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Colleges are reopening in fall, but many professors won’t be present

nytimes.com

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Re: Colleges are reopening in fall, but many professors won’t be present

#51

Post by mikem170 »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #36
drfuchs wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically, in the Ivy League / Stanford, a one-child family with annual income of over $150k to $200k (depending on the school) will pay full tuition. Really. And incomes of less than $65k-ish get you a free ride. Details vary.

This happened with my family. It was especially bad because earning $150k total for a household near an expensive urban area leads to purchasing power basically the same as a family with $65k household income in suburbia or small towns. Without adjusting parents income for cost of living (factors the kids in question have no control over), it’s totally unfair. This has a lot to do with “last place aversion” - the peo…

I usually think of the opposite affect, someone making double money in San Fransisco pays the same price for what they order on amazon as someone working and living in a cheaper market. Also cars, airline tickets, vacations, etc. Cuts both ways, I guess.

My two cents: I'd blame San Fransisco, they are the ones with the weird housing market and shouldn't make others subsidize things around their propped up property prices.

Re: Colleges are reopening in fall, but many professors won’t be present

#52

Post by dredmorbius »

gbronner wrote: post #18

This is looking more and more like an extinction event for academia. Elite institutions can charge whatever they want for their brand name and selectivity, and for the environment of other equally motivated high potential students. Other schools combine a school with a resort/cruise ship experience. Insofar as the school is no better than a bunch of videos, and the resort is mostly shut down, so long as employers don…

I'm leaning more strongly to "major impact / selection event / paradigm shift" than extinction. Education generally, and universities specifically, are highly durable institutions which have undergone massive changes over time, whilst retaining recognizable elements from their origins. Specific universities are remarkably durable, with the oldest (Bologna, Oxford, Salamanca, Cambridge) dating to the 11th and 12th centuries (Bologna will be 1,000 years old in 2088, within the lifetime of some now reading this). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_universities_in...)

Curricula, degrees conferred, methods, organisation, associated attached sport and medical industries, and defence and research programmes ... are largely newer. Starting with the Humboldtian reforms in Germany in the early 19th century, much of what we now think of as the modern universiy started taking shape (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldtian_model_of_higher_ed...)

In-place instruction of both explicit and tacit knowledge, remains the most effective method attained. Mediated education, whether through old low-tech such as books, or high, such VR headsets, may have their affordances, but simply cannot match the full immersion of simultaneous group presence. More so for tacit knowledge in which simply ingesting words is not sufficient, where hands-on experience is required, and equipment, facilities, and materials needed.

There are several fundamental functions of the universiy which seem unlikely to vanish. Education; credentialling; open research; establishing curricula and pedagogy; relations with culture, industry, and government, document archival, basic research; keeping aging academics off the streets; and serving as transition institutions four young adults entering the world, all remain. No doubt individual campuses or systems will collapse, and many revered traditions will be abandoned, at least temporarily.

How this is accomplished given a few months, or years, or decades, of endemic disease, is a challenge. The institution's seen worse.

Re: Colleges are reopening in fall, but many professors won’t be present

#53

Post by wongarsu »

vgchh wrote: post #41

For universities to fully crumble and education to become significantly cheaper, in addition to all the advancements that have occurred in last decade, I believe we need a credible way to certify students online. Imagine if someone sitting in Tibet or slums of Bombay could prove to Googles of the world that he/she (and not some hired help) successfully completed a highly ranked test online, it could be transformative…

Online tests are wide open to cheating if they aren't taken in person. Hybrids exist (take online test in a testing center, e.g. AWS certifications), but aren't all that useful for the slums of Bombay.

And in a way Google is already doing this in person with their interview process: they ask obscure questions aimed at knowlege gained in a computer science degree (or by good test preparation).

Re: Colleges are reopening in fall, but many professors won’t be present

#54

Post by creato »

vgchh wrote: post #41

For universities to fully crumble and education to become significantly cheaper, in addition to all the advancements that have occurred in last decade, I believe we need a credible way to certify students online. Imagine if someone sitting in Tibet or slums of Bombay could prove to Googles of the world that he/she (and not some hired help) successfully completed a highly ranked test online, it could be transformative…

I have heard from people (and read accounts from people on HN) that companies use all kinds of software that does this during remote interviews. Recording the screen, turning on the camera to watch the interviewee, etc.

I doubt the main problem is ensuring integrity, it's that it's hard to test knowledge and capabilities reliably, and that's already a hard problem regardless of where the candidate is.

Re: Colleges are reopening in fall, but many professors won’t be present

#55

Post by vsskanth »

wongarsu wrote: post #53
vgchh wrote: post #41

For universities to fully crumble and education to become significantly cheaper, in addition to all the advancements that have occurred in last decade, I believe we need a credible way to certify students online. Imagine if someone sitting in Tibet or slums of Bombay could prove to Googles of the world that he/she (and not some hired help) successfully completed a highly ranked test online, it could be transformative…

Online tests are wide open to cheating if they aren't taken in person. Hybrids exist (take online test in a testing center, e.g. AWS certifications), but aren't all that useful for the slums of Bombay. And in a way Google is already doing this in person with their interview process: they ask obscure questions aimed at knowlege gained in a computer science degree (or by good test preparation).

taking tests in a testing center is actually pretty viable and scales well. This is primarily how all those international students from developing countries write GRE, TOEFL and end up coming to study in the US.

Re: Colleges are reopening in fall, but many professors won’t be present

#56

Post by rayiner »

gbronner wrote: post #18

This is looking more and more like an extinction event for academia. Elite institutions can charge whatever they want for their brand name and selectivity, and for the environment of other equally motivated high potential students. Other schools combine a school with a resort/cruise ship experience. Insofar as the school is no better than a bunch of videos, and the resort is mostly shut down, so long as employers don…

> This is looking more and more like an extinction event for academia.

God I hope you’re right.

Re: Colleges are reopening in fall, but many professors won’t be present

#57

Post by crimsonalucard5 »

wongarsu wrote: post #53
vgchh wrote: post #41

For universities to fully crumble and education to become significantly cheaper, in addition to all the advancements that have occurred in last decade, I believe we need a credible way to certify students online. Imagine if someone sitting in Tibet or slums of Bombay could prove to Googles of the world that he/she (and not some hired help) successfully completed a highly ranked test online, it could be transformative…

Online tests are wide open to cheating if they aren't taken in person. Hybrids exist (take online test in a testing center, e.g. AWS certifications), but aren't all that useful for the slums of Bombay. And in a way Google is already doing this in person with their interview process: they ask obscure questions aimed at knowlege gained in a computer science degree (or by good test preparation).

>they ask obscure questions aimed at knowlege gained in a computer science degree (or by good test preparation).

I don't think this is the focus of their questions. Their questions are more like IQ tests with a CS spin. The knowledge itself is trivial, it's how you use that knowledge to solve problems.

Re: Colleges are reopening in fall, but many professors won’t be present

#58

Post by mdorazio »

outoftheabyss wrote: post #4

I’m doing a distance data science degree at a fraction of the cost and I would imagine I’m getting much more out of it than this September intake will. There’s been a revolution in remote working, will education follow?

Be careful in your assumptions here. Online degrees still carry a huge negative stigma with them (which is interesting given that all students in the current cohorts at normal universities will have had several semesters of remote learning). Signalling of the college brand is also largely underappreciated by online students. You're getting a degree for a fraction of the cost of an in-person one, but it may or may not also carry a fraction of the job market value.

Note: I do not know which school you are referring to. It might be Berkeley's $70k+ degree or one of the many lower-tier schools, so YMMV.

Re: Colleges are reopening in fall, but many professors won’t be present

#59

Post by felipemnoa »

gbronner wrote: post #18

This is looking more and more like an extinction event for academia. Elite institutions can charge whatever they want for their brand name and selectivity, and for the environment of other equally motivated high potential students. Other schools combine a school with a resort/cruise ship experience. Insofar as the school is no better than a bunch of videos, and the resort is mostly shut down, so long as employers don…

Nowhere in your comment I see you mention that elite institutions are mainly research institutions that do teaching kind of as a side job. In fact, several of the best researchers working at universities are horrible teachers.

However, if you want to be at the cutting edge of your field then that is where is at.

Re: Colleges are reopening in fall, but many professors won’t be present

#60

Post by jonfw »

creato wrote: post #54
vgchh wrote: post #41

For universities to fully crumble and education to become significantly cheaper, in addition to all the advancements that have occurred in last decade, I believe we need a credible way to certify students online. Imagine if someone sitting in Tibet or slums of Bombay could prove to Googles of the world that he/she (and not some hired help) successfully completed a highly ranked test online, it could be transformative…

I have heard from people (and read accounts from people on HN) that companies use all kinds of software that does this during remote interviews. Recording the screen, turning on the camera to watch the interviewee, etc. I doubt the main problem is ensuring integrity, it's that it's hard to test knowledge and capabilities reliably, and that's already a hard problem regardless of where the candidate is.

Exactly. If a single test becomes important enough, it will be very heavily gamed. Conventional education avoids this somewhat, because there are so many models by which you are measured against, over a very long period of time. This makes conventional education much harder to game.

You need a system that encourages people to optimize for maximum problem solving ability, but a formal grading scheme encourages people to optimize for that instead. This is the single biggest problem with online classes and is why online degrees are not considered as highly as in-person ones.

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