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Why hasn’t technology disrupted higher education already?

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Re: Why hasn’t technology disrupted higher education already?

#111

Post by rdtwo »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #89
syzarian wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has been possible for a century to self-study to the equivalent of a bachelor's degree using textbooks but it is… With the exception of a small percent of the population this isn’t true. Most people don’t have the ability, patience, wherewithal to self study a topic in depth. HN comments are littered with examples of educated people in one area making foolish comments in other areas with those people thinking they…

> With the exception of a small percent of the population this isn’t true. Most people don’t have the ability, patience, wherewithal to self study a topic in depth I don't disagree, but didn't feel the nuance added meaningful information to my post. Most of these people also are unlikely to complete an online course - ed tech has a hard time reproducing the "social pressure" aspect of education. It's worth noting tha…

Very common to see techs that are better in every way than new engineers but don’t get recognized as such

Re: Why hasn’t technology disrupted higher education already?

#112

Post by rdtwo »

jltsiren wrote: post #108
etempleton wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are both right, honestly. Much of the value of higher education as it is structured is the credentialing and the networking. Everyone knows what a bachelors is, a master’s is, a doctorate is. This is important. It means something. However you are also right that education works in person for a lot of people and there are a lot of values there. Community colleges are an under utilized resource to learn. Making mon…

> Everyone knows what a bachelors is, a master’s is, a doctorate is. This is important. It means something. A bachelor's is a glorified dropout. A master's is the primary academic degree. A doctorate is more like a title rather than a degree, and if you do it full-time early in your career, it signifies that you can advance from junior to intermediate positions. Or they could mean something else, depending on which t…

Harsh… I think a doctorate often means you are difficult, out of touch and got stuck in a bubble too long

Re: Why hasn’t technology disrupted higher education already?

#113

Post by rdtwo »

armchairhacker wrote: post #52
Hermitian909 wrote: post #30

I've worked in the ed-tech space for years and am good friends with many of the early pioneers. Most of the capturable value in education is signal of acquired knowledge and other factors. I'll address the knowledge signaling first. It has been possible for a century to self-study to the equivalent of a bachelor's degree using textbooks but it is very difficult to verify in a reasonable amount of time whether someone…

It may be useful to expand proctoring centers, and provide online universities where many exams are taken in-person and a lot of the grade is determined by assignments that can't easily be faked/cheated (e.g. randomly-generated questions, projects) Universities have pre-existing weight and "old money" recognition, but there's nothing inherently more "reliable" about them than online. A lot of people cheat in college,…

Random does not prevent cheating. Cheating happens because students know the problem style ahead of time. It’s like doing leet code, vs knowing the question and then redoing it with a slightly different question

Re: Why hasn’t technology disrupted higher education already?

#114

Post by clpm4j »

thwayunion wrote: post #88
HDThoreaun wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you are a math teacher, so I suspect your experience is because you are speaking to employers who are looking to hire math students. In that case I agree, calculus is important. For students outside of STEM it’s a different story in my experience.

I am not a math teacher. I have not taught professionally in a long time, and even then it was temporary and not in math. But I know Calc II in particular is an interesting crucible in terms of students' abilities to learn from an internet module. I work in the software industry and serve on committees/boards for several schools with which I have various affiliations. I speak with all types of employers for all types…

It has long been a tradition of Wall Street to hire Ivy grads with name-your-social-studies major (History, Government, English, Philosophy) into investment banking analyst roles. These kids then proceed to live in Excel and Powerpoint for 2+ years. They get hired for the reasons that the parent commenter stated. It's different out here in the tech/startup world - you truly need the skillset beforehand to step into the role, but I imagine there are plenty of other industries similar to Wall St where they just want someone young and smart who they can train to do the job. The core curriculum gets thrown out the window - it's about time management, self motivation to be successful, smart enough to deal with ambiguity, etc.

Re: Why hasn’t technology disrupted higher education already?

#115

Post by [deleted] »

thwayunion wrote: post #43
Hermitian909 wrote: post #30

I've worked in the ed-tech space for years and am good friends with many of the early pioneers. Most of the capturable value in education is signal of acquired knowledge and other factors. I'll address the knowledge signaling first. It has been possible for a century to self-study to the equivalent of a bachelor's degree using textbooks but it is very difficult to verify in a reasonable amount of time whether someone…

> Most of the capturable value in education is signal of acquired knowledge and other factors. IMO, this is an extreme bias in the Ed VC community and explains how they managed to flush so much cash down the toilet. In no particular order: 1. Tech focus. Most SWEs do not need a CS or even SE degree, and even if you do need that knowledge it really can be learned by hacking at things alone in a room. This ranges betwe…

[deleted]

Re: Why hasn’t technology disrupted higher education already?

#116

Post by hammock »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #30

I've worked in the ed-tech space for years and am good friends with many of the early pioneers. Most of the capturable value in education is signal of acquired knowledge and other factors. I'll address the knowledge signaling first. It has been possible for a century to self-study to the equivalent of a bachelor's degree using textbooks but it is very difficult to verify in a reasonable amount of time whether someone…

>It has been possible for a century to self-study to the equivalent of a bachelor's degree using textbooks

That is not the point of a liberal higher education, though.

Historically (for much longer than a century) people were tutored k-12 in their own homes, with their families and neighbors, and not in these government-run public schools. You could learn whatever you wanted from books at home, and a governess and key instructors.

Still, you were sent off to college at a certain age, to be finished as either a man or a woman at a place like Harvard or a women’s college. The purpose was not principally to teach you math or anthropology that you couldn’t otherwise learn yourself (though you would learn some math and anthropology). There was another purpose

Re: Why hasn’t technology disrupted higher education already?

#117

Post by t-3 »

thwayunion wrote: post #86
makeitdouble wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could replace "self-study" with "manage your own learning resources" and include in that in-person private teachers, one to one online lesson, library talks, workgroups etc. Parent is talking about textbooks, but it doesn't have to be limited to that and you'd still have the "tells us in three sentences how educated you are" problem. I also think it's an interesting "problem", if you'd try to evaluate how knowled…

> I also think it's an interesting "problem", if you'd try to evaluate how knowledgeable someone would be after listening to economic audiobooks for a decade for instance. I assume it is more likely than not that this person is a crank with superficial knowledge and is dangerous when given a stack of cash or access to policy levers. Even for highly literate people, the crucible of feedback is very important. That is…

How often does an economist ever receive feedback on their theories? AFAICT, only a handful of people make economic decisions at the scale of economic theory.

Re: Why hasn’t technology disrupted higher education already?

#119

Post by bigger_cheese »

analog31 wrote: post #87
RigelKentaurus wrote: post #53

If you use a different definition of higher education -- not as a college degree but truly incredible learning on a variety of topics, I think the disruption has already happened. Youtube has completely changed how I learn. The most amazing videos on philosophy, quantum mechanics, psychology -- it's all on Youtube.

How good are you at solving moderately difficult quantum mechanics problems? Maybe you're the exception, but when I meet people who've learned quantum mechanics from books, they've soaked up all the cool weird stuff, but can't write an equation. Disclosure: I don't know how I would have learned physics without classroom instruction. I was viscerally interested in it, and in math, but didn't have the self discipline t…

I have a Materials Engineering degree. In my 4th and final year I decided to pick "Solid State Physics" as an elective, it was a 3rd year course taught by the physics faculty it had no prerequisites listed and sounded like it was an interesting subject.

I was the only non physics student in the course and I remember sitting in the first lecture as the lecturer spoke a million miles an hour about Hamiltonians, Wave Functions and Fermi-Dirac Statistics. Almost everything he spoke about sounded like a completely different language to me and everyone else was nodding along to everything he was saying. I felt so lost. I somehow scraped a pass but in the process had to teach myself the prior assumed physics knowledge in order to do so. I would not recommend.

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