I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears • Hacker News Board

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

#821

Post by socksset » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 11:50 AM UTC

chongli wrote: post #712

noobermin wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me explain a line of reasoning that would refute the explanation you provide for the ballooning debt. Universities have not generally changed the way they do things, universities have always been the four things OP listed since forever, even when you likely got your degree (assuming you did, or at the very least most of hacker news did), they were those four things too! Therefore, there is no inherent thing to un…

The thing that happened, which you astutely pointed out, is not related to universities at all. What happened has been called cost disease but is perhaps better known as inflation. The trouble with talking about inflation is that the most commonly-reported figures are based on a consumer basket of goods which have seen skyrocketing leaps in productivity which has kept their prices down, relative to everything else. T…

You can't make an inflation argument when it comes to State school tuition cost. That is absurd.

State school tuition cost have crushed the general level of inflation increases because it is easy money for the state and there is no state that does not love extra money to spend.

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

#822

Post by kkjjkgjjgg » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 11:51 AM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #763

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't he also make a lot of money already? So at least also good at making money.

When Howard Hughes was at his most batshit crazy and generally out of touch with anything resembling humanity his businesses kept being profitable, perhaps once you have a lot of money it is difficult to really screw it up.

So your claim is that Altman used to be capable of making money, but is not anymore? Why?

He doesn't come across as crazy and out of touch to me.

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

#823

Post by socksset » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 11:53 AM UTC

LeroyRaz wrote: post #481

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…

If you have a physist who is at the leading edge of their field you very much do want them teaching. How do you think you get the next generation of great physists? It is similar to how when growing crops, like wheat, you should take the best of your harvest and use it for seed. Historically that is one of the most important and also one of the hardest things to teach farmers. + Many of the greats have loved teaching…

Yea because there is such correlation between being an expert in a field and being a great teacher.

Come on. Most professors are not Feynman. This is exactly the problem if anything.

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

#824

Post by shafyy » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 12:04 PM UTC

darkerside wrote: post #814

shafyy wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He leads OpenAI And OpenAI has strayed away from their initial "vision" considerably. > Why do you think this is a bad idea? Because it's a very libertarian and capitalistic view of how life and society should work. It's very one dimensional. 18-year-olds should not be put in an environment where their goal is to make money for a sicko in Silicon Valley who then takes a percentage of their future earnings. 18-year-…

18 year olds are adults. What you're saying is very paternalistic and patronizing. Everybody who wants to should be encouraged to enjoy their lives, travel, and learn. That's not unique to 18 year olds. And if some have already done a lot of that or are just driven for entrepreneurship, that's a choice they should be able to make.

Of course, 18-year-olds are adults in a legal sense. But they are still very inexperienced in life, heck they are not even allowed to buy beer in the US.

I'm not saying 18-year-olds shouldn't be entrepreneurs. But what Sam Altman is suggesting is just very dystopian to me, because he suggests it as an alternative to a traditional education. In his narrow view, the goal of education is only to produce people who maximize financial value.

> Everybody who wants to should be encouraged to enjoy their lives, travel, and learn

Yes. But as you probably know from your own life (if you're older than 30), this gets harder and harder. So we should especially encourage younger folks, who are still more opend-minded and have less responsibilities, to do that.

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

#825

Post by shafyy » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 12:07 PM UTC

newsclues wrote: post #787

shafyy wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He leads OpenAI And OpenAI has strayed away from their initial "vision" considerably. > Why do you think this is a bad idea? Because it's a very libertarian and capitalistic view of how life and society should work. It's very one dimensional. 18-year-olds should not be put in an environment where their goal is to make money for a sicko in Silicon Valley who then takes a percentage of their future earnings. 18-year-…

“ Because it's a very libertarian and capitalistic view of how life” Why that bad? Is a very socialist or communist view on life better? Seems like a bias rather than factually supported.

I think it's clear that libertarianism and extreme capitalism is not the best way to organize a society. And no, the alternative to that is not communism.

Countries who have a good social net and where the state plays some role in ensuring social welfare fare better than countries who don't. And no, GDP is not a good metric of how people in a country are doing as a whole.

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

#826

Post by shafyy » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 12:10 PM UTC

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #822

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Howard Hughes was at his most batshit crazy and generally out of touch with anything resembling humanity his businesses kept being profitable, perhaps once you have a lot of money it is difficult to really screw it up.

So your claim is that Altman used to be capable of making money, but is not anymore? Why? He doesn't come across as crazy and out of touch to me.

He does not seem out of touch to you?

He recently announced WorldCoin [0]:

> To address it, we built a new device called the Orb. It solves the problem through biometrics: the Orb captures an image of a person’s eyes, which is converted into a short numeric code, making it possible to check whether the person has signed up already. If not, they receive their free share of Worldcoin.

He thinks that launching a global coin owned by VCs and collecting everyone's biometric data will make the world a better place. If that's not out of touch, I don't know what is.

[0]: https://worldcoin.org/

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

#827

Post by raxxorrax » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 12:11 PM UTC

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…

> If you have a physicist who's at the leading edge of research in their field, you want them doing that research, not teaching 18 year old's Newton's laws of motion.

That depends. Fundamental research is a tiny field and prodigies should perhaps stay there. But otherwise you want the best of the best to educate the next generation as a general rule. Their task is vastly more complex as to convey the plain material. That teachers have such a low regard is indicative of a highly anti-intellectual position, which of course makes the job fairly unattractive for anyone talented.

To supply researchers with resources that their work is not inhibited is often a logistically trivial problem, especially in modern times. So research and education can and should remain intertwined for the most part. Progress is about the pipeline too.

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

#828

Post by praestigiare » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 12:12 PM UTC

This is one decent and uncontroversial point: that the system of student loans is not working well, followed by a lot of very bad arguments. Take this, for example;

“Monocultures suck. It's hard to know how many of the stories about ridiculous stuff happening on campuses to believe, but even if a small fraction of them are true, these are clearly no longer places hyperfocused on learning.”

It starts with negative priming. Though he has not and will not do any work to actually suggest colleges are monocultures, he throws it out there. Then he invites you to think of negative stories, and suggests some of them are probably true. In a complete non-sequitur (it must be, because he has not actually defined a premise, just asked his audience to imagine one), he provides a conclusion. But even there, to deflect criticism he moves the goalposts, implying that to be successful, colleges should be “hyperfocused.”

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

#829

Post by davemp » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 12:22 PM UTC

jdiez17 wrote: post #714

davemp wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Home improvement is pretty cancerous right now. I get quotes with ~$5k in labor for work that would take me a week to do in the worst case. That’s literally double my rate without considering that working for yourself is tax free. It baffles me that our markets are so inefficient that it’s 125% more effective for me to take time off my ‘highly skilled’ engineering job to do ‘low skilled’ renovation/repair work myself…

> It baffles me that our markets are so inefficient that it’s 125% more effective for me to take time off my ‘highly skilled’ engineering job to do ‘low skilled’ renovation/repair work myself. I don’t think it’s particularly baffling. A large class of jobs, including the trades and so-called “low skilled” professions, are in very high demand - which indicates that what they do is valuable to a lot of people - and whi…

That’s the charge out rate. The people actually doing the labor (overwhelmingly immigrants) are only seeing a tiny fraction of that money (~1/10th or less).

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

#830

Post by BlameKaneda » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 12:25 PM UTC

Forgeties79 wrote: post #518

beloch wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I was told as a grad student that I've never forgotten is, "Nobody has ever won a Nobel prize for having happy students". At the time, I was struggling to keep up with the marking demands of a new (i.e. This was the first year it was taught) course I was TA'ing. I had around a hundred students and each one was generating 10-20 pages of handwritten lab reports per week. Student writing varied from human type…

It is so refreshing to see this take. I was on a path to be a history Ph.D candidate - I wanted to teach, and archive diving is basically my own personal drug. The problem is it’s “publish or perish,” as we all know. My higher priority, i.e. teaching, was essentially an obstacle. You know how I know that? My own advisor and other department members told me not to get my doctorate (after writing a 60 page thesis mind…

> I wanted to teach, and archive diving is basically my own personal drug. The problem is it’s “publish or perish,” as we all know. My higher priority, i.e. teaching, was essentially an obstacle.

I got an Associate's degree at a community college, and one of the most refreshing things about it was how un-focused the professors were on research. Teaching was their Number One, and I attribute much of my overall enjoyment to their attitudes.

I then transferred to a 4-year school and received my Bachelor's in two years. The professors at this university did research, but they were also committed to teaching and interpersonal relationships with students. I'd been given the option to transfer to a large (40k+ university), and although it was more well-known I knew that I'd be in gigantic class sizes with research-heavy instructors.