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School is all about signaling, not skill-building

latimes.com

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Re: School is all about signaling, not skill-building

#181

Post by Godel_unicode »

adamnemecek wrote: post #140
y4mi wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you probably meant it as "because most administrative staff are female, male interests are underrepresented at the highest level" I cant really argue with it because i've honestly no idea which male interests could possibly fall short in the context of a school, but anyway. your phrasing of the initial statements comes across as sexism, because it sounds more like: "only males can represent all students interests" yo…

Ok, I felt that e.g. drawing was mostly figure drawing rather than say car designs.

Why is one of them for male students and one not? Because those are your preferences?

Re: School is all about signaling, not skill-building

#182

Post by mcguire »

(I'm going to break up my initial response to this article into several pieces, because if I don't, everyone will read the first sentence, down vote it, and ignore the rest. Plus, it gives everyone an opportunity to downvote me several times. :-))

Is it ironic that this was written by Bryan Caplan, Ph.D., a professor[1] of Economics[2] at George Mason University?

[1] I'm getting a certain amusement from the image of Prof. Caplan, at a meeting of the current Economics faculty discussing prospective faculty candidates, voting against all the U. of Chicago grads in favor of Earl, who has a GED and audited a few economics classes.

[2] Economics? Really? The most signally of the signaling degrees. The field which, aside from its ability to demonstrate rightthink, is worthless outside academia and politics, not least because of its long history of disconnection with reality.

(End part 1: mockery.)

Re: School is all about signaling, not skill-building

#183

Post by drjesusphd »

danenania wrote: post #81
rjf72 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One key thing this paragraph misses is the characterization of this sort of person. Imagine we have a person that would independently, without extrinsic reward or 'push', show up to classes completely of their own accord. And we must further assume that they would engage in all assignments and somehow try to regularly test their understanding - the feedback exams offer is crucial to demonstrating understanding. And w…

Adult learners are a demographic that could be highly motivated as you describe but often wouldn’t have any chance of getting in through the application process of an elite university. There are a lot of intelligent people out there who didn’t engage well with school when they were young for whatever reason but come to place a high value on education later in their lives. I think this group is quite poorly served by…

I disagree. I was able to get into one of the best graduate programs in my field a few years after a mediocre undergraduate record. This took some preparation, but it came down to finding other avenues to prove myself. The committee knows your undergrad record doesn't mean much if it was many years ago. "What else have you got?" they might ask. It takes some effort and creativity, but it can be done.

Adults with a newfound motivation are valuable and they know that. But just saying so isn't enough.

Re: School is all about signaling, not skill-building

#184

Post by triangleman »

mcguire wrote: post #182

(I'm going to break up my initial response to this article into several pieces, because if I don't, everyone will read the first sentence, down vote it, and ignore the rest. Plus, it gives everyone an opportunity to downvote me several times. :-)) Is it ironic that this was written by Bryan Caplan, Ph.D., a professor[1] of Economics[2] at George Mason University? [1] I'm getting a certain amusement from the image of…

My understanding is that of all schools of economics, the Chicago school is the least disconnected from reality, in that it rightly recognizes its own "dismal" science as a social science first.

Re: School is all about signaling, not skill-building

#185

Post by snowwrestler »

nafey wrote: post #41
kevintb wrote: post #33

I strongly disagree. Elite colleges are all about signaling. But I don't doubt for a second that my CS degree taught me an enormous amount - some skill-building, lots of abstract thinking - that I wouldn't have been able to achieve as quickly as anywhere else.

Okay but how about this: Say you actually dropped out of your degree one day before completing it. Skillwise you are almost the same but your compensation will take a drastic hit on average.

As someone who completed four years of college but did not receive my degree because of one unfulfilled requirement, this is true.

However, it is a temporary phenomenon. Within 5 years I was earning on par with my colleagues who had their diplomas, and today I manage and out-earn people with degrees.

I am absolutely certain that the skills and knowledge I gained in college were essential to my career. So if the question is whether college is useful minus the credential, count me as an enthusiastic yes.

The first job after college seems huge to young folks but it really does not matter in the long run. I can't think of a single person I know over 40 who is doing the same thing today that they did out of college. In some cases the job or industry did not even exist when they graduated.

College education gives you the opportunity to built a base foundation that will serve your whole life, which is (hopefully) long. Who knows what the world and jobs will look like 30 years from now.

Re: School is all about signaling, not skill-building

#186

Post by mcguire »

I don't really want to dig into the details of the arguments for the value of a "generalized, liberal arts education" here, mostly because I need to do some research on those arguments before evaluating them.

But, on the other hand, I really do believe that an education in ye olde trivium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivium), quadrivium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrivium), and a number of other areas are important for the citizens of a modern, democratic republic, quite aside from how "Literacy and numeracy are vital, but few of us use history, poetry, higher mathematics or foreign languages after graduation."

I see this education as important on at least two levels. First, to fight the natural human tendency to assume that everyone else is like us (and that anyone who is different is deviant): we're all programmers here, right? And anyone who doesn't think in discrete, logical steps, is the bizarre alien them, right?

More seriously, I had to take Texas government and history classes in college, the requirement for which (a history professor informed us with glee) came out of a number of soldiers from Texas who were captured during the Korean War and who decided to stay in China after the war. (Honestly, I have no idea how those things fit together.) But those classes and others like them, while not directly benefiting me as a computer programmer, did provide some background and common ground between me and a huge number of other people who would otherwise have nothing in common with me.

Secondly, to fight the natural tendency for someone who is well skilled in a certain field to assume that field is all that exists. (You should recognize this from this very forum, where people suggest technological fixes for problems which are not technological in nature. And yes, there are problems which are not technological nature.)

As for the wisdom of the students, choosing easy classes and complaining about those on topics they'll never use in real life? I took Spanish as a foreign language which I never really learned and promptly forgot, took four semesters to get through two semesters of calculus (badly; all my math be discrete), and those damn semesters of government and history. Guess what? None of those things were useful to me in my subsequent career. Nope, not even calculus, that horrid waste of time and grade points.

On the other hand, I regard my lack of knowledge as a bad thing. A usable foreign language would have been nice. Other programmers do use calculus; I just had to avoid those jobs.

So, yeah, I pretty much disagree with everything in this article.

(End of part 2. See part 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19409228)

Re: School is all about signaling, not skill-building

#187

Post by sdaslo »

milesvp wrote: post #178
sdaslo wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you stay motivated to finish the homework or projects to the same degree as if you were being graded? I feel like the one factor that changes the equation is that grading inherently motivates even those who want to learn for learnings sake - it forces you to move faster and study harder with time and grade challenges. Do you feel like you learned the material to a level that you would have had it been graded…

I was one of those students who didn’t care about the grade except as a proxy for learning. I never understood why other students would try to argue with profs about test grades, when it was clear they list points because they misunderstood something. That said, the thing that kept me from getting C’s in courses I didn’t like was that I was motivated to do at least decent at the things I do. For the classes I sat in…

Interesting. I agree about the MOOCs. It takes a lot of willpower and even then, it just doesn’t feel the same. There’s something about being forced to show up and sit through two hours of intellectual rigor and at least try to understand as much as possible. I guess it’s the same reason people go to the library to study.

Btw did you ask the profs if you could take the exams , and did you? Were they willing to? They are usually a little averse to extra work lol.

Re: School is all about signaling, not skill-building

#188

Post by mcguire »

There are some things very wrong with the American education system, but I suspect a focus on "signalling" and a desire for job training over general education is going to miss all of the important ones.

In the first place, the concern only with reading, writing, and 'rithmatic along with standardized testing are probably destroying most of the value of the public education system. Thanks, everyone. Good job.

Secondly, the belief that any bachelor's degree is as good as any other, along with the corresponding rise of for-profit educational institutions (along with not-for-profit ones which behave like for-profit institutions) leads directly to this whole signalling flap.

A degree from Joe's Diploma Mill is a bad signalling indicator because the education Joe provides is crap. A degree from Stanford is a good signal because Stanford provides a good education. Don't go to Joe's; it's a waste of money and time.

Back at UT, many students and the occasional visiting job recruiter complained that the classes didn't cover "job-relevant" skills. (x86 assembler, anyone?) On the other hand, those same recruiters kept coming back, and showering money on recent grads; something they notably didn't do at, say, ITT Tech or DeVry, in spite of the fact that those schools taught nothing but "job-related skills."

Sure, a degree from Stanford is a signal that you are smart and hard-working. That's because Stanford is hard to get a degree from unless you are smart and hard-working. Some of that is simply jumping-through-hoops-ism, but most of it is because Stanford requires you to learn hard shit. And that's why smart and hard-working students go there.

(End of part 3; see part 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19409381)

Re: School is all about signaling, not skill-building

#189

Post by Balgair »

snowwrestler wrote: post #176
Mbioguy wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boy are you in for a surprise. Medical school lectures are mostly optional these days and are entirely skipped by a significant proportion of med students in favor of resources like Strong Medicine (literally a YouTube channel), gigantic Anki digital flashcard decks (see reddit.com/r/medicalschoolanki), UWorld, First Aid, Sketchy, Pathoma, etc. 'High Yield' is the buzzword for resources that are a better use of time.…

> doctor someday who was educated at least in part by YouTube or comparable online resources Emphasis mine. No one cares if medical students avail themselves of digital resources to help them through medical school. Good for them. Show me how many practicing doctors passed the boards and made it through residency after ONLY using Youtube channels and flash cards to self-educate.

It's a continuum.

Some people rely on the 'free' resources more than others. The real question is where is the cutoff percentage at. Say someone got 95% of what they know only from free resources and passed boards swimmingly. That sure don't look good on the med-school.

Say 95% of the entire class got 95% of the learning through Youtube/Anki and 95% of them passed boards. At such a percentage, med-school is all but useless to the general public that they serve. May as well get rid of them.

Granted, I don't think it's anywhere near that kind of level of dereliction that the med-schools are at (Cadaver Lab is an obvious counterpoint). But, where is the cut-off point for the schools and society? It's not 5% of the material being learned outside of them, that's fine I think. But if 95% is 'learned' outside the lectures, then yeah, that's a real bad sign.

It's a complicated question and the answer will likely be more complex and will evolve from class to class and year to year.

Re: School is all about signaling, not skill-building

#190

Post by iguy »

milesvp wrote: post #178
sdaslo wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you stay motivated to finish the homework or projects to the same degree as if you were being graded? I feel like the one factor that changes the equation is that grading inherently motivates even those who want to learn for learnings sake - it forces you to move faster and study harder with time and grade challenges. Do you feel like you learned the material to a level that you would have had it been graded…

I was one of those students who didn’t care about the grade except as a proxy for learning. I never understood why other students would try to argue with profs about test grades, when it was clear they list points because they misunderstood something. That said, the thing that kept me from getting C’s in courses I didn’t like was that I was motivated to do at least decent at the things I do. For the classes I sat in…

I think that one of the under-rated aspects of having classmates is finding out how little they understand. From the professor it's easy to get an idea of what the perfect student would know, in week 5, but it's much more helpful to have some realistic benchmarks.

Besides, of course, getting to bounce ideas off each other, etc.

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