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

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#191

Post by save_ferris » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 5:08 PM UTC

kumarvvr wrote: post #143

save_ferris wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bee…

> 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.

I agree, which is why I argue that it should be an OS concern, not an application concern. Screen time in iOS provides some of this functionality, but it’s still not powerful enough to restrict access to certain sites, and there are ways to get around the parental control modes.

The problem is that a phone is necessary in many jobs. I tried switching to a “dumb” phone a few years ago and had to revert because I needed app-based 2FA for work.

I would pay good money for a solid iOS screen time app that allows me to set profiles for work time, free time, personal focus time, etc. that only provides access to apps I truly need in a given moment and cannot be worked around. That would be such a game changer

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#192

Post by taylodl » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

Domenic_S wrote: post #186

albatross wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like an educational instituion relying on income from real estate properties points to the greater issue here: General lack of funding for education. Making money off housing will disproportionately affect students of differing income backgrounds, so this is not the same as moving that cost to tuition fees. Schools shouldn't have to run themselves like a traditional business, yet that is exactly the model mo…

> Making money off housing will disproportionately affect students of differing income backgrounds Having trouble parsing this. What do you mean? IMO the problem is that many colleges are not focused on education to begin with. They compete with each other by building the most luxurious facilities, sports programs, and so forth. Then they pay execs crazy salaries while leaving the actual instructors in the dust: "Aud…

This is pretty much the same situation in every Fortune 500 company, is it not?

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#193

Post by fiftyfifty » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 5:13 PM UTC

dhimes wrote: post #124

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…

My last one is a rising sophomore, and I concur. In fact, he's taking a class this summer. I wish he were taking more- getting an extra semester out of this at home would have been shrewd.

My youngest's university is offering free tuition for the summer session in 2021 next year to students that are enrolled this fall. You can bet we'll be taking advantage of that and hopefully that will mean an earlier graduation and some money saved later on.

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#194

Post by swiley » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

thomasfortes wrote: post #111

HarryHirsch wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You won't find anyone willing to teach several sections a day in a teaching laboratory with 24 students, the risk of infection is (correctly) perceived as too high. The market has adapted, there are kits to do experiments at home. Research labs are much less densely packed, and in-person interaction is less. In less affected states lab-based research is starting again.

> there are kits to do experiments at home. For high school level, sure. But I can't see a sane way to let students handle acids like I did in chemistry labs during college, and physics labs have equipment that is too complex/expensive/dangerous to send to the students.

You can buy a lot of those chemicals in Walmart and Lows in the US (ex: Walmart usually has fairly pure concentrated sulfuric acid. Lows has most common organic solvents.) The lab equipment is also pretty easy to buy on amazon (I’ve bought some trying to teach myself, although I’d recommend against buying anything from China, It always seems to disappear somewhere around LA.)

There’s an entire community of autodidacts that do this sort of thing at home as a hobby. They have lots of advice on PPE, materials handling, storage, where to find papers and books etc. Some of them even record experiments instead of just writing them down so everyone can watch.

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#195

Post by gentryb » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 5:19 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)

Volunteering at our homeless shelter doing health assessments and triage was certainly much better than sitting at home watching TV and worrying more.

Many of my prospects disappeared as COVID hit - and it made me feel some self worth trying to help others. I learned a ton too.

When the volunteer work is truly doing something for the community, I find it more valuable than paid work (even barely scraping by) - just knowing that I did SOMETHING to attempt to help others.

Just my 2 cents.

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#196

Post by darth_avocado » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

game_the0ry wrote: post #29

A couple of years ago, I was looking into MOOCs for tech education, Udacity's nano degree in particular. I remember stumbling across a video on Youtube where some Udacity folks were discussing the merits of online education with college professors and admins. What stood out to me was how vehemently the college folks were against online education. They were visibly livid - there was no way substituting a live class ro…

You're confusing professors and admins. All professors that I know from undergrad (one of the best unis in the country for tech), recorded all the lectures, sessions and discussions and made all the class material online, including reading material, because they were of the opinion that education should be available in all ways possible. If you didn't feel comfortable concentrating in a class, you could do it later, because that is what effective education is.

Admins on the other hand are just a bunch of insecure pricks who know that the only reason they have a job is the bloated organizations they themselves created, which can only be supported as long as students keep paying that ridiculous tuitions.

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#197

Post by xiphias2 » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC

fiftyfifty wrote: post #107

game_the0ry wrote: post #29

A couple of years ago, I was looking into MOOCs for tech education, Udacity's nano degree in particular. I remember stumbling across a video on Youtube where some Udacity folks were discussing the merits of online education with college professors and admins. What stood out to me was how vehemently the college folks were against online education. They were visibly livid - there was no way substituting a live class ro…

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…

Not earning is not the only missed financial opportunity: all the money that goes to travelling could be invested at a young age. With investments time is the most valuable resource. I quit at the age of 35 from the hard software engineering jobs just like many of my friends, because we burned out / wanted to come back to our home towns.

The difference between our quality of life (and especially fear of needing to go back to work) is huge.

Travelling is pretty easy though when you have time and money at this age, I don't feel that I missed out on some travel when I was younger.

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#198

Post by codekansas » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

willismonroe wrote: post #80

game_the0ry wrote: post #29

A couple of years ago, I was looking into MOOCs for tech education, Udacity's nano degree in particular. I remember stumbling across a video on Youtube where some Udacity folks were discussing the merits of online education with college professors and admins. What stood out to me was how vehemently the college folks were against online education. They were visibly livid - there was no way substituting a live class ro…

I think you might be conflating two camps of academics. There have been folks for a while now who were vehemently against online education, and there are also those pushing digital pedagogy forward. The former were stuck in a rut when classes moved online this spring, and the latter were there to pick up the slack and start organizing workshops and trying to make all university teaching better online.

Seems obvious when you consider that Udacity, Coursera, MIT OpenCourseWare were all started at universities

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#199

Post by Grimm1 » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

astura wrote: post #174

game_the0ry wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Self-directed study is challenging Fair point, but that's because students are not encouraged to learn what they are interested in.

Or they literally don't know how to learn what they are interested in? I went into computer science as a major because I was interested in computers. College was literally the only way I was able to learn because I didn't know anything about getting started - I didn't know what a programming language was, for example, so I wouldn't know to learn to program. I grew up poor and my public education was very substandard.…

Google "Careers in computers", followed by how to learn then click on any of the resources and get to it. I'm very much not a fan of the kind of "learned helplessness" being displayed in this comment and getting started in something like this is trivial with the amount of resources available right now. It's really not that hard to get started learning and college doesn't really prepare you for these jobs anyway so if that was your reason for going I think you wasted a lot of money.

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#200

Post by 2snakes » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

j0hnml wrote: post #47

eugenekolo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on your field a masters degree in anything is seen equivalent to every other masters degree. And on the other side of the spectrum, they're not considered useful by many employers/jobs.

While the mere presence of MS on a resume may not mean much to employers, I almost think it’s more important to weigh its usefulness against your current skill set. For instance, I work in tech but majored in something other than CS, and so I sometimes feel “weak” when I need to write more formal code. I’m going back to get my masters in CS so I can learn some of the foundational aspects that I unfortunately missed o…

This has been brought up before on HN: https://teachyourselfcs.com You don't get initiated by the teachers, you get initiated by doing the practice problems so you can develop schema for what strategy works.