The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard • Hacker News Board

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#21

Post by objclxt » Sun, Aug 11, 2013, 8:10 PM UTC

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…

> I am not sure if aid and scholarship are the same thing.

At most Ivy Leagues it effectively is. Harvard also has a 'no debt' policy, so that aid really does have very few strings attached. The Crimson article you linked to uses data from 2010/11, whereas I'm using the latest figures from the admissions office.

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#22

Post by rollo_tommasi » Sun, Aug 11, 2013, 8:33 PM UTC

I don't think yet another institution which selects life's winners based on who they were at age 16-17 is really the solution to the country's educational problems.

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#23

Post by realspeech » Sun, Aug 11, 2013, 8:35 PM UTC

NotOscarWilde wrote: post #2

It is a definitely interesting project, but what would benefit "us" (as in, humanity, I guess) most is a nigh-free online university with respected accreditation and as much high-quality content as possible while keeping costs at a minimum. Amazon is a good role model when you look for a for-profit giant, but I'd like the top education model to look like Wikipedia. Heck, Wikipedia is a pretty good tool for kickstarti…

http://www.londoninternational.ac.uk/ offers courses with respected accreditation and (limited) study materials. the cost is tiny compared to tuition in the usa. no real STEM courses though.

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#24

Post by da02 » Sun, Aug 11, 2013, 8:44 PM UTC

ahelwer wrote: post #15

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 t…

Can you provide some examples of the ideas you bumped into? I'm curious since I've never been in a multi-discipline env like the one you had @ Green.

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#25

Post by rjbond3rd » Sun, Aug 11, 2013, 8:47 PM UTC

argumentum wrote: post #9

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…

Even if "Minerva" was $1/year, the question is one of value . A degree from Harvard at $50k/year is more valuable than a free one from a UC Berkeley Dean's scholarship student (which is probably about the same difficulty to attain), simply due to the perception it engenders from people that matter.

No offense to anyone, but I'll take that Berkeley kid any day.

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#26

Post by chasing » Sun, Aug 11, 2013, 8:54 PM UTC

Harvard my ass. He's trying to overthrow the incredibly lucrative University of Phoenix.

Also, his reductionist approach to higher education means Minerva will lose a lot of the quality of education and community that makes a top-tier program worthwhile.

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#27

Post by MWil » Sun, Aug 11, 2013, 9:01 PM UTC

If I'm a prospective student for this university (I'm not), I'm thinking I'm going to regret being videotaped in all of my classes several years down the line.

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#28

Post by BruceIV » Sun, Aug 11, 2013, 9:02 PM UTC

This is the first "let's completely overhaul university" idea I've heard that doesn't completely suck. I like the ideas of world travel and reasonable tuition, and doing away with a lot of the useless cruft of a traditional university - Minereva sounds like fun, and if I was in high school right now, I'd be applying.

That said, one possible hassle I can see with this plan is that to bootstrap an "elite" reputation, and deliver these big core courses in a useful way, you're going to need some amazing professors, and as a PhD candidate with ambitions of teaching, I'm not sure I'd want to work for this university. Teaching via email and video lectures is unappealing, and (more importantly for catching top talent), I don't think it would be a good career move - they don't have the elite reputation yet, and I feel like at the end of my "flexible short term", I'd have trouble convincing a more traditional university that my experience wasn't from some online diploma mill.

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#29

Post by foobarqux » Sun, Aug 11, 2013, 9:02 PM UTC

fecklessyouth wrote: post #20

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,…

Nelson doesn't lament that his mind wasn't adequately "cultivated" but that he wasn't taught some basic skills that he quickly, but probably painfully, acquired on the job and which presumably he found critical in his career.

This isn't a question of "mental development" but of having useful things pointed out so that you don't have to suffer whatever damage accrues from not knowing them.

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#30

Post by Tycho » Sun, Aug 11, 2013, 9:32 PM UTC

Higher education's product-delivery system—a professor droning to a limited number of students in a room—dates back a thousand years. The industry's physical plant (dorms, classrooms, gyms) often a century or more. Its most expensive employees, tenured faculty, can't be fired. The price of its product (tuition) and operating costs have outpaced inflation by multiples.

Why is this the case? Is teaching basically the last great guild?