Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition • Hacker News Board

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#141

Post by entha_saava » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 4:00 PM UTC

f6v wrote: post #49

entha_saava wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classes are not worth the cost of full tuition.

I think people here sometimes are delusional about the prices of education since everything software-related has almost become a commodity. You can buy a Django/React/whatever course for 9.99 on Udemy. However, there’s an incredible amount of effort which goes into preparing courses in other disciplines.

* people are delusional because colleges are getting away with low quality work, because of the higher barrier of entry for competition compared to something like Udemy.

* People are getting delusional because of both low quality and high price.

Edit: disclaimer: I am a college student at thus I may be biased about what I see here in India. But I assume it is almost universal from other discussions here and on reddit.

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#142

Post by game_the0ry » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 4:00 PM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #117

game_the0ry wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're stuck at home you might as well study. Exactly. It's a good opportunity for self directed study. I would spend time doing something productive, not traveling.

Self-directed study is challenging, especially for 17 year-olds that don't have anyone (eg parents) who are in tune enough with autodidactism to guide them. One of the biggest advantages of college for me was realizing how much there was to learn and how easy it was to do it (after skating through all of my schooling with straight As), and I only really refined my autodidactic abilities in my mid-20s.

> Self-directed study is challenging

Fair point, but that's because students are not encouraged to learn what they are interested in.

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#143

Post by kumarvvr » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

save_ferris wrote: post #132

kumarvvr wrote: post #119

Despite all the discussion about online classes, there is one fundamental aspect of online teaching, that isn't fully 'disrupted' Keeping students attention on the class. Technology may improve, economics may change, industries created and destroyed, but ultimately, if the students attention is not held, everything is lost. In today's world, it has become extremely difficult to even keep focus, with the myriad of dis…

I think this stems from a general disinterest of the focus issue pertaining to technology at large. I work from home and have the exact same problem staying focused on work. Phone operating systems still treat features like “zen mode” as second-class citizens while not providing enough granular access to third party apps to implement features that encourage putting down the phone successfully. There are still too man…

There are a lot of apps that provide the zen mode.

However all of them are only as effective as the person's will to use them.

In my view, Extreme cases of Phone / Internet addiction can only be solved by physically removing the user from the device. Like you do for drugs and alcohol.

I am thoroughly convinced any other method will not be useful. Of course, I base these thoughts solely on my experience and I have been trying to do that since last one year. I have tried many apps, lots of self control and forcing myself to be away from my phone physically, only to be under it's spell in a few days. The most I held out was 2 days.

While being physically away from the phone / device is not always practical, I have found that timers for apps are slightly more effective, as they repeatedly warn and close the app.

I found zen modes to be not really effective, as they shut off everything and ultimately you end up removing them for one reason or the other.

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#144

Post by pdabbadabba » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

dhimes wrote: post #127

pdabbadabba wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your point is that students shouldn't take a gap year just because its a year when they aren't getting paid, then I think you are missing the nonmonetary value (or value that is difficult to capture in monetary terms) of travel, volunteering, and the other things that people do during gap years that are much harder to replicate once you're out of school. (You're "waste of time" comment makes me thing that this is…

Part of the point is at the time of decision it's not clear that the students can do that gap year stuff if they take a gap year now. They wouldn't be doing it so they can travel to Brazil, but so they don't have a difficult semester (or year) in college.

Not sure I see this anywhere in GP's comment. But I certainly agree that you that it doesn't make a lot of sense to take a gap year if you can't identify, with a reasonable degree of confidence, anything valuable (or at least fun) to do during it. And I agree that this makes 2020 (perhaps also 2021) an especially poor time for gap years.

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#145

Post by kingkawn » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

x87678r wrote: post #114

kerkeslager wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can study without paying tens of thousands of dollars. There are also tons of productive uses of time that can be done during the pandemic. Now is a great time to volunteer.

Volunteer - unemployment is the worst for decades. There are literally half the population not working right now with nothing to do, its the least useful time to volunteer. (OK maybe I'm wrong)

This is the most useful volunteering time because the social needs are everywhere

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#146

Post by scarmig » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 4:03 PM UTC

pdabbadabba wrote: post #115

fiftyfifty wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with gap years is you loose an additional year of income at the college graduate level on the backend, that's a pretty big missed financial opportunity. With the economy in the state it's in now, it's unlikely most college students will be able to land decent paying jobs during a gap year, if they can find a job at all. Better to just finish the degree as quickly as possible and be ready to enter the work…

If your point is that students shouldn't take a gap year just because its a year when they aren't getting paid, then I think you are missing the nonmonetary value (or value that is difficult to capture in monetary terms) of travel, volunteering, and the other things that people do during gap years that are much harder to replicate once you're out of school. (You're "waste of time" comment makes me thing that this is…

Those things are very valuable, but if there's one thing that's going to be even harder than "get a job available for a high school grad with no experience" in the coming year, it's going to be "travel the world and meet lots of new people and have amazing experiences."

I feel for the kids nowadays. I'd probably just get a year of college out of the way, despite the particularly shitty, expensive form it'll take this year, because there's really no better use of your time right now.

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#147

Post by wutbrodo » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #129

I sometimes worry that a lot of the online class feedback that while not wrong, is based on a bunch of self selecting folks who are good at / motivated to / prefer taking online classes. If somehow we magically switched to online classes and everyone was good at making them ... I worry we'd loose a lot of people / the education quality could drop and we wouldn't know. Granted that also implies that folks who aren't g…

> Granted that also implies that folks who aren't good at in person classes may have been lost for decades already.

For what it's worth, I probably went to about 10% of my classes in college and I got a great education (CS+math) from a combination of the course materials, exams, and working with other students.

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#148

Post by buildawesome » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 4:06 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #100

b5n wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd think strategically about a gap year. If you're a great student with excellent college prospects a gap year might make sense, admissions are going to be very competitive for 21/22. If you're not the best student it might make sense to try and get accepted for 20/21 due to smaller field of applicants.

That applies to inbound freshman, but for students going into their sophomore-to-senior years, who are already accepted, taking a year off seems like a no-brainer.

I believe you can defer commitment as a freshman.

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#149

Post by travisoneill1 » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

teslademigod1 wrote: post #2

I'd imagine the tuition should drop by about 30-50%, seeing as college costs are going to be dropping. I'm pretty sure in a skeptical sense they'll be trying to pay associate professors less for the same reason. and charging students more.

Tuition should drop by 50% anyway. The same schools were able to deliver the same services at that price 30 years ago. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/how-much-college-tuition-has...

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#150

Post by HarryHirsch » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

fullshark wrote: post #90

HarryHirsch wrote: post #48

Online teaching works particularly well for the tutorial model, where you have a small number (<5) of students plus the instructor engaged in discussion. It fails completely for large classes. That's not dissimilar to the situation before the plague.

Wow I'd argue the opposite. Large classes / lectures I didn't even interact with the professor in person, might as well just get that info online. Smaller classes I found in person discussions much more valuable.

In the large classes you still need to have tutorials, this time led by the TAs. On-line TA herding is difficult, I don't envy anyone who is doing this right now. There's also the hallway track, students organizing themselves into study groups and interest groups. Doing that on-line is quite impossible, how do you have random encounters after class?