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Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

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Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

#141

Post by kragen »

WalterBright wrote: post #139
kragen wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did, more or less, but I was pretty motivated. If I hadn't been so strongly motivated, I wouldn't have been able to do it at all. As it was, I switched to taking calculus classes at the first opportunity. The funny thing is, though, I did a lot better on the AP exam than the kids who did take a calculus class, the same class I would have taken if I'd finished the prerequisite class in time. And, after a semester of…

High school calculus barely scratches the surface of what calculus is, though to be sure, I've only personally encountered one person who got that far with calculus without school.

Yes, unfortunately I didn't really get anywhere after my university vector calculus course. Didn't even take diff-eqs.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

#142

Post by Dn_Ab »

WalterBright wrote: post #24
Tycho wrote: post #13

I was thinking about this today. I remember I used to think 'well, if you do a degree, at least you'll be an expert in something , even if you can't find a good job with it.' When I think of it now, the notion is almost laughable. University students don't become experts in anything. For a non-technical subject, the knowledge gained isn't really going to beat a normal member of the public with an interest in the subj…

I've seen very, very few people able to learn calculus outside of a school system. Most will just go to elaborate lengths to avoid using calculus and justify why they don't need to learn it.

I don't believe it needs to be that way. Why was one of my personal heroes, George Green able to do what he did?

Through Thomson, Maxwell, and others, the general mathematical theory of potential developed by an obscure, self-taught miller's son would lead to the mathematical theories of electricity underlying twentieth-century industry.

http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Green.ht... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Green

I think I have learned myself a decent amount of calculus.I suggest anyone interested in self learning calculus to to try Infinitesimal Analysis first as its more intuitive. Epsilon delta becomes easier after. And for differential calculus, consider implementing a Higher Order Multivariate Automatic Differentiator able to deal with Jacobians and Hessians efficiently. That hands on learning helps a lot.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

#143

Post by r00fus »

davidhollander wrote: post #20

Flip the system and make the classwork homework and the homework classwork. Instead of a lecturer being the 5000th person trying to teach the subject with a varying degrees of preparedness, you just get the single best and most enthusiastic lecture of all time, everytime, as a video. Then in class teachers, TAs, and students can have normal humans conversations with each other to work through problems and peer intera…

This is the most interesting reply I've seen so far.

How would one grade this effectively though?

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

#144

Post by enjo »

Vivtek wrote: post #84
enjo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, a massive generalization that you quite frankly don't have a bit of data to support.

What? Seriously? One of the "great successes" of Indiana education lately (scare quotes to denote its Potemkin aspect) is the satellite campus in the city in which I live of a certain state university, which has recently been augmented with a new satellite campus of, um, another certain land-grant university. (Hi, Mr. Google, nothing to see here.) Party of the first part itself has never been much to write home about…

So you're saying that the program doesn't fail a single student?

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

#145

Post by rhizome »

cj wrote: post #15
hugh3 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right -- she skips the discussion of her personal experiences and jumps straight into the generalizations. "Our higher education system largely fails to educate... It’s nothing less than a deep institutional, cultural, societal and indeed humanitarian crisis." Really? I could have sworn that I learned a bunch of stuff about physics and pure mathematics in my four years of intensively studying physics and pure…

The vast majority of graduates do not leave college having intensively studied anything as rigorous as physics or mathematics. Most leave college with a degree that they didn't work very hard to earn. College offers the opportunity to do what you did and work your ass off, but most have no such desire.

If all I had to do in college was not work very hard, I probably wouldn't have flunked out.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

#146

Post by rhizome »

xiaoma wrote: post #80
hugh3 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well shit, all I can say on the subject is exactly what an originality-challenged dean would say to his class of incoming freshmen (if deans actually addressed classes of incoming freshmen): what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. Want to take advantage of being able to spend four years learning from some of the best minds in every field of human endeavour? Four years set free on hundreds of possible…

It's telling that many of the folks who are pushing the "we don't need no education" meme are programmers by trade, since programming is one of the very few skills that you can learn effectively on your own by reading books. I would say that programming is one of the few high-paying professions that many can break into without certification. There are a lot of skills that can be learned via self-study if one is willi…

I have an acquaintance who makes a very good case for most people learning all they need by 8th grade for what they wind up doing.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

#147

Post by Vivtek »

enjo wrote: post #144
Vivtek wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Seriously? One of the "great successes" of Indiana education lately (scare quotes to denote its Potemkin aspect) is the satellite campus in the city in which I live of a certain state university, which has recently been augmented with a new satellite campus of, um, another certain land-grant university. (Hi, Mr. Google, nothing to see here.) Party of the first part itself has never been much to write home about…

So you're saying that the program doesn't fail a single student?

No, I don't think I could safely say that, but the lengths to which one must go to fail are really astonishing.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

#148

Post by colomon »

NY_USA_Hacker wrote: post #138
colomon wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to try a Google search on the phrase "You can always tell a bigot"...

"Bigot"? How about idiot? You might try to wipe your ass with your left hand and then stare at your fingers and try to find some meaningful direction in your life.

Okay, first hit: "Dad always said that you can always tell an idiot... but you can't tell him much." Works for my point just as well as "bigot", I suppose.

Hint: "You can always tell a XXXXX, but you can't tell him much" is a stock construction. It most certainly is not used to indicate that XXXXX has superior powers of reasoning.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

#149

Post by NY_USA_Hacker »

colomon wrote: post #148
NY_USA_Hacker wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Bigot"? How about idiot? You might try to wipe your ass with your left hand and then stare at your fingers and try to find some meaningful direction in your life.

Okay, first hit: "Dad always said that you can always tell an idiot... but you can't tell him much." Works for my point just as well as "bigot", I suppose. Hint: "You can always tell a XXXXX, but you can't tell him much" is a stock construction. It most certainly is not used to indicate that XXXXX has superior powers of reasoning.

I was going the other direction, and that is somewhat meaningful. That is, a well educated person, e.g., from Harvard, is skeptical.
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