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

Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus

stanforddaily.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 482 posts

Re: Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus

#271

Post by non-entity »

m0zg wrote: post #269

Reduce prices. Expand the number of students. Most STEM work does not require that you be present on campus. Heck, even "gender studies" degrees do not require it, if you'd like more of that. This is once in a decade opportunity to increase the throughput, _and_ increase the quality of their creme de la creme (because with more throughput more high performing outliers will randomly be caught). And they'll 100% squand…

> Most STEM work does not require that you be present on campus

I was under the impression that the reason more STEM degrees weren't online because you can't effectively replicate science or engineering labs at home very well. Most engineers (not software engineers) I've talked too said they wouldn't take an online degree very seriously.

Re: Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus

#273

Post by acdha »

timr wrote: post #178
acdha wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know that there are people who take a long time to recover. This is pretty widely reported but we don’t know how long that will end up taking or what permanent impacts there are since it’s a new disease and treatment options are being rapidly pursued. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/brain-fog-heart-dama... https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/long-term-symp... https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/12/a…

"We know that there are people who take a long time to recover." There are people who take a long time to recover from rhinovirus. The question is, at what rate? You'll note that this is not covered in the articles you have linked. We simply don't have the data -- what we have is a small number of anecdotes, and a bunch of news organizations who are willing to write speculative stories before we know anything. But yo…

This is a new disease which is still early in the research cycle but I find it somewhat puzzling that in such a climate you're expecting a higher burden of proof for people urging caution than the reverse, especially given that the medical community and researchers are generally urging caution.

For example, I linked to this: https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/long-term-symp...

> "I think it's an argument for why we take this disease so seriously," says Dr. Poland. "People who are thinking, especially young people: '(It's a) mild disease, you know. I might not even have any symptoms, and I'm over it.' Whoa. The data is suggesting otherwise. There's evidence of myocardial damage, cardiomyopathy, arrhythmias, decreased ejection fractions, pulmonary scarring and strokes.

I'd tend to think that a doctor at the Mayo Clinic who has relevant education, experience, and is actively working in the response has better instincts for whether we should be taking this seriously.

Re: Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus

#274

Post by beaner »

netcan wrote: post #32
eric4smith wrote: post #12

I firmly think there is a sea change going on from standard “college” degrees to more practical training that will be a mix of apprenticeship and solid training like air/vac, electricians and online skills, since the vast majority of jobs don’t really need a college degree. This has actually begun already at the high school level. Once again I believe net/net the beer virus will be positive for America in the long ru…

Somewhat different take. The student debt problem is not really related to the college format. The format existed in earlier decades, exists in other countries and exists in K-12 education without runaway costs and student debt. It's mostly a matter of policy. The US' method to expand third level education to most of the population was by government backed and/or subsidized loans, without price controls. This caused…

> At least, these tend to be real subjects that students are actually interested in.

I don't think that whether real students are interested in a topic is related to how well that choice of study does for them in the real world.

International relations, anthropology, women's studies, psychology, etc., are all real subjects that students are actually interested in. Some small fraction of the people who study them actually go on to do something near-related to those topics. Many (most?) others go on to work recruiters, office managers, in call centers (etc), immediately throwing away their studies and never revisiting them.

"online marketing" degrees are just part of this category, not anything special in themselves.

The trend hopefully is not just in how study happens but what people choose to study, because a lot of time and money is being wasted in things that never get used, because a lot of students have no real interests, and we teach them if they choose and go to college for anything - anything at all - then they'll magically do well. This is a lie and a disservice. We should be pushing people towards STEM and trade schools. Hopefully this situation helps do that.

Re: Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus

#275

Post by AnimalMuppet »

non-entity wrote: post #271
m0zg wrote: post #269

Reduce prices. Expand the number of students. Most STEM work does not require that you be present on campus. Heck, even "gender studies" degrees do not require it, if you'd like more of that. This is once in a decade opportunity to increase the throughput, _and_ increase the quality of their creme de la creme (because with more throughput more high performing outliers will randomly be caught). And they'll 100% squand…

> Most STEM work does not require that you be present on campus I was under the impression that the reason more STEM degrees weren't online because you can't effectively replicate science or engineering labs at home very well. Most engineers (not software engineers) I've talked too said they wouldn't take an online degree very seriously.

> I was under the impression that the reason more STEM degrees weren't online because you can't effectively replicate science or engineering labs at home very well.

True, you can't. But I have a BS degree in physics, and I took a grand total of one physics lab in four years. (I also took one in chemistry.) True, that's not engineering. But then, most math people don't take many labs at all.

So maybe this is true of the "TE" parts of STEM, and not so true of the "SM" parts.

Re: Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus

#276

Post by non-entity »

beaner wrote: post #274
netcan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat different take. The student debt problem is not really related to the college format. The format existed in earlier decades, exists in other countries and exists in K-12 education without runaway costs and student debt. It's mostly a matter of policy. The US' method to expand third level education to most of the population was by government backed and/or subsidized loans, without price controls. This caused…

> At least, these tend to be real subjects that students are actually interested in. I don't think that whether real students are interested in a topic is related to how well that choice of study does for them in the real world. International relations, anthropology, women's studies, psychology, etc., are all real subjects that students are actually interested in. Some small fraction of the people who study them actu…

> We should be pushing people towards STEM and trade schools. Hopefully this situation helps do that.

Might as well cut the S and M off that because most people who get a science degree probably aren't working in the filednwithout higher education and even the there's so few jobs available. Most people with math education probably aren't working directly in mathematics, but at least you can make the argument that there are other fields where math is related enough to be somewhat useful.

Re: Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus

#277

Post by School-Cotton »

acdha wrote: post #66
anonunivgrad wrote: post #22

Let the college kids get sick. They are extremely unlikely to have any serious effects from covid. At least on a college campus they won’t infect older family members. Herd immunity on campus would be reached very quickly. The few with serious preexisting conditions can stay home until that happens. The level of fear is frankly ridiculous. People get sick and people die. One day, we will all die. That is the human co…

They are relatively unlikely to _die_ from COVID-19 (and please do not repeat the false claim that these are only “people already on the cusp of death” - the average victim is losing at least a decade of life based on actuarial data) but we know that there are a much greater percentage of people who will experience significant health problems, potentially with life-long impacts. Similarly, not everyone on or near cam…

> we know that there are a much greater percentage of people who will experience significant health problems

Can you quantify this?

Re: Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus

#278

Post by newtoday »

celnardur wrote: post #99

I feel like I can offer a unique perspective on this because I go to Notre Dame and we are just finishing the first week of classes with everyone back on campus. It's gone alright so far. All the cases so far have been traced back to off campus bars or parties. However, I expect it to get worse soon as cases start spreading on campus. If you want to see how Notre Dame is doing with cases and testing we have a dashboa…

I grew up in South Bend, and most of the 'Fighting Irish' near campus bars are way too small for social distancing. Pre-covid, all of them were shoulder to shoulder packed with students and locals. Please be careful celnardur. It's a wonderful place and campus, enjoy your time there.

Re: Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus

#279

Post by mikem170 »

ipnon wrote: post #237
mikem170 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's reasonable evidence at this point that Covid infections do long-term damage, even to healthy people It is already a known fact that diseases with fever and/or lung components leave a small percentage of people with long term damage. Covid is like the flu in this regard. From https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas... >COVID-19: Lasting damage to the lungs, heart, kidneys, brain and other…

Would you consider 60-78% to be a small percentage?[1] Do you have any evidence suggesting that the flu's rate of long-term cardiovascular consequences is similar? [1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/...

From http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.685...

> During the Sheffield, England influenza epi-demic from 1972 to 1973, the cases of 50 consecutive patients who were initially diagnosed as mild cases and were treated on an outpatient basis were followed. Transient electrocardiogram (ECG) changes were seen in 18 patients, and long-lasting changes were seen in 5 patients.

Like I said, covid is no different than the flu in this regard. The above linked paper is full of other case studies showing similar data, from 1918 to the 2000s.

While reading up on your citation I found tons of literature out there talking about how common this is with other bacterial and viral infections.

EDIT: I grant that the numbers for myocardial inflammation are not insignificant. I'm learning as I go. But I'll stand by my opinion that covid is not (historically) anything out of the ordinary, just another coronavirus that made the jump to people, like so many before, and lockdowns are not going to eradicate it.

Re: Stanford cancels plans to bring half of undergrads back to campus

#280

Post by benibela »

huffmsa wrote: post #52
tyingq wrote: post #9

My son's state university is forcing students to return in person. I fully expect a notable outbreak in some college to start a wave of media noise, followed by all the universities sending everyone back home again. Sucks because students are signing leases, moving crap, buying meal plans, etc, right now. Aside from the obvious safety issues.

Yeah but there are outbreaks of everything at the beginning of the school year, at all levels. Flu, mono, the clap. It's why you're supposed to be up to date on your vaccinations. It's just what happens when a bunch of people who've been in separate microbiomes come together and start sharing the same air.

But there is no mono or clap vaccine?
Post reply on HN