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The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

theatlantic.com

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Re: The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

#191

Post by abvdasker »

This is a pretty bad take. The article doesn't consider the numerous disciplines like chemistry, biology or physics for which often expensive physical resources, equipment and facilities are a necessity — really any course of study with a significant amount of time spent in a laboratory.

Call me paranoid, but I am very suspicious of the voices pushing for all-digital education. Of the students whom I know, none want this. It's not what they signed up for, and many feel shortchanged by their universities continuing to charge them full price for a subpar learning experience post-COVID.

Re: The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

#192

Post by vangelis »

watwut wrote: post #147
FrobozzElectric wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have a healthy respect for authority, and can delay gratification in the extreme. What does these qualities have to do with being a effective software developer? > The degree acts to filter out people who are too independent to fit well within a hierarchy. Wouldn't people that fall into the category of "free-thinkers" make for better engineers — or at least engineers that are more capable at creating novel solution…

Delayed gratification means that you are willing to work on tasks that are not immediately fun or are frustrating or when manager is not looking. It means that you are more likely to keep doing tasks whose benefit is in the future (like writing tests). It means that you dont need pat on the back and managerial supervision so often to keep motivating. Lack of healthy respect for authority typically means more fights a…

There's a difference between actual respect for authority and knowing when to shut up as well. I could not like management but I have nothing to gain from getting into a fight.

Re: The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

#193

Post by battery423 »

orbifold wrote: post #132
battery423 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have studied for a year next to my job. My biggest challenges was to find material which explained to me certain concepts. Stuff like 'why can you transform this mathematical notion to this short form? How do you know that? Oh i learned that in the gym' YouTube helped, other students helped but it was time consuming. It would have helped me much more if i would have had a proper central source of high quality mater…

Well these centralised resources are books. There are high quality (almost standard) books for most subjects. Want to learn Analysis at a Graduate level? Pick one of the popular books Rudin (for example) and work through it. Same goes for Quantum Field Theory (Peskin & Schroeder, Zee, Srednicki,...) and tons of other subjects. The lectures are often only a guided tour through one of those books (at least at the under…

Those are books you start reading one page and then you do research on this page until you got it.

The density is to high and there is no use of modern technology at all to link to explanations or guidance for it.

Re: The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

#194

Post by cs702 »

Students at elite schools do NOT attend "to learn facts." Most such students are smart enough to learn anything they want to learn on their own.

Elite universities like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, etc. are attended mainly (a) to interact socially with and learn in-person from other individuals who are smarter, more talented, more knowledgeable, and/or more connected in diverse ways, (b) to join a kind of 'exclusive networking club' with lifetime membership benefits, (c) to learn the rituals and norms of this club, and (d) to get a credential that also confers lifetime benefits.

Re: The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

#195

Post by asciimov »

The best thing that college did for me is get me out from under my parents roof and their influence. College gave me a chance to develop my own beliefs and ideas by being surrounded by people from many different places.

College changed me, by forcing me to be surrounded by different thoughts and feelings of people that I normally wouldn't have come into contact with in my home town.

In the few short years I was in college I went from a religious staunch conservative to an atheist liberal. This would have never happened to me had I stayed in my home.

Re: The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

#196

Post by empath75 »

abvdasker wrote: post #191

This is a pretty bad take. The article doesn't consider the numerous disciplines like chemistry, biology or physics for which often expensive physical resources, equipment and facilities are a necessity — really any course of study with a significant amount of time spent in a laboratory. Call me paranoid, but I am very suspicious of the voices pushing for all-digital education. Of the students whom I know, none want…

> It's not what they signed up for, and many feel shortchanged by their universities continuing to charge them tuition fees for a subpar learning experience post-COVID.

As soon as they convince employers that a digital education is a reasonable substitute for in person classes, the traditional university will be over.

Why would you put yourself into $100k worth of debt for a piece of paper when you can get the same piece of paper from a pure online university for a fraction of the cost.

Re: The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

#198

Post by asciident »

weston wrote: post #188
growlist wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you include anti-white racism? Because there seems to be a lot of it about at the moment.

There’s no such thing as anti-white racism. Racism is prejudice or discrimination backed by institutional, structural power. Therefore, a black person prejudiced against white people (as an example) is meaningless because black Americans have historically had very little power in the United States. Racism by white americans has historically been backed up by the power of every institution in the United States, which…

I think most people recognize that this is the "new definition" of racism, or sometimes people refer to it as structural racism. But when people use the term racism, they usually mean the standard dictionary definition, which is about being prejudice against someone because of their race.

It's probably better if people used "structural racism" to define what you mean here. Similar to how "sex" retained the original definition of sex, and "gender" was used for the social construct. If people tried to say "There is no such thing as being born with a binary sex, because sex is a social construct" then it would be equally confusing.

Re: The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

#199

Post by turbinerneiter »

Chathamization wrote: post #151
turbinerneiter wrote: post #83

Ya'll use University wrong. The classes, etc. ... whatever! During my time at Uni, I: * designed a demonstrator car frame to show off a bunch of new manufacturing techniques, which was actually built in the end * was part of a team who tested a new type of fiber optical vibration sensor on a sounding rocket * worked with a PhD student on developing a sensor to measure water flow through a tank to validate his simulat…

> University is a place where teachers and students who are interested in a field meet to learn and research together. It would be nice to have places like this open to the general public and not gated off like universities are. There are a lot of people who become interested in these things after university, people who didn't attend university that are interested in them, who were interested and involved in these th…

Our University has a Makerspace that is frequent by a lot of people outside of University. The trainers for the machines and such are also not from University, but have gone through vocational training are experienced metal workers, wood workers, textile workers and so on. These interactions are definitely awesome for the students, to learn about their perspective, and the other people also gain insights in uni work, i.e. supporting students with prototypes for their thesis projects and so on.

I definitely think University should be open for all people and there is a lot of cool things you could do if you attracted morn people from different backgrounds.

When I ever move back to the countryside where I grew up, I definitely plan to start a Makerspace that combines an open workshop, a youth center (with tutoring), some low level research work.

Actually, this conversation has me excited to go do that :)

Re: The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age

#200

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #83

Ya'll use University wrong. The classes, etc. ... whatever! During my time at Uni, I: * designed a demonstrator car frame to show off a bunch of new manufacturing techniques, which was actually built in the end * was part of a team who tested a new type of fiber optical vibration sensor on a sounding rocket * worked with a PhD student on developing a sensor to measure water flow through a tank to validate his simulat…

You did use University correctly. But your example could just as easily been prison. Some people use prison to get off drugs, get an education, learn a job skill, develop a moral code and purpose.

Something that can cost so much, and require such a huge time commitment shouldn't have such a high failure rate of people who fail to "figure out how to use it".

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