Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 298 posts

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

#131

Post by pak9rabid »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #106
turbinerneiter wrote: post #83

Ya'll use University wrong. The classes, etc. ... whatever! During my time at Uni, I: * designed a demonstrator car frame to show off a bunch of new manufacturing techniques, which was actually built in the end * was part of a team who tested a new type of fiber optical vibration sensor on a sounding rocket * worked with a PhD student on developing a sensor to measure water flow through a tank to validate his simulat…

Your specific experience is great, and I'm glad for you. The point here, however, is what University is for all people, not just for individual cases like yours where things align nicely, and where maybe your own character and personality (and some of your professors and class mates) helped you get a meaningful experience out of it. My personal opinion is that the article is mostly right about what doesn't make sense…

Or, more accurately, Universities don't make much sense for most applicants in 2020. For those that are willing to put in the time and effort building & researching things, it still sounds like a great experience. However, for those that are are simply seeking a piece of paper while doing the absolute minimum to graduate, yes, it's probably not for them.

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

#132

Post by orbifold »

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…

Well these centralised resources are books. There are high quality (almost standard) books for most subjects. Want to learn Analysis at a Graduate level? Pick one of the popular books Rudin (for example) and work through it. Same goes for Quantum Field Theory (Peskin & Schroeder, Zee, Srednicki,...) and tons of other subjects.

The lectures are often only a guided tour through one of those books (at least at the undergraduate and early graduate level). In many ways lectures are still la huge advantage of course because most of these books are too long to be useful (I still have some guilt when I think about how little I absorbed of the 500+ pages experimental condensed matter book we used). Often the exercises then cover things that were not explicitly explained in the lecture but can be worked out with the help of the book.

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

#133

Post by OGWhales »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #83

Ya'll use University wrong. The classes, etc. ... whatever! During my time at Uni, I: * designed a demonstrator car frame to show off a bunch of new manufacturing techniques, which was actually built in the end * was part of a team who tested a new type of fiber optical vibration sensor on a sounding rocket * worked with a PhD student on developing a sensor to measure water flow through a tank to validate his simulat…

I think the issue is so many jobs require a college degree for no other purpose than further general education skills. I am of the opinion that public schooling needs to be extended to include these skills and then we still need higher education where the exact experiences you described are the main point.

Far too many people go through college for no other reason than to get some degree, doesn’t even matter what degree. And it’s no surprise, as it’s much harder to find a decent job without any old college degree.

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

#134

Post by _curious_ »

0d9eooo wrote: post #46
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…

As a former tenured professor I've been watching all of this with a bit of empathy, anxiety, concern, and schaudenfreude. Many of my best friends and colleagues are at the university and it still forms a huge part of my life. In speaking with many students and colleagues, one thing has struck me, which is that many of the current undergrads are enrolled because they want to get away from home. They want some true tra…

"...where they live on their own and develop into an independent adult with a vocation and adult identity."

One can see where you are coming from since these desires are pretty normal around that age right? I think that the trade-off here, however, is two fold:

1) That lifestyle is expensive and puts many young adults into debt before they've even learned and lived financial independence.

2) It delays the inevitable hard work and time that we all must put in contributing as a net positive to the real world economy.

Add 1+2 together and the output in large numbers yields people in bondage lacking the mental fortitude to actually sustain and prosper independently as an adult over the course of their lifetime.

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

#135

Post by funcDropShadow »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #106
turbinerneiter wrote: post #83

Ya'll use University wrong. The classes, etc. ... whatever! During my time at Uni, I: * designed a demonstrator car frame to show off a bunch of new manufacturing techniques, which was actually built in the end * was part of a team who tested a new type of fiber optical vibration sensor on a sounding rocket * worked with a PhD student on developing a sensor to measure water flow through a tank to validate his simulat…

Your specific experience is great, and I'm glad for you. The point here, however, is what University is for all people, not just for individual cases like yours where things align nicely, and where maybe your own character and personality (and some of your professors and class mates) helped you get a meaningful experience out of it. My personal opinion is that the article is mostly right about what doesn't make sense…

> The point here, however, is what University is for all people

Traditionally, that was not true and still is not true in places like Germany. A university is the place where you can get the highest education of a field, or ideally where you study a field on your own. Both requires a lot of prerequisites that not everybody fulfills. I am talking about knowledge, ability to learn although something is not flashy, and the will to endure. And it should be like that, otherwise you loose the ability to train the brightest people of a society. For everybody else, there are applied universities, dual study programs, and well established and respected vocational training programs, here in Germany.

Replacing universities with a netflix-esque experience may seem attractive to students, but is doomed to fail to train students. The question how much teachers should adapt to the wishes to their students is as old as learning itself. In the end the students have to trust, that a teacher knows which material to cover to teach students the desired skills, facts, and abilities. For an example of that, search your trusted video-streaming platform for the film Karate Kid. ;-)

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

#136

Post by battery423 »

senux wrote: post #112
battery423 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think your sentiment is great overall and I agree with it in essence. But realistically, there are way more obstacles to something like this than just creating a platform, as I'm sure you can imagine. Especially when you mentioned above, "why not start when you're a baby" which I think you meant start at a young age. kinder-gardens, preschools, schools, are not only used as a place for education, unfortunately. Par…

I thought about this as well and the benefit of such a platform would be that depending on what your role is, the platform can do different things for you:

- You are a teacher -> you can make sure you teach related stuff like the rest of the world. You can share and exchange learning material, you can track your students - You are a parent -> you don't need it often but you might need to see early if your kid is struggling or you wanna have some extra material for your kid to exercise with - You are in a government position -> you can use it to get your curriculum - You are an help organization and you need stuff to print out for some remote village without internet

I'm not saying that i have fixed/analysed all issues coming from it but i do see a huge benefit if we as a society centralize it more then what it is right now.

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

#137

Post by OGWhales »

_curious_ wrote: post #119
tams wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fine as it is.

Didn't say it was, only a question, and AFAIK bragging is allowed here...but why is it the top comment? How does that work?

I’ve noticed newer comments (sometimes as new as 1 minute) can sometimes appear at the top and that may be in an effort to get people to participate with newer comments instead of people only seeing the stuff that was commented first.

Not sure if that applies or even how the system works, just a thought

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

#138

Post by goblin89 »

I like the distinction between a university and an institution focusing on practical higher education (German “Fachhochschule” seems to convey the concept). This should not be about difficulty and prestige, but one’s mindset and what they want to do in life.

Research-oriented higher education is not likely to become obsolete, and neither is applied practical education. What can (and, arguably, should) go away is expecting an institution originally intended for the former to provide the latter.

Unfortunately, in many countries universities have grown to become the default option, any other path is considered inferior.

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

#139

Post by MisterBastahrd »

AznHisoka wrote: post #103
_curious_ wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could the essence of this comment been captured and communicated without running the risk of coming off as braggadocios?

I didn’t view it as bragging. OP was just throwing out examples on how to best utilize an university.

How many degree-granting universities do you think have access to this kind of funding and network? I'm guessing less than 5% in the US alone.

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

#140

Post by Yhippa »

maram wrote: post #116
turbinerneiter wrote: post #83

Ya'll use University wrong. The classes, etc. ... whatever! During my time at Uni, I: * designed a demonstrator car frame to show off a bunch of new manufacturing techniques, which was actually built in the end * was part of a team who tested a new type of fiber optical vibration sensor on a sounding rocket * worked with a PhD student on developing a sensor to measure water flow through a tank to validate his simulat…

> University is a place where teachers and students who are interested in a field meet to learn and research together. Modern Uni has often forgotten that. Universities are like venture capital investments...it’s that one single class that will matter the most. 1/10 classes will have the biggest impact on your life... It were the night courses at the Art Institute of Chicago for Walt Disney. It was the calligraphy cl…

This is an interesting way of thinking about this. There were definitely a few classes I took that really made an impression on me and changed the way I thought about things. There were also a lot of classes that were highly forgettable.
Post reply on HN