Silicon Valley is wrong about college • Hacker News Board

Re: Silicon Valley is wrong about college

#41

Post by yummyfajitas » Sun, Dec 30, 2012, 7:13 PM UTC

The idea that education will address the problem of the low information voter is nonsensical.

The probability of your vote affecting the outcome is too low to be represented in double precision arithmetic (last time I did the calculation). Therefore, you have no incentive to vote correctly.

Even if education gives you the tools to become a high information voter, why would you bother? Just vote for whichever candidate gives you $0.01 worth of self congratulation about not being a racist, having good family values, or whatever.

Re: Silicon Valley is wrong about college

#42

Post by ojr » Sun, Dec 30, 2012, 7:21 PM UTC

I am pursuing a degree in CS but im also a Javascript Hacker out of the classroom, (wrongly hating Java by default, I blame the community). I thought I would struggle coming into a Java class because "Java is to Javascript as Ham is to Hamster" blah blah blah. College forced me to see the similarities, for-loops, dot/bracket notation, using a library to import certain methods etc... I would never have drill myself to learn these if I didn't go to school because I would have stayed away from Java as far as possible but I'm glad I did. It also gave me extra confidence and self-validation that the code I write works kind of like Test Driven Development ;)

Everyone should go to as much education they can afford or what they seem necessary, and learning out of classroom is important as well

Re: Silicon Valley is wrong about college

#43

Post by 001sky » Sun, Dec 30, 2012, 7:22 PM UTC

keithpeter wrote: post #15

001sky wrote: post #7

When you look at the problems our democracy has, probably the biggest one is the "low information voter." The ignorant electorate that says they want government out of our lives, but keep your hands off Medicare and Social Security, for example. == Puhleeeeeeez.

I live in the UK, so I may not be up with US politics, and I know Winer has political views. Are you saying that Winer underestimates the median voter, or that Medicare is wrong? PS: I suspect you are being down-voted because you are not making your meaning clear.

Regardless of policy, step back and look at the logic:

"The biggest problem with our democracy is that [everyone esle] is stupid"

This is the worst kind of ignorance, generally speaking.

Re: Silicon Valley is wrong about college

#44

Post by davewiner » Sun, Dec 30, 2012, 7:25 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #25

"Nowadays Silicon Valley says that college education is a waste." This is false. I know a lot of people in Silicon Valley, and I know no one who says that. Even Peter Thiel, who is arguably the iconic college skeptic, only says that college might not be optimal for everyone.

Well, it didn't say "Everyone Paul Graham knows in Silicon Valley says that, exactly."

In an attention-deprived environment, we write in shorthand sometimes. I don't have to tell you everything I read that led me to that belief, you can use your own judgement and look it up yourself.

You know I sat in the audience when you interviewed Zuck a couple of months ago, and I listened carefully to what you and he said about his experience at Harvard. Interestingly, I was at Harvard at the same time, and I know that a lot of the stories he's telling are not true, about what the adults were doing there at at the time. I was one of the adults. We were doing some pretty important stuff too, it turns out. :-)

Anyway the point is this -- we can all learn from each other. It would be great if you read past the first thing that turned you off and listen to the whole schpiel. I gave you and Zuck that much, I spent a few hours of my life to find out what you thought, even though I was sure a fair amount of it was wrong.

Re: Silicon Valley is wrong about college

#45

Post by pcote » Sun, Dec 30, 2012, 7:38 PM UTC

Oh, this topic again. What the heck...

>Nowadays Silicon Valley says that college education is a waste.

I wasn't aware of Silicon Valley being of one voice on this matter. Is there a representative spokesperson I don't know about?

>I find this disturbing. I want them to educate better citizens, not richer business people.

Personally, I'm not aware of how college made me a better citizen.

> But first comes the person, not the bank account.

I am not a better person than someone who didn't or couldn't go to college.

>When you look at the problems our democracy has, probably the biggest one is the "low information voter."

After the grade pressure was off, a potential job was the only thing that could get me to research anything. Later on, I learned to let my own curiosity have a say in what I looked into. I think I became a lot more "educated" when I got to that point.

Re: Silicon Valley is wrong about college

#46

Post by japhyr » Sun, Dec 30, 2012, 7:38 PM UTC

jpdevereaux wrote: post #14

japhyr wrote: post #3

The college experience is still pretty worthwhile, but the consequences of taking out loans in order to attend college are gettin uglier. My wife and I are both working in service fields - I am a teacher, and she is a counselor. We are both good at what we do. But we are at our income ceilings. We are paying as much in student loan payments as we are in housing costs. some of my colleagues will be in debt for the res…

This "income ceiling" you mention brings up a potentially interesting idea - why not scale the cost of college according to the expected value of your major? I know that in a broader sense this happens already, as "better" schools tend to be more expensive, but perhaps (to use a cliché example) an English degree and a CS degree shouldn't cost the same.

I think this is a pretty good approach to the problem. It certainly applies to service fields in which there are pay ceilings. We already have some attempts at making this happen. For example, teachers and people in service-oriented fields can get about $5000 of federal loans forgiven if you work in a low-income or hard-to-staff position for 5 consecutive years. STEM teachers can get about $17000 forgiven.

But these are token measures right now. I have a colleague who has roughly 100,000 in loans. If you think this is unreasonable, keep in mind that in many states you need a master's degree to keep teaching. There is a 10-year forgiveness program, where if you pay off your loans at an income-adjusted rate for 10 years, the rest of your loan is forgiven. But, you pay income tax on the amount that is forgiven. So we have people paying appropriate income-based amounts, which don't cover interest. Then you get a taxed on a "windfall" of 100,000+. So now you have a 20-40,000 IRS bill, which doesn't qualify for any forgiveness programs. One arm of the government giveth, another arm taketh.

So I think the answer does lie in scaling college costs according to expected incomes, with appropriate measures in place to guard against gaming that system. It seems to come down to a question of whether we, as a society, actually value these service-oriented fields. Many of our elected politicians don't appear to, because they can afford to pay privately for these services (education, counseling, health care, etc.).

Re: Silicon Valley is wrong about college

#47

Post by dullcrisp » Sun, Dec 30, 2012, 7:42 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #41

The idea that education will address the problem of the low information voter is nonsensical. The probability of your vote affecting the outcome is too low to be represented in double precision arithmetic (last time I did the calculation). Therefore, you have no incentive to vote correctly. Even if education gives you the tools to become a high information voter, why would you bother? Just vote for whichever candidat…

I'm not sure I understand your point. What chance of personally deciding the outcome of an election do you need to have before voting is worth your time? 50%?

One votes for the same reasons one refrains from littering in a public park, or gives a few dollars to a charity, or donates blood, or contributes to a Kickstarter campaign, or volunteers to go to war, or pays taxes. Not mainly because of the chance that your individual contribution will make a difference in and of itself, but to do your part in making society better for everyone. From the perspective of the whole social organism, if you refuse to do these things because your individual contributions don't make a direct difference, you're one of the harmful cells.

Re: Silicon Valley is wrong about college

#48

Post by japhyr » Sun, Dec 30, 2012, 7:42 PM UTC

schwabacher wrote: post #29

jpdevereaux wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "income ceiling" you mention brings up a potentially interesting idea - why not scale the cost of college according to the expected value of your major? I know that in a broader sense this happens already, as "better" schools tend to be more expensive, but perhaps (to use a cliché example) an English degree and a CS degree shouldn't cost the same.

I think this is a bad idea - salaries paid to different fields are a good (although imperfect) way of measuring the value of those skills to society. If we subsidize education towards less valuable skills at the expense of the most valuable, we end up discouraging people from going into the most needed professions.

"less valuable skills"

That's a pretty loaded statement. Teacher pay is based on years in the system because it is so difficult to measure individual teacher effectiveness, without incentivizing people to pay more attention to the "good" students and marginalize those who are difficult to teach.

Salaries are largely dependent on how much economic return the position provides to the employer, not on how valuable the skills are to society.

Re: Silicon Valley is wrong about college

#49

Post by stared » Sun, Dec 30, 2012, 7:43 PM UTC

I would like to defend Silicon Valley a bit.

More and more education is out current needs. And it will never catch up, as a huge system, with many constrains, large inertia etc. A programme which was perfect (say) 30 years ago may be not longer up to date - when jobs and technologies change rapidly.

Additionally, now almost everything programming-related is on the Internet. See http://xkcd.com/519/ for a comment on usefulness of formal education.

Sure, when someone's dream is to become "the next Gates/Jobs/Zuckerberg" it's not the right motivation to quit education. But I know a lot of smart people who dropped out because of their IT work, or company - and their motivation is not unlike one's who finished their degrees.

Re: Silicon Valley is wrong about college

#50

Post by g2e » Sun, Dec 30, 2012, 7:45 PM UTC

keithpeter wrote: post #18

g2e wrote: post #12

As a current college sophomore, I agree, education is important. However, I strongly believe that a degree does not define a person as educated. As long as you continuously have a general thirst for knowledge and act on it, you'll build your way to becoming an educated individual.

Excellent, now what part does mathematics play in your model of education? PS: I have learned to respect craft skills over the years. Those skills do not normally earn degree level certification in the UK (exceptions being surgeons, opticians and dentists).

Depends on the flavour of the mathematics being taught. If it's a computational calculus course where all you do is memorize integration patterns so you can integrate a boatload of functions, then it's not very beneficial. However if it's a logic course, where you learn how to prove theorems and understand what a proof really is, it would help you in any field. As long as the course doesn't train you to become a computer than I believe it's beneficial to one's education.