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Universities should be more than toll gates

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Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#101

Post by mofosyne »

Lu2025 wrote: post #59
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #43

Makes me think of the "The purpose of a system is what it does" axiom. Universities were always about credentials whether professional or just to indicate social class. They can at the same time be places of learning, and many still are in some disciplines. The problem is that value of the credential is now worth more (to most people) than the value of the learning/knowledge. So universities adapted to the that model…

> employers across the economy who require applicants have 'university degrees' Somebody from HR admitted to me that they often do it to simply trim the applicant pool to a more manageable size.

Wonder if this problem would be reduced by some mechanism of incurring cost on job positions that advertise for more requirements. (A heavy handed approach would be to charge an additional fee/tax if you require university educated persons for a position not requiring one)

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#102

Post by aleph_minus_one »

orwin wrote: post #68
tgv wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US perhaps, but it happened in Western Europe too, even where there weren't student loans. Simplistic explanation: the right wing parties were in favor of "austerity" measures, i.e. budget cuts, and the left-wing ones of getting as many people through college as possible. Unfortunately, both got what they wished for.

On this particular issue, i think all parties that reach power want the same thing: more educated people, cheaper (because let's be honest, a "left-wing" party in Europe that conquer power in Europe is at most a "third way"-type party, sometime with a green tint), and are all equally at fault for the situation. The meaningfull difference between right-wing and left-wing parties is how the University should be organiz…

> On this particular issue, i think all parties that reach power want the same thing: more educated people

I don't think so: educated people are much harder to control that uneducated masses.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#103

Post by jagged-chisel »

arn3n wrote: post #86

I am always astonished by the range of people who claim their college degree was useless, citing rote memorization and bad classes. I had an entirely different experience and so did most people I know. University gave me the opportunity to talk to world-class researchers during office hours, to discuss ideas with my peers and have them either validated or critiqued by experts. Sure, all the information is available o…

> … world-class researchers …

These people can’t possibly be at every university, let alone colleges, community colleges, or technical schools.

> … rote memorization and bad classes …

Not every school will be good. There are at least three post-secondary schools within driving of me that take the minimum required curricula as a script and offer nothing more than the bare minimum required to get certification, accreditation, and receive that sweet state and federal budget money.

I can’t imagine how someone with a good or great post-secondary education is confused that this would be the situation for millions of students.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#104

Post by yobbo »

constantcrying wrote: post #83

From my experience at a German university, it was very clear that every student with a desire to learn would learn relevant skills and have no trouble passing any exam. The exams never were easy and studying was required,but if you understood the subject you would definitely pass. The experience the author describes seems totally disconnected what I have ever experienced in university. The author believes (which I th…

The poster was achieved success in all metrics he was exposed to.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#105

Post by jstanley »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #43

Makes me think of the "The purpose of a system is what it does" axiom. Universities were always about credentials whether professional or just to indicate social class. They can at the same time be places of learning, and many still are in some disciplines. The problem is that value of the credential is now worth more (to most people) than the value of the learning/knowledge. So universities adapted to the that model…

> "The purpose of a system is what it does"

Conversely, https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/come-on-obviously-the-purpo...

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#106

Post by constantcrying »

yobbo wrote: post #104
constantcrying wrote: post #83

From my experience at a German university, it was very clear that every student with a desire to learn would learn relevant skills and have no trouble passing any exam. The exams never were easy and studying was required,but if you understood the subject you would definitely pass. The experience the author describes seems totally disconnected what I have ever experienced in university. The author believes (which I th…

The poster was achieved success in all metrics he was exposed to.

Did you read the article? The author laments that he did not learn anything relevant to him during his degree.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#107

Post by jagged-chisel »

eitally wrote: post #92
arn3n wrote: post #86

I am always astonished by the range of people who claim their college degree was useless, citing rote memorization and bad classes. I had an entirely different experience and so did most people I know. University gave me the opportunity to talk to world-class researchers during office hours, to discuss ideas with my peers and have them either validated or critiqued by experts. Sure, all the information is available o…

> or just didn’t take advantage of the opportunities presented to them. It's this. Most undergraduate students do not go to office hours, try to get to know their instructors, ask follow-up questions, pursue independent research, or do anything approaching "apprenticeship". Most American students matriculate into college/uni not even having ingrained behaviors that make any of these things obvious or approachable, so…

> … Most undergraduate students do not go to office hours, try to get to know their instructors, ask follow-up questions

This was actively discouraged by the instructors in the school I attended. Not by policy, but by behavior - passive-aggressively belittling students for not “getting” the subject matter, showing a complete lack of interest in reciprocating any amount of getting to know the instructor.

> … ask follow-up questions, pursue independent research, or do anything approaching "apprenticeship". Most American students matriculate into college/uni not even having ingrained behaviors that make any of these things obvious or approachable …

A failure of secondary education and students’ families.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#108

Post by parpfish »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #78
orwin wrote: post #73

I know someone who started uni at 24, after 7 year of working as line cook then chef. She seems to have the opposite experience that you have. She has had a lot of support from the professors in her first year, and only wanted to reach bachelor. Then the seocnd year came, she started to really understand biology, and changed her goals from nutrition to pharmaco/biochemistry, changing her courses with the help of the…

> maybe we whould require children to work before getting to uni if they don't know what they wat to do yet You can easily get lots of information about various jobs using some magic technology called the "world wide web", so there is basically no need to work before university to get an informed opinion. If you are incapable of doing this, you likely simply don't "belong" into a university. Looking back at my life,…

There’s a vast gulf between “reading about a job online” and “doing a job”. Of course college bound kids know that jobs exist, but they don’t know what it’s like to do them for any extended amount of time. And I’m guessing that one of the main reasons that they don’t know what it’s like is that their parents and every other adult guiding them has been telling them, implicitly or explicitly, “you’re a college bound kid, jobs like this are beneath you. Just focus on school”

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#109

Post by skeeter2020 »

Lu2025 wrote: post #59
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #43

Makes me think of the "The purpose of a system is what it does" axiom. Universities were always about credentials whether professional or just to indicate social class. They can at the same time be places of learning, and many still are in some disciplines. The problem is that value of the credential is now worth more (to most people) than the value of the learning/knowledge. So universities adapted to the that model…

> employers across the economy who require applicants have 'university degrees' Somebody from HR admitted to me that they often do it to simply trim the applicant pool to a more manageable size.

This is definitely part of it, but after working - and hiring - in the software industry for several decades I can say that a university grad has probably at least heard of relational algebra or taken a course that covered costing algorithms. Do they use this every day or ever? Definitely not, but when I interview non-uni grads the odds they can write (let alone explain) a modest SQL query are lower. There's very little causation between uni grad and good developer, but IME the best uni grads are better than the best non-uni grads. There's some signal in there.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#110

Post by skeeter2020 »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #71
Lu2025 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> employers across the economy who require applicants have 'university degrees' Somebody from HR admitted to me that they often do it to simply trim the applicant pool to a more manageable size.

This is true across literally millions of HR people across the whole country. Every one trying to make their job a little bit easier and thus creating an externality with the monstrous negative effect on the entire education system and years of people lives pursuing pointless degrees at great cost and debt that may take some lifetimes to pay off. Absolute madness.

>> pursuing pointless degrees at great cost and debt

Maybe if you require a liberal arts degree and immediately cut someone who's just "well read" but this is not my experience in technical and engineering focused roles.

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