is the last time you asked someone who is a strident racist to explain their ideas in the form of a full essay or 30 minute presentation? Have you ever seen this done without the implicit or explicit assertion that the target of their animus is a lesser human or perhaps not human at all? Anyone with two brain cells to rub together -- including and ESPECIALLY impressionable young people raised in racist environments -- can see the absurdity of such an argument. The very act of exposing the ideas to open discussion and forcing the proponent to defend them with logic and reason is what ultimately undoes them. Will some still recalcitrantly cling to such ideas? Sure, but that but by that point it will be clear to anyone paying attention it's not for a reasonable purpose.

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

#60

Post by burntoutfire »

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…

Here in Poland there's a split between Computer Science (mostly lots of theory and fundamentals) and Software Engineering, which gives you some of those as well, but also prepares you for a typical programming job in a typical company.
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