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The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

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Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#11

Post by dominotw »

objclxt wrote: post #6

The 'sticker price' comparison is really misleading here. I don't think the Wall Street Journal do anything to correct this. Here's what the article says: > A degree [at Minerva] will cost less than half the average top-end private education, which is now over $50,000 a year At Harvard today, the minority of students pay full price. Over 70% of the undergraduate student body are on scholarship. Notably, if your famil…

>Over 70% of the undergraduate student body are on scholarship.

I am not sure if aid and scholarship are the same thing. But according to this http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/1/26/diversity-lack-f... Over 45% of students dont even qualify for aid because their parental income is over $200,000

" we come to the stunning conclusion that approximately 45.6 percent of Harvard undergraduates come from families with incomes above $200,000, placing them in the top 3.8 percent of American households. Even more shockingly, only about 4 percent of Harvard undergraduates come from the bottom quintile of U.S. incomes and a mere 17.8 percent come from the bottom three quintiles of U.S. incomes."

Which also means that over half the students wouldn't care much about the cost of tuition.

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#12

Post by bobbydavid »

clicks wrote: post #4

I'm reminded now of something that Bill Gates said: universities like Harvard or MIT shouldn't be lauded for churning out smart people... who were already smart before they entered Harvard, we should instead be lauding institutions that admit everyday folks from tough backgrounds that then turn them into smart and able people. In that spirit it is strange that the article goes to great pains to emphasize how "elite"…

I agree but in the same way that the original elite Facebook paved the way for today's Facebook behemoth, I imagine a successful elite e-stitution (c) will legitimize the concept, which will pave the way for something with more universal appeal.

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#13

Post by lmartel »

dominotw wrote: post #11
objclxt wrote: post #6

The 'sticker price' comparison is really misleading here. I don't think the Wall Street Journal do anything to correct this. Here's what the article says: > A degree [at Minerva] will cost less than half the average top-end private education, which is now over $50,000 a year At Harvard today, the minority of students pay full price. Over 70% of the undergraduate student body are on scholarship. Notably, if your famil…

>Over 70% of the undergraduate student body are on scholarship. I am not sure if aid and scholarship are the same thing. But according to this http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/1/26/diversity-lack-f... Over 45% of students dont even qualify for aid because their parental income is over $200,000 " we come to the stunning conclusion that approximately 45.6 percent of Harvard undergraduates come from families with…

But exactly 0% of Minerva students will come from those quintiles if the tuition is 20k with no aid. Unless they take out loans, of course, but that puts them in a much worse position than if they attended a mainstream elite school, which are all very proud of their widely publicized "no loans" financial aid [0].

[0] http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/09/pf/college/no-loan_financial...

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#15

Post by ahelwer »

I'll post a small anecdote, which I promise is not an exercise in narcissistic banality.

A couple of my friends attend Green College[0] at the University of British Columbia (UBC). I crashed in their residence room for two nights during a cross-Canada road trip at the end of July.

The short time at Green College restored my love of higher education, which had been flagging toward the end of a drawn-out CS degree at the University of Calgary. Every morning the students meet for breakfast at a hall in the center of the residence compound, between 7 and 9. This is much earlier than my usual wakeup time, which hovers between 10 and 11. Green College has students from a wide variety of disciplines, and discussions accompanying the meal were a general mash of ideas far outside what I would ever encounter when hanging around my school's CS labs. It was a joy to participate.

The experience very clearly communicated to me that this is what I've been missing. Education in a vacuum is horrendously dull when compared to all these ideas bumping into each other around the breakfast table. It's inspiring; without the social aspect, school is reduced to jumping through hoops and learning the secrets behind magic tricks.

The idea of forming a close-knit community of students then transposing it to cities around the world has me grinning. Were I younger and capable of meeting the admission requirements...

[0] http://www.greencollege.ubc.ca/

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#16

Post by bsbechtel »

The value in any educational institution is derived from the ability of its graduates to go out and create value for the rest of the world. I only skimmed the article, but I felt like it completely missed this point. People pay more to go to Harvard and Stanford because they believe they will earn more when they graduate. People pay more for Harvard and Stanford graduates because they believe they will create more value for their firm. This is why every educational institution in the world touts its notable alumni. If Minerva can't create this perception, it won't succeed.

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#17

Post by bane »

argumentum wrote: post #7
clicks wrote: post #4

I'm reminded now of something that Bill Gates said: universities like Harvard or MIT shouldn't be lauded for churning out smart people... who were already smart before they entered Harvard, we should instead be lauding institutions that admit everyday folks from tough backgrounds that then turn them into smart and able people. In that spirit it is strange that the article goes to great pains to emphasize how "elite"…

The value of great institutions lies not merely in education, but in bringing great people together. Simply attracting already smart people (or determined and otherwise talented people) is a value in and of itself.

We have those and they're generally free. We call them "social clubs" and "mixers". Heck, Mensa is basically a social club for smart folk.

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#19

Post by foobarqux »

rayiner wrote: post #14

You can't call a university "elite" that doesn't have any history. Where is the multi billion dollar endowment? Where add the scads of important alumni? Where is the name recognition among ordinary people?

I don't think this venture will succeed but I do think that it raises an obvious point: Elite and other universities don't groom you to be elite nor do they teach you enough of the basic things that are valuable to employers and therefore to you. Instead universities spend a great deal of time on things that most people, in retrospect, would say were not useful.

If you were to ask recent top graduates about 6 months into their first job what basic useful things they learned that they should have or could have learned in school I think you would find many recurring themes.

Why are students forced to unnecessarily learn things the hard way?

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#20

Post by fecklessyouth »

Nelson's remarks exemplify a disturbing trend amongst technologists, and especially those trying to reform education: Misidentifying sub-par educational experiences and areas of studies as "the liberal arts," and then attributing insufficient outcomes to the liberal arts themselves.

If he went to Wharton Business school for undergrad, he does not have a liberal-arts education. History and literature are liberal arts, business is not. Yet he blames his lack of growth during undergrad years on the very same:

>My first six months, what did the consulting firm teach me? They didn't teach me the basics of how they do business. They taught me how to think. I didn't know how to check my work. I didn't think about order of magnitude. I didn't have habits of mind that a liberal arts education was supposed to have given me.

Perhaps he thinks he studied the liberal arts because he majored in Economics. But majoring in Economics within a business school is, as Wharton's website proclaims, a specialized, business-focused approach, which the site's copy actually contrasts with "a liberal arts setting." [1]

Such programs can't be grudged for failing to cultivate the mind, as their sole aim is "appl[ying] business methods and economic theory to real-world problems." Business programs will always fall-short of real-world experience in teaching business skills, since one is actually real.

If he had studied an actual "liberal art" like philosophy or history or French, he might have gotten the mental development that his program apparently lacked. I think those of us who truly delved into liberal arts programs, with the accompanying rigor, breadth of study, and dedication to teaching, found them a great boon to our mental capacities.

Edit: Another trend that's been irking me lately: the idea that you can "teach" someone to think through "critical thinking" classes:

>In the Nelson dream curriculum, all incoming students take the same four yearlong courses. His common core won't make students read the Great Books. "We want to teach you how to think," Mr. Nelson says. A course on "multimodal communications" works on practical writing and debating skills. A "formal systems class" goes over "everything from logic to advanced stats, Big Data, to formal reasoning, to behavioral econ."

There's a reason that "Communications" programs have a reputation for being full of fluff. If you want to learn how to communicate, communicate. Trying to "study" it isn't get to help you personally. If you want to learn how to write, write about any subject, and have your teacher tear your work apart. Communications skills are taught through experience. You can't sit down and "learn" writing skills.

[1] http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/undergrad/academic-excellence/B...

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