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Universities should be more than toll gates

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Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#11

Post by fruitworks »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #7

Well, if you actually want to learn, there is always the vast swaths of the Internet. Virtually everything here is free, and nobody will care until you do something impressive with your knowledge. As for universities, they will likely stay as signaling mechanisms until society finds a more efficient way to signal the things that universities do. This is a worldwide pattern that has emerged, and to the extent you see…

I agree. I would even go so far as to suggest there is far more information availiable on the internet than you can get in a degree. Mostly it's inside pirated textbooks and academic papers.

I've been self-teaching cryptography since I graduated with an engineering degree, and it's amazing how woefully unequipped a degree program alone leaves you compared to the information that's just out there

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#12

Post by keiferski »

Well, they used to be, but the modern industrial age needed institutions that could train workers - and universities fit the bill. I don’t think it’s possible to detach the credential aspect from universities without a parallel work-focused system existing, and even then, the prestige of universities will still mean that the wealthy and privileged will prefer universities, which means that that prestige will trickle down to everyone else.

The only real solution IMO is to support institutions like St. John’s [1] and others that are explicitly not career-focused, and work on making similar institutions affordable and accessible. There’s no real reason why someone can’t start a student-operated (to keep costs down) university that focuses on the liberal arts, classics, mathematics, etc. that is affordable enough for the average person. I suspect the main problem is the lack of prestige and precariousness of the economy at large.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John%27s_College_(Annapoli...

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#13

Post by mettamage »

The annoying thing is that: when universities aren't toll gates and you actually learn something, then people don't believe you and you have "0 work experience".

So often, I've had the experience with work that it just feels like a long elaborate lab and there really is not much of a difference. Whether I make Jupyter notebooks analyzing things in a computer lab or for colleagues, I still use the same skills. Whether I present in front of classmates or colleagues, same skill.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#14

Post by Lyngbakr »

This was exactly like my experience, although mine was in the UK maybe 15 years earlier. I went to university and studied a particular subject so that I'd be employable and didn't enjoy what I was learning. (It's debatable whether I learnt much at all, though.) Like the author, many years later I also came across computer science and found it exciting and engrossing, but I have a slightly different take on that:

    > Absolute joy turned into anger, and anger into resentment, as I wondered how different my life might have been if I’d been taught subjects I actually cared about by professors who cared too.
For me, I'm not sure that hypothetical alternative path was ever available. I really admire university students who are passionate about what they are learning, but I doubt that could've been me regardless of the subject (unless that subject was beer). I simply wasn't in the right headspace for that.

Perhaps I needed to grind out a dull degree as it ultimately set me on a path to a time/place/subject that I really do enjoy. My interests now have been shaped by my journey and if you'd tried to teach me computer science at 18 I'm sure I would've hated that, too.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#15

Post by artemonster »

I get my blood pressure to dangerous levels each time I stumble upon some high quality video lectures on youtube that explain some topics that were totally fucked in university, like PID control. 30 Minute video made by some amateur with cool animations explains basically 95% of everything you need to know vs old lifeless dork professor at "elite" university mumbling some nonsense and throwing walls of formulas with zero context, explanation or examples to help you understand. And in the end, your uni knowledge is at most 5% applicable in your work, you are still totally unprepared to enter the workforce and your first employer carries the burden to teach you.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#16

Post by tiku »

I'm so glad I studied something other than programming, because I taught myself coding. College taught me important life lessons, especially one involving lawyers. I was already working as a freelance programmer and it was my second study (first one was sys admin on a practical level, because I was lazy at school because of gaming haha).

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#17

Post by keiferski »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #7

Well, if you actually want to learn, there is always the vast swaths of the Internet. Virtually everything here is free, and nobody will care until you do something impressive with your knowledge. As for universities, they will likely stay as signaling mechanisms until society finds a more efficient way to signal the things that universities do. This is a worldwide pattern that has emerged, and to the extent you see…

There is definitely a lot of information on the internet, but I wouldn’t undervalue the benefits of being in a classroom with a small group of bright people focusing on the same topic every week.

Probably the best class I took for my philosophy degree was a 3 hour metaphysics course, held once every Wednesday. There were maybe 6-7 people in the class, and the discussions we got into were incredibly educational.

I don’t think reading a bunch of books and web pages about metaphysics would have been 10% as insightful. Maybe with talking to an AI, you could get that up to 20%…but still, it’s not the same.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#18

Post by dmos62 »

Lyngbakr wrote: post #14

This was exactly like my experience, although mine was in the UK maybe 15 years earlier. I went to university and studied a particular subject so that I'd be employable and didn't enjoy what I was learning. (It's debatable whether I learnt much at all, though.) Like the author, many years later I also came across computer science and found it exciting and engrossing, but I have a slightly different take on that: > Ab…

Same. I didn't know how to express my passions, and I didn't know that I didn't know. I've since been (re?)discovering this. I'm still working on it.

I wish that we didn't talk down to kids to teach them, and instead approached them as equals, so that they wouldn't think that their passions and interests are below that of "grown ups". I recently learned that there's a term for that. Well sort of. It's "andragogy", which directly translates as education for adults, contrasting with "pedagogy" which is education for kids.

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