Colleges are reopening in fall, but many professors won’t be present • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by secabeen » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 1:52 AM UTC

throwaway9870 wrote: post #73

felipemnoa wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On what do you base that opinion? I did a MS and PHD at Stanford and was blown away by how good the profs were and how hard they actually tried to teach well. I don't agree at all with your thinking. Perhaps you need to be a bit less general and more specific about what school you are referring to?

The impact the coronavirus has on the ~250 R1 and R2 research universities is going to be very different than the effect on the ~4000 other schools. Although the research universities dominate the conversation around academia, they only make up a small fraction of the total number of schools.

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

#82

Post by gbronner » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 1:53 AM UTC

felipemnoa wrote: post #59

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.

I heard a story about a famous stem researcher. In class, a brave student asked a question. After glaring at the student, he slowly responded "I came here to teach. I didn't come here to answer questions".

That department has been reformed thankfully.

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

#83

Post by gumby » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 1:54 AM UTC

I suspect there will evolve a hybrid model:

- a small number of elite institutions will offer largely the same product they do today, possibly in lower volume but even higher price. Some lectures will be online, combined with in person recitation, lab etc.

- these same institutions’ lectures will be available online, perhaps for free or paid. Why get a lecture from state U when you can get the MIT lecture?

- local third parties will offer the recitation, lab etc. Perhaps you’ll go to a completely independent one, perhaps you’ll attend one that has licensed the GAtech name or has some sort of reciprocity deal in order to proctor exams and such.

- the networking value of school attendance will vanish except at the elite places.

- a few professors, the ones actually presenting the lecture, will earn a living wage, or perhaps even a significant wage. Everybody else student-facing in this ecosystem will earn adjunct/ post doc barely-living wage.

- even the recitations could be conducted online, perhaps by third parties in India who can explain the material just as well or better than someone local. You could be getting 1:1 instruction his way.

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

#84

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 1:58 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #77

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether it’s right or not, prestige and notoriety of a college count for a huge amount in employment and earnings. Why should my family not get that chance if they worked just as hard to earn it?

Not really. Most studies show that what college you go to only matters for a few professions. Way back when I graduated, 3 years in, I was making just as much as people that went to prestigious schools for my same area (computer science) and I paid less for one year of college than they paid for four - and no debt. If I were graduating today and wanted to work in Big Tech, I would spend six months to a year preparing…

It looks like you quickly copy/pasted some articles from a Google search, but unfortunately your linked articles don’t back up what you say, rather they only indicate it’s somewhat complicated.

For example from the first link:

> “ However, another expert, this one from The Atlantic, says that where you go to school does matter, and he also has a study that backs up his point of view. There are institutions, especially ivy league schools and those with name recognition, that can improve someone's earning and employment potential, especially in the cases of graduate work. According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, both someone's grade point average and their school of choice are determining factors in their earnings.”

which includes embedded links to The Atlantic and NCES research on it.

You also are confusing the question of whether school choice at large is correlated to earnings vs whether specific schools produce graduates who earn more, which is a different statistical question.

Consider from here:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/14/how-much-mor...

> “ The median annual earnings for an Ivy League graduate 10 years out amount to well over $70,000 a year. For graduates of all other schools, the median is around $34,000.

But things get really interesting at the top end of the income spectrum. The top 10 percent of Ivy League grads are earning $200,000 or more by the time their 10-year college reunion rolls around. The top earners of other schools, on the other hand, are making just a hair under $70,000.”

It’s not too related but I also disagree hugely with you about algorithm hazing trivia in tech hiring. It’s not correlated with career success and it is used to play politics to do gatekeeping on the candidate pipeline (eg Steve Yegge’s classic on interview anti-loops).

I’ve been a senior architect and engineering manager for a while. I have never noticed any correlation between people who whiz through algorithm interviews and people who are effective at achieving business outcomes and project success once in the role.

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

#85

Post by gbronner » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 2:03 AM UTC

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #68

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…

Small liberal arts colleges may be extinguished but the major universities will live on. The sciences, medicine, and engineering fields still require facilities and equipment beyond the reach of the individual, particularly for cutting edge research. I could point to universities with their own wind tunnel for aerospace engineering, their own research and teaching hospitals, their own small silicon chip fab and so fo…

Exactly. But most students don't need these resources, and most current teachers don't work at these institutions

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

#86

Post by CraigRo » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 2:06 AM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #69

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…

> Elite institutions can charge whatever they want for their brand name Also, their brand names may be tarnished. For example, Yale and Stanford are named after men who abused black and brown people. If the Universities decide to no longer honor these men and remove their names from the university, they will have lost a lot of the brand that they built up over many years.

There's no Adolf Hitler university. There was a time when lots of us people, especially Jews, would but buy a Volkswagen. Today nobody cares. People are not going to UConn over Yale because of the name

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

#87

Post by geomark » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 2:07 AM UTC

coronadisaster wrote: post #31

sumoboy wrote: post #23

So many of these teachers have become unqualified to teach remote classes since they can't adapt to virtual engagement to help students succeed. They don't answer emails, don't chat, leaving students lost. You get more from a youtube video in many cases. Remote teaching has made these teachers lazy IMO.

But with remote classes it becomes easier to find out which teachers are lazy... One of my son had a great remote teacher... not so much for my other one.

Yep. And I also was able to see first hand some of the issues my kid frequently told me about when they were doing in-person classes at school, like how much classroom time was wasted due to behaviors by the same kids day after day. It makes a strong impression when you see for yourself the same kids every day unprepared and being disruptive. In addition, I also noticed what a drag the weak students were on the rest of the class. I ended up withdrawing my kid from the school.

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

#88

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 2:08 AM UTC

snazz wrote: post #78

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you’re right about that. Groceries, supplies, movie tickets, restaurants, fuel, transit, medical & dental resources, rent, and so on are all much more expensive in the city. The fraction of things you get on Amazon or through other means that allows paying a low competitive nationwide price is pretty tiny and doesn’t really offer any meaningful advantage to city dwellers. But on the flipside, state and…

> I don’t think you’re right about that. Groceries, supplies, movie tickets, restaurants, fuel, transit, medical & dental resources, rent, and so on are all much more expensive in the city. The fraction of things you get on Amazon or through other means that allows paying a low competitive nationwide price is pretty tiny and doesn’t really offer any meaningful advantage to city dwellers. It's primarily the discretion…

Inflation is faster in some urban centers though, so fixed interest rates are disproportionately bad for those urban dwellers. While that interest rate might grow your larger starting pile of money faster than it grows someone’s money in rural Nebraska, the gains are eroded more quickly so they don’t translate to purchasing power.

In those cities, your money has to grow fast or the loss of purchasing power is huge.

So I wouldn’t say nationwide interest rates are definitely an advantage for people with bigger starting piles of money in urban areas. It’s complicated.

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

#89

Post by deathcalibur » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 2:08 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #24

1996 wrote: post #15

College currently sell an "experience" with clubs, restaurants, football teams, fraternities, housing, a nice campus with trees and lakes, etc. This isn't free. It has pushed up the price of education. If education turns remote, I would expect prices to fall (and layoffs for the administrative staff), unless a similar experience part can be replicated online (which I strongly doubt) This is the exact opposite of work…

If working from home becomes the default then wages will fall because employers will be able to select employees who live anywhere. Working in a physical office constrains the labor supply to workers who live nearby (or are able to relocate).

This could work both ways. Workers have more options for employment meaning they can jump to a higher paying job without having to uproot their life.

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

#90

Post by m0zg » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 2:12 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #52

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 cen…

> In-place instruction of both explicit and tacit knowledge, remains the most effective method attained.

Citation needed. I view today's colleges (including the university I attended) as little more than a racketeering scam. "It'd be a shame if you didn't pay us $200K and didn't get a degree, no employer would take you seriously".

Most of the stuff I use on a daily basis I did not learn in the college, and there's no doubt whatsoever in my mind that the 6 years I've spent to get my masters degree would be better spent advancing my career, if I could have that choice. In my field, however, you can't have a career if you don't have a degree, even if you learned little to nothing of relevance getting that degree. It's basically a racketeering scam where you pay "protection money" to get a degree, without which you can't be considered by an employer. As a hiring manager, I've lost count how many times I interviewed fresh grads who know very little and have little to no usable skills. Whoever makes through and manages to acquire actual skills does so in spite of, not thanks to, the best efforts of their professors.