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MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”

tech.mit.edu

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Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”

#31

Post by dhimes »

gravypod wrote: post #4

The only point of a modern day university is that they are (a) exclusive, and (b) "guarantee" that students "know" what they are "taught". That's at least what people who hire think. I remember someone saying "It wouldn't matter if MIT only taught basket weaving as long as they still had such a thorough selection process". This holds true here. People only care about the pedigree of your degree, it's substance comes…

"guarantee" that students "know" what they are "taught"

That used to be the case, but now corporations require you to pass their own exam before they hire you. Let that sink in a moment. No longer are the universities taken at their word about their product.

For some of you it has never been any different, but this change came about more or less when I was teaching at university/college. Some of us saw this as a quite profound change.

In my view, that was the first signal of the beginning of the inevitable disruption of modern higher ed.

Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”

#33

Post by paulojreis »

gravypod wrote: post #21
paulojreis wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say that the substance of e.g. a M.D. degree comes "second". Maybe you're focusing too much on IT?

If there were two medical schools, one a state funded community medical school and the other a big name like John Hopkins, what school would you want your doctor to have attended? Even if you were assured that they both teach the same material, you would want the Coca-Cola over the Pepsi.

Yes, of course. My intuition would be the same. But that doesn't mean that the only point of a university is to guarantee exclusiveness/selection and accreditation.

Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”

#34

Post by tedmiston »

ludamad wrote: post #13

Now project based learning is fine, but CS for example has lots of wonderful theory, where does that fit in?

That probably depends on which parts of CS theory you're thinking of... the way my university taught CS theory for topics like data structures, algorithms, state machines, applied machine learning, etc. was fairly interwoven with programming projects.

Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”

#35

Post by wfo »

gravypod wrote: post #11
legutierr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By this reasoning, you should put a list of the universities you were admitted to on your resume, not the university that you actually attended. Under these terms, what's the difference between going to Harvard for a couple of semesters and dropping out, and getting admitted to Harvard but deciding to attend Dartmouth instead?

If you have not joined the university you are not part of the "in" group. There is a perception among people that if you attend a "prestigious" university that you are smarter than someone who attends a community college. I find that crazy. Both teach basically the same thing. If they are both accredited, then it is almost indistinguishable. Who would you think is smarter off the cuff, a Harvard graduate, or someone…

Intro courses are the same (calculus and basic chemistry are calculus and basic chemistry) but once you get past anything more difficult than 101 you see a wild disparity in difficulty across different universities (some universities will have material as junior-level undergrad that others have as graduate). Community colleges don't even try to teach the vast majority of courses taught at the smallest least prestigious 4-year university.

Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”

#36

Post by AnimalMuppet »

ludamad wrote: post #13

Now project based learning is fine, but CS for example has lots of wonderful theory, where does that fit in?

How much of that theory do you have to understand in order to be a competent professional programmer? Some, sure. The more the better, sure. But much of it can be learned independent from much of the rest of it - you don't need one mammoth 4-year curriculum to "master" CS.

Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”

#37

Post by enjo »

tedmiston wrote: post #17
gravypod wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have not joined the university you are not part of the "in" group. There is a perception among people that if you attend a "prestigious" university that you are smarter than someone who attends a community college. I find that crazy. Both teach basically the same thing. If they are both accredited, then it is almost indistinguishable. Who would you think is smarter off the cuff, a Harvard graduate, or someone…

> I find that crazy. Both teach basically the same thing. If they are both accredited, then it is almost indistinguishable. Speaking just on computer science here, but the depth of CS courses varies radically across universities. Sure they all might follow the ACM model curriculum, but how much of the book you're actually reading (and which book you're using in the first place), the number and difficulty of practice…

It's not just the depth, but the breadth as well. Better universities do an amazing job of teaching their students how to learn. The curriculum is thoughtfully designed to produce well rounded students who are capable of achieving expertise in their chosen field (they don't leave college as experts by any stretch.. and THAT is the disconnect surrounding education these days).

The big difference between someone coming out of a higher-end school and a community college isn't (necessarily) intelligence or even knowledge, it's that the university educated ones have been prepared to reason about the world in a more complete way. Which is comforting for me to know when I'm hiring.

I should note: I didn't finish college (I made it through three years). My wife on the other hand went on to a PhD. At 24 I was convinced that I had missed nothing. It wasn't until about a decade later that I began to understand that she was capable of seeing so much more nuance and detail than I was. Partly because she's smarter, but partly because she had so much more substance to her education. It gives her a basis to reason from that I don't have. It's a gap I'm feverishly trying to close through completing my own education... but it sure would have been easier to have done it in my 20's...

Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”

#38

Post by thorntonbf »

It's exciting to see some thought and movement at this level.

The existing system is broken when it comes to actual student knowledge. A lot of systems are to fault, but as the modern university has bowed to their corporate overlords in filling the pipeline of modern corporate key punchers, college has essentially become tech school for Power Point and Excel in a lot of cases.

So many of our current college students would be so much better served by tech school.

Heck, so much of this community often ends up eschewing college at large to go build something - often because the value proposition of the university model right now simply doesn't make sense.

We're always going to need people who can think - maybe a bifurcated path where a lot of our university experience returns more to a true liberal arts education.

This experience-based model wouldn't have been out of place historically. That it appears so revolutionary to us today shows how broken the current model is.

Something has to change. I'm excited to see some movement around the borders.

Re: MIT dean to start new university: “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”

#40

Post by hackaflocka »

gravypod wrote: post #11
legutierr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By this reasoning, you should put a list of the universities you were admitted to on your resume, not the university that you actually attended. Under these terms, what's the difference between going to Harvard for a couple of semesters and dropping out, and getting admitted to Harvard but deciding to attend Dartmouth instead?

If you have not joined the university you are not part of the "in" group. There is a perception among people that if you attend a "prestigious" university that you are smarter than someone who attends a community college. I find that crazy. Both teach basically the same thing. If they are both accredited, then it is almost indistinguishable. Who would you think is smarter off the cuff, a Harvard graduate, or someone…

I would assume the Harvard person was smarter (unless their father also went there AND they have a building named after them there), simply because anyone can get into the Community College but not Harvard. That, in and of itself, is a filter. So it's not biased to think that.
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