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

I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 1001 posts

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#321

Post by wolverine876 »

nsonha wrote: post #254
sammalloy wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without a well-informed populace, democracy cannot function. Contrary to what you have argued, becoming cultured (in other words, understanding the philosophy, ethics, history, and fundamental assumptions about how and why society functions) are essential skills for taking responsibility, and the lack of these skills is behind virtually every major deficiency in society. College and university were never supposed to…

"College and university were never supposed to be about job training. They were supposed to teach one how to learn so you could become a lifelong learner" I see little benefit in discussing how things should be instead of what they are. There are clearly forces that pivoted universities towards what they are today, telling people what university should be isn't gonna fix anything. More importantly, who decided univer…

> I see little benefit in discussing how things should be instead of what they are. There are clearly forces that pivoted universities towards what they are today, telling people what university should be isn't gonna fix anything.

What makes you say they are that, and for everyone, and from everyone's perception? Because lots of people say it on HN? Because lots of people say it anywhere? Does that make it true?

And if it is true, it changed once, why can't it change again? Through these discussions is how society changes - and it will change, one way or another.

> who decided university is the only place you could learn this, or that you could not become a life long learner long before going to university?

It seems like universities are the best place to learn, given the obvious resources? If I want to learn about history, it would be good to have experts in history, books about history, other people studying history, etc.?

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#322

Post by flatiron »

fock wrote: post #240
flatiron wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the argument would be better if Germany was some sort of education haven. My cousin fosters study abroad kids in the US and most are German. They say the German education isn’t anything to tout and having an American education on your CV is a big +. I’m not saying this whole thing is perfect but I just don’t see anyone banging down the doors for a German education.

most of the people I know, who do this kind of "study abroad" in highschool (which to my understanding is on average well below Abitur/A-levels) have their parents paying (quite a bit) for the privilege^. From what I've seen around, most of this activity is centered also around private "pay-to-your-A-levels"-schools. Notably these people might think of + on their CV (while being stupid). ^And then our public school h…

Exactly my point. From my experience hiring in tech Europeans are very quick to mention US education believing it’s a big advantage.

Personally at that role it was an English role so I only took from their US education that they can function in an English environment. I didn’t give two shits about their Carnegie Mellon masters.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#323

Post by WalterBright »

synergy20 wrote: post #280
rayiner wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> College prepares people to be adults in every way, not to be a resource for corporations. Only 2% of Bangladeshis go to college. Are the rest not adults? Indeed, I’d say the opposite is true. Apart from job training, the main function of college in America seems to be extending adolescence and deferring dealing with the real world. 18 year olds in Bangladesh are a lot more “adult” than many college-educated 30-some…

college is delaying young people to become mature, we're producing giant babies these days, thanks to endless parenting, online gaming, social screen time, now probably even metaverse, you name it. on the STEM subject, teens good at math are never teacher's favorites, instead they're called nerds and some are even isolated from the rest, it's quite the opposite in Asia, or even in Europe. That's the root cause we nee…

I asked my high school math teacher to write me a recommendation letter for college. He politely refused, saying he could not in good conscience recommend me. I am grateful for him for letting me know, so I could ask another teacher.

More than once he'd announced in class that he was grading the class on a curve, but me separately.

Suffice to say we didn't get along.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#324

Post by Schiendelman »

droidist2 wrote: post #318
xyzzyz wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think Americans were less adult in, say, 1930s, when only small fraction of them went to college?

I mean, they looked more adult. If you look at a high school year book from decades ago the seniors look like they're in their 30s. Maybe this means time is speeding up, or that life was harder then which aged them, like how outdoor cats often look all haggard. Then again was life really that much harder in the 1960s?

I suspect that what you’re seeing is that they were less overweight, which appears to us as “older” in young people.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#325

Post by gruez »

lordnacho wrote: post #250
gruez wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Serious question - have you ever been poor? Are you aware that sometimes people have to work at shitty jobs because they have no other options? OP was talking about the problem from a practical perspective (ie. "We really need farm workers", presumably worried about a future where there aren't enough farm workers and we starve or something), and I was addressing that in the same way. Your objection seems to be from…

The whole price stickiness thing is the free market not working. How can you say the market will sort it out and in the next post give the mechanism for why it doesn't do so? What you're really arguing isn't that the market will sort things out to someone's satisfaction, you're just saying the market is a jungle and whatever survives survives.

> The whole price stickiness thing is the free market not working. How can you say the market will sort it out and in the next post give the mechanism for why it doesn't do so?

I suppose it's "not working" if by "not working" you mean "behaves exactly like economics 101 models that assume rational actors". But as it relates to this context, business are reacting approximately in the way we would expect, albeit with some delay/hesitancy. Average pay has gone up in the past few months, for instance.

>What you're really arguing isn't that the market will sort things out to someone's satisfaction, you're just saying the market is a jungle and whatever survives survives.

I don't argue that because it's not clear what "satisfaction" entails. If you mean the optimal choice every time, I don't think you'll find any free market advocate who would make that claim. In the meantime, I'm pretty satisfied. I can still eat out, and I have the choice between "higher wages but more expensive" restaurants and "lower wages but worse service" restaurants. It's not really clear right now which is the best choice here (eg. maybe I'd rather accept reduced/worse service than pay more), so letting consumers as a whole decide seems like the best course of action.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#326

Post by WalterBright »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #313
synergy20 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

college is delaying young people to become mature, we're producing giant babies these days, thanks to endless parenting, online gaming, social screen time, now probably even metaverse, you name it. on the STEM subject, teens good at math are never teacher's favorites, instead they're called nerds and some are even isolated from the rest, it's quite the opposite in Asia, or even in Europe. That's the root cause we nee…

It's not (just) college. Even if you do make it past college, hitting what older generations would consider typical markers of adulthood (having your own place, a good job, a stable relationship, a family, etc.) are all delayed and/or more difficult to achieve. Meanwhile many jobs are trying to sell themselves not through a TC that would let one hit these markers, but through football tables, pizza parties, drinks an…

When I was a teen, teenagers had after school jobs. McDonald's, stores, etc., were populated with teen workers at minimum wage.

Today those jobs are held by adults, expecting to be able to raise a family on it. Teenagers rarely have jobs, their first job waits until after they graduate from college.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#327

Post by vmception »

imgabe wrote: post #312

Higher education in the US is trying to fulfill so many roles it's unsustainable. - teaching marketable skills so people can get jobs - teaching "how to think" and learning about art and culture - Performing cutting edge research - minor league sports teams The large state schools are trying to fulfill all these conflicting roles. We should probably break them out to separate entities. If you have a physicist who's a…

The first should be trade schools

Just so professors dont have to act oblivious as to why students are there, some still revert to “wdym, you should be here for the pursuit of learning”

But there is merit to that, the schools reserved for the upper echelon of society (in terms of most coveted exclusive network and access) have been around for like 300 years, they can weather this several decade long meme of inclusion and the coincidental corporate sector that has people convinced they need degrees to access that (and why expanded audiences want to be included in those school’s admissions to begin with)

“Hey current Dean and former US Treasury Secretary and cabinet member, remember that time when the proletariat was trying to go here? Are those dark ages going to be on the evaluation?”

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#328

Post by fuckcensorship »

agumonkey wrote: post #170
crackercrews wrote: post #52

Definitely agree that removing the SAT appears to be related to the upcoming supreme court case about affirmative action. COVID was a good reason to delay it for a couple years. But schools are pushing it out further. That makes no sense. It seems the SAT is increasingly considered "racist" because it reveals racial disparities in learning. What's next? Get rid of the driver's license test because it turns that white…

It's extremely difficult for me to pinpoint when / where the tendency to flatten (as in no more disparity) started. It's super weird. Everything is flat. I sense some kind of rejection of it from fear of potential dominance. But it's still odd to me.

You’re not the only one who notices this. I think you would be interested in Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut [1], a great short story related to this topic.

[1]: https://www.cvccworks.edu/Downloads/HarrisonBergeronByKurtVo...

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#330

Post by ryan93 »

stonogo wrote: post #253
ryan93 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SAT math scores combined with GPA are 5 times more predictive than gpa alone at Berkeley. They also found the test was more predictive for low income students

The same task force you're quoting also recommended the SAT be revamped to reduce the inherent bias among the questions.

“black/white comparison on the SAT verbal test, some evidence of bias exists, but the bias is against white students on some questions against black students in other cases. Furthermore, our analysis of the results suggest that for this one, the effects are far too small to explain much of the SAT gap in test scores between black and white students.“ nonetheless the SAT math lets them find students who’s GPAs aren’t super high for personal reasons and also distinguish between students with the same GPA
Post reply on HN