151–160 of 187 posts
Janitors can work at night. Cafeterias can be take out. Profs can be on a screen or given early retirement. I realize it is an inconvience, but how about students first for the first time in a long while.
We collectively are safer if the college kids are away at school and not infecting grandma.
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The downside is that you basically won't get into Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale... or most any other "top" college after going to community college. I know of one counter example, and I know of many very smart capable people who would have been capable and profited from such a degree, but missed their chance... which in turn made it VERY difficult to get any advanced degree. Maybe that doesn't matter in CS/programming…
> get into Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale Based on everything I've seen over my roughly 20-year career in academia, plus the 18 years before that living in that world (my parents are both professors), what you get from going to Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale, and all the other "Big Name" schools is just that: the name. The education you get there is not better than the education you can get at a small liberal arts colleg…
I was an arrogant superstar before I went to MIT. It wasn't that I thought that I was worth more than other students, but I felt my classes were a bit below me. I got all As, except for a B or B+ in my Intro to World Politics class at the UofM. As I remember, the way honors GPAs were calculated, I my GPA was above 4.0 at the UofM. In my high school "Enriched Chemistry" class (one level above honors, no extra GPA boost beyond, but all the kids there really wanted to learn), after I caught a couple of mistakes in exams, the teacher started marking my Scan-Tron answer sheets as the exam answer key, and in class, the whole class would together grade my exams the day after the exam to make sure the answer key was correct. There was one exam where the second-highest score was 90/100, so the teacher just added 10 points to everyone's score. At some point, I made one mistake the whole semester, so I ended the semester 9 points above 100%. At the UofM in my honors mathematics course, I was being graded on attendance and felt it was a bit of a waste of my time. I would read a newspaper in class. One day, the TA asked a couple times if anyone knew the answer to a problem, and I made a bit of a show of folding up my newspaper and proceeding to answer the question nobody else could answer. The honors math professor took me out into the hallway and proceeded to tell me "I don't care who you are. I don't care what kind of grades you get. If you bring a newspaper to class one more time, I'll have you thrown out of the program."
MIT was another level of challenges and expectations. Most of the kids there were used to being at the top of their class and getting cut a bit of slack from the teachers/administration because they were head-and-shoulders above their peers in high school. For most of us, it was a big ego hit and a big adjustment having to work very hard just to get a median grade.
The instruction at MIT was top-notch, but the real value was increased expectations, and excellent peers for both competition and support.
On the flip side, the ego hit is soul-crushing for some students.
The honors programs of state schools definitely have students every bit as smart and capable as people at MIT. The extra level of competition and expectations at MIT really does help some people shine, though. Also, the name is helpful as there's a pretty high minimum bar for getting an MIT degree. You might not be getting the best by hiring the MIT grad, but you're hiring someone who's pretty good.
That being said, I hope the age of GitHub, HackerRank, etc. diminishes the effects of brand-name schooling. I had a friend back in my honors math classes who also got into MIT, but couldn't justify the expense due to his dad being a welder and his mom a homemaker. MIT offered him a lot of loans and grants, but he got a full scholarship at the UofM honors program and could live at home while going to school.
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On the contrary: Reopening before the test and trace infrastructure (like South Korea’s) is in place is likely to cause another wave right about the time when the Fall Semester is starting..
That sounds like pure speculation. We should be relying on data, instead of fear, for motivating our decisions.
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The downside is that you basically won't get into Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale... or most any other "top" college after going to community college. I know of one counter example, and I know of many very smart capable people who would have been capable and profited from such a degree, but missed their chance... which in turn made it VERY difficult to get any advanced degree. Maybe that doesn't matter in CS/programming…
> get into Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale Based on everything I've seen over my roughly 20-year career in academia, plus the 18 years before that living in that world (my parents are both professors), what you get from going to Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale, and all the other "Big Name" schools is just that: the name. The education you get there is not better than the education you can get at a small liberal arts colleg…
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That sounds like pure speculation. We should be relying on data, instead of fear, for motivating our decisions.
not pure speculation. There's historical precedence in the Spanish Flu for a resurgence of the disease after social distancing orders are ended too early.
As feedback, I would feel safer if you used the name "1918 Pandemic" rather than naming viruses where they might have came from. I have personally seen and been targeted by daily overt acts of aggression (in San Francisco, no less) because of these kinds of false associations.
Is the best thing a new high school grad can do to become more tech literate really brush up on their "Blackboard skills"?
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> get into Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale Based on everything I've seen over my roughly 20-year career in academia, plus the 18 years before that living in that world (my parents are both professors), what you get from going to Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale, and all the other "Big Name" schools is just that: the name. The education you get there is not better than the education you can get at a small liberal arts colleg…
When I was in high school, my state had a program where if you were eligible for high school but got accepted to any in-state college, the state would pay tuition. So, by the time I went to MIT, I had about 2.5 years' worth of credits from the University of Minnesota, including honors-level mathematics up through differential equations. I was an arrogant superstar before I went to MIT. It wasn't that I thought that I…
That said, brand matters.
MIT now invests incredibly heavily in brand development, compromising integrity, research quality, and teaching-and-learning. For grads, that's paid off. My degree has gone up in value a lot over the years.
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Universities would seem uniquely capable of just going into hibernation for a while. They do it every summer, after all. That tradition is even because of infectious disease risk! What does it really cost to park a campus in "summer mode" a while longer?
The people who work there might have been planning on 3 months w/o pay, but are expecting a job in the fall.
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When I was in high school, my state had a program where if you were eligible for high school but got accepted to any in-state college, the state would pay tuition. So, by the time I went to MIT, I had about 2.5 years' worth of credits from the University of Minnesota, including honors-level mathematics up through differential equations. I was an arrogant superstar before I went to MIT. It wasn't that I thought that I…
I went to MIT, and I can confidently say it's no better than many schools a tier or two down. What you describe is a difference in personality, more than in tier. There are party ivies, and there are some really awesome 2nd or 3rd tier tech schools. Some of the lower-tier tech schools are just like MIT in virtually all respect, except brand. That said, brand matters. MIT now invests incredibly heavily in brand develo…
https://youtu.be/rIAZJNe7YtE?t=6418
I've been conflicted with MIT as an institution ever since the death of Aaron Swartz, it stood by and then participated in what ultimately took the life of a great member of the hacker/tech community, but I understand and accept that so many great minds go there to create some of the greatest innovation the Human Species' is capable of.
It was sad to hear Eric's plight was the same trivial political non-sense and administrative corruption that I encountered in the low tier State Schools I attended, his impact was far greater to say the least of course. Which apparently also the case with Harvard. This seems systemic, and not just a prestige campus based occurrence.
The closest I ever got to MIT was a clim co-lab project I was involved in that was accepted into the finalist rounds in sustainability and presented on campus at the awards.
I couldn't attend the event as I was working on my startup in CO, so I didn't see it from within; but I was told by the project lead that it was a great experience, even if nothing really came of it--there is lots of hand shaking, but ultimately prize winners are given a small token sum, not really even seed money to get a project off the ground so the best thing you can do is network for well endowed collaborative partners and find leads for real funding.
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> 2) If you are studying a technical field, even if you are average, a degree has greater ROI than just about anything else. You can pay off your debt in the first few years out of school and continue earning dividends for the rest of your life. What's the downside to going to a community college? Where I grew up the credits were transferable. They did say, "Most people spend the first two years figuring stuff out".…
Transfer spots can be more competitive than Freshmen spots. This would especially be true if more people were doing it.
One would imagine in a fair world if you applied as a Freshman and as a Junior you'd have a higher chance of being accepted, if Junior applicants had a higher graduation rate they would bias accordingly, or if they started getting more Junior applications they would find more spots.