141–150 of 188 posts
I went to an Ivy League university. Was studying for Biochem one year to meet a requirement. Class had ~500 people in it and no classes. You just go to study sections once a week, and take the tests. The study sections were all run by OTHER undergrads and the entire thing was run by an adjunct. I ask one of the TAs (same year as me) - "Why the fuck are we paying so much for this education. My high school teachers put…
Here's how it will happen: digitalize knowlege, I mean really digital, like how LEAN math cover nearly all undergrad math subjects in mathlib.
Make learning courses like MUD or multi-ending visual novels so learners can hae adaptive route of learning. The higher education won't be replaced until we hae complete single-source-of-truth in digital.
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…
I don't think this is true.
Most universities' signaling value is from the fact that they are accredited universities. They draw their signaling power for the institution of the university, maintained in part by the department of education.
While I haven't checked recently if this survived, in the 2010s several universities offered their courses online and offered certificate of completion for $50-$300 per course. These kinds of programs fizzled because even if students did learn the material the certificates did not sufficiently signal to employers that the student had learned it. A friend of mine from one of these universities did an internal study showing that of those students who completed the equivalent of a bachelor's degree almost none found employment in their field. This result should be surprising if we think low tier universities have no signaling power.
On a more conciliatory note; I generally agree VC ed-tech has been a boondoggle for similar reasons - a combination of misunderstanding education and realizing that no other part of education is monetizable enough to produce the kind of returns VCs want (barring certain extra-ordinary tech innovations that have not been forthcoming e.g. strong AI)
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…
As for signalling, “The Case Against Education” by Bryan Caplan is a crisply argued case that signalling is >50% at least of what is going on.
But college education does have value for most people beyond signalling. Whether it's worth $80K-$100K (depending on your state) I think is a harder question, but I definitely think it's >>$0.
I think the reason for this is hindsight bias, we don't realize how dumb we were before college vs. after college. Maybe going to an expensive day care where you are spoonfed super basic math and sociology or whatever is not valuable. But what I do think was valuable for me when I graduated 5-6 years ago from a state U.S. school was
(1) learning to talk with other people in a professional way,
(2) dedicating yourself for 4 years to studying one thing and becoming generally knowledgeable and mature about that subject, so that very little can surprise you, and
(3) learning self control and independence, and also how to drink/use drugs without embarrassing yourself. Valuable professional skill especially in tech.
I don't think (2) can be accomplished unless you take the initiative to go beyond the basic requirements for the undergrad curriculum. At least in math/CS, which is what I studied. But in industry, that maturity comes in handy especially as you're given loosely scoped tasks and you have to determine what's possible or impossible and then convince various manager types from foreign countries who are pushing back and sometimes threatening you. And as your peers whine and are weeded out, you see more and more how valuable that maturity is.
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I mostly agree. The one place I split with you -- and hard -- is that I view the institutions in my life as charities. I am admittedly blessed in that all save one (my PhD school) really is basically a well-run charity. The only one that isn't public and sparten is not rich amd not elite. All are way more lean than most businesses ( If you really want to make money off the back of education... don't. Build your thing…
I think higher education institutions should be non-profit. I do think there are a lot of financial pressures on most small-medium non-public schools that make them operate in a more business oriented fashion and they must do so to stay open. When I talk about making money I am talking about system utilized by colleges like enrollment CRMs, grading software etc. In most cases the only way those get made and are suppo…
In some countries private universities even get a bad reputation, with exception of a few renowed ones, as their graduates are seen by the employers as having bought their degree, even if they battled throught it as everyone else, e.g. in Portugal.
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I’ve taught mathematics for over 20 years in higher education and I strongly disagree with your view on the relative ease of learning math on one’s own. Let’s take a simple example. Here’s the distributive property for rings: a(b + c) = ab + ac It’s easy for me to convince someone that because of this property we get the following: 3(x + 2) = 3x + 6 It’s much harder to convince someone that 3x + 6 = 3(x + 2) It’s har…
1+1 x 2 this has been doing rounds on twitter how people do not have grasp of basic maths and it points out a good argument for people who have been taught "good basics"... like i recently asked a doctor who says they are bad at maths and they just blurted out 3. i asked why and they responded, "uh.... bodmas?" its such a small thing really, like in your primary and secondary education, of all the classes you attend,…
Whereas ring theory is very much specific to algebra and you're not going to use it programming, doing chemistry, or whatever else outside math. Finding motivation to learn pure math is a bit harder.
GP's example illustrates a good point. I agree with their point.
I went to an Ivy League university. Was studying for Biochem one year to meet a requirement. Class had ~500 people in it and no classes. You just go to study sections once a week, and take the tests. The study sections were all run by OTHER undergrads and the entire thing was run by an adjunct. I ask one of the TAs (same year as me) - "Why the fuck are we paying so much for this education. My high school teachers put…
Every time this conversation comes up it seems so surreal: paying for branding? Signaling status? Not for learning? Not my experience.
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> The answer to "why hasn't technology disrupted [XYZ]" is always that the problems in XYZ weren't technology related in the first place. I wonder why one would want to "disrupt* [XYZ] in general, and education in particular. Disruption seems to me to almost always being a net negative for everyone except the upstarts who displaced the incumbents by literally breaking their market - particularly, the customers end up…
> Disruption seems to me to almost always being a net negative for everyone except the upstarts who displaced the incumbents by literally breaking their market - particularly, the customers end up holding the short end of the stick. There's plenty of "customers" (students) who wind up holding the short end of the current stick, too. People who, say, wind up $50,000 in debt, and still didn't manage to get a degree. Or…
So outside US, and a few other countries with similar approach to high level education, there isn't nothing to disrupt.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> Most institutions provide very little signaling value. I don't think this is true. Most universities' signaling value is from the fact that they are accredited universities. They draw their signaling power for the institution of the university, maintained in part by the department of education. While I haven't checked recently if this survived, in the 2010s several universities offered their courses online and offe…
From what I see technology has definitely disrupted higher education. Textbooks, worksheets, and report cards are being replaced by Khan Academy, MyLab, Canvas. Teachers are doing less teaching and delegating more tasks to these services: assigning online modules, quizzes, and resources to help students (and this isn't necessarily a bad thing, as some of these online modules are really good). I predict that very soon…
If AI tutors are not designed and implemented in a way that is inclusive and respectful of diverse learning styles and needs, they may perpetuate or even exacerbate existing inequalities and discrimination.