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

991–1000 of 1001 posts

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

#991

Post by tsol »

shafyy wrote: post #680
WoodenChair wrote: post #605

Sam Altman makes a lot of grandiose predictions and statements. For example, in 2019 he said “Human radiologists are already much worse than computer radiologists. If I had to pick a human or an AI to read my scan, I’d pick the AI.” [0] However, most people with domain knowledge in this space still would not want their scan not to be read by a human. The AI radiology apps are generally narrowly focused and useful for…

Sam Altman and his buddies are incredibly out of touch with the real world. In a related tweet, he said [0]: > A version of college replacement I'm super interested in: Find the smartest and most driven 18 year olds in the world, and give them 'tenure'--say a decade+ of salary, resources to work on whatever they want, and a smart peer group--in exchange for small % of future earnings. Completely agree with your state…

>Find the smartest and most driven 18 year olds in the world

And how do you even do that? Who's more driven, the white honor roll student, the Asian honor roll student with the tiger mom pushing them, or the African student who isn't on the honor roll but came from an environment with fewer opportunities and who is raising their younger siblings alongside school? Just defining what intelligence is, is really difficult and there isn't any universally accepted measure. He just assumes these problems can be solved easily, when that question is unanswered. If it's so easy to find those the smartest and hardest working people, then you can just turn schooling into a tier system-- these schools are for the smartest and these and for everyone else. Because right now, that's akin to saying let's give everyone at Harvard a bunch of money and resources to do whatever they want. Which, I don't think will end well as there are plenty of immature people at Harvard

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

#992

Post by oversocialized »

judge2020 wrote: post #530
4oo4 wrote: post #158

Really surprised no one has brought up that admissions are dropping (especially among men), and that almost all universities are built on the poverty labor of captive educators. Meanwhile administrators take all the money. Case in point: https://futurism.com/the-byte/university-professor-unpaid

This is capitalism in general as of the last ~30 years. Profits are continuously rising, with investors and senior management taking the largest checks home so they too can become small time accredited investors of their own 8,9-digit net worths. To add, covid was the perfect scapegoat to shifting liability to in order to move tons of wealth higher up and away from the lower and middle classes: https://www.nytimes.co…

[dead]

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

#994

Post by lifeplusplus »

wolverine876 wrote: post #953
lifeplusplus wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems SAT merely reflects current academic skills. If they developed to that point due to privilege, the test isn't responsible for highlighting it. If college goal is to give limited space to most skilled students then it's an effective method to do that.. isn't it?

> It seems SAT merely reflects current academic skills. What is that based on, and how do you define academic skills? It may reflect how much time and money you can spend on test prep courses (time is also a problem for poor students who tend to have jobs, take care of siblings for parents with multiple jobs and no day care, etc.). It may reflect test-taking skills in general, which aren't skills of value.

That's a possibility, that there is a difference between test taking skills and true academic skills, in that case maybe have students take one class and admission would based on percentile... ie. 1000 student in top percentile will be accepted full time other passing students will get a credit but not admission.

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

#995

Post by de_nied »

I am reminded more and more of 2008. An academic loan bubble. Students paying tens of thousands for network connections and a degree. Student's parents putting loans in their names for it.

We started with Coronavirus, went into "The Great Resignation", and ended up at Ukraine. Fast-forward to student loan payments restarting, how many people will be able to afford it after all that? Assume they can afford it, how many would rather default?

A bubble, just waiting, patiently.

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

#996

Post by kylewpppd »

tsol wrote: post #991
shafyy wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sam Altman and his buddies are incredibly out of touch with the real world. In a related tweet, he said [0]: > A version of college replacement I'm super interested in: Find the smartest and most driven 18 year olds in the world, and give them 'tenure'--say a decade+ of salary, resources to work on whatever they want, and a smart peer group--in exchange for small % of future earnings. Completely agree with your state…

>Find the smartest and most driven 18 year olds in the world And how do you even do that? Who's more driven, the white honor roll student, the Asian honor roll student with the tiger mom pushing them, or the African student who isn't on the honor roll but came from an environment with fewer opportunities and who is raising their younger siblings alongside school? Just defining what intelligence is, is really difficul…

In your hypothetical, why did you choose to have the African kid raising siblings, the Asian kid have a Tiger mom, and the white kid be on honor roll with no external factors?

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

#997

Post by achileas »

BlameKaneda wrote: post #830
Forgeties79 wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enjoym…

It's not that they're unfocused on research, they don't do research as part of their CC duties. IME many are bored retirees, underemployed MS/MA holders, or adjuncts moonlighting.

IME many aren't technically professors either, instead they're instructors. It's a weird distinction but academics huff and puff about it a lot.

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

#998

Post by achileas »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #858
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…

Why do US universities use students as teaching assistants in the first place? If you study for a PhD in the UK then the academic and research work is what you are there for and all that you do. And that means you get it done in much less time.

Cheap labor, takes the load off of professors when it comes to the gruntwork (grading, etc.) so they can focus on research, teaching, and grantwriting, and it's part of the apprenticeship of grad students (which is what grad school and postdocs are supposed to be), introducing them to the world of teaching. In my PhD program, post-quals you had to fully teach one intro class as part of your degree requirements.

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

#999

Post by selimthegrim »

Gollapalli wrote: post #962
selimthegrim wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My 19 year old mother in Pakistan might have been a lot more adult because she had me, but I'm sure having to forego her career for a marriage with a Rs 10000 mehr was something she would have liked to have had a few more choices about. Get a grip on yourself, man. (And yes, she went to college there too)

Your mom might be better off. Look at what's happening with educated American women. They forgo children until it's too late to have them, focusing on career instead of on family, and then find that they can not do both. My mom flipped the order, working until she had us, then taking about a decade off her career and doing an MS in Computer Science in the meanwhile, before returning to her career.

She got an MIS about a decade after having us but couldn’t get internships because she had to take care of us as a single mother so it really never helped her land a job

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

#1000

Post by naveen99 »

Fomite wrote: post #933
ModernMech wrote: post #931

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've just added this position to our school called "Research Faculty". They are soft money supported and have no teaching load. Often they will be attached to some research institute.

Soft money supported versions are fairly common - mine's got a substantial hard money component, which is what makes it rare and honestly a little bit wonderful.

What’s soft vs hard money ?
Post reply on HN