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Universities should be more than toll gates

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Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#31

Post by raincole »

keiferski wrote: post #12

Well, they used to be, but the modern industrial age needed institutions that could train workers - and universities fit the bill. I don’t think it’s possible to detach the credential aspect from universities without a parallel work-focused system existing, and even then, the prestige of universities will still mean that the wealthy and privileged will prefer universities, which means that that prestige will trickle…

> here’s no real reason why someone can’t start a student-operated (to keep costs down) university that focuses on the liberal arts, classics, mathematics, etc that is affordable enough for the average person.

... so a book club?

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#32

Post by gjgtcbkj »

keiferski wrote: post #29
kazen44 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is also a specific difference between germanic education and english/us education. Does the US not have something like a fachhochschule? A institute where peoeple are trained for specific fields/jobs? This systems seems to exist in most european countries that i know of, and it is specifically focussed on education related to a specific field or career. (this is also is there for different levels of prac…

There are schools like this, called various things like “technical schools” or “vocational schools.” But they tend to be looked down upon by the American middle class and higher; e.g., the average parent wants their kid to go to college, any college, over a vocational school. In other words, vocational schools are (unfortunately) associated with people that don’t do well in traditional school. From what I understand…

People always say these schools are “looked down on” and rightly so they are mostly scams. Virtually all tradespeople like this have relatives in that trade. The idea these school would actually be equivalent to a college is laughable.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#33

Post by general1465 »

Almondsetat wrote: post #30
general1465 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> throwing walls of formulas with zero context, explanation or examples This rings so true for me. Lot of teachers has this ass backwards style of teaching where they will come up with final formula like deus-ex machina. Why? To buy his text book where it is explained the way he wants it.

Many formulas you use are the apex of months of research from the best minds of the last centuries. Every explanation is a deus-ex machina ordeal

You can summarize years or even centuries of research into a some digestible steps with length of less than a average lesson. Months of research does not mean that I need to read your whole research journal from start to finish to understand what research was about and what it reached.

But that often expects that the person explaining a thing knows what they are talking about. I.e. people on high school does not like logarithms because they don't understand what it is for. I would bet that's because teachers themselves have absolutely 0 clue what in essence is a logarithm and why did it came to be. It was centuries of research, which you can summarize with one sentence - to make multiplication as simple as addition with lookup tables, because at 15th century they did not have calculators so multiplication was a hard laborious process. 135+265 is simple. 135*265 is difficult.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#34

Post by StefanBatory »

gjgtcbkj wrote: post #32
keiferski wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are schools like this, called various things like “technical schools” or “vocational schools.” But they tend to be looked down upon by the American middle class and higher; e.g., the average parent wants their kid to go to college, any college, over a vocational school. In other words, vocational schools are (unfortunately) associated with people that don’t do well in traditional school. From what I understand…

People always say these schools are “looked down on” and rightly so they are mostly scams. Virtually all tradespeople like this have relatives in that trade. The idea these school would actually be equivalent to a college is laughable.

For us in Poland we have normal high schools, technikum - which is similar, but year longer and you are trained in a job, and zawodówka - which is vocational.

And issue with them is not the school itself, but the type of teenagers that attend them. As much as it pains me, for zawodówka schools - you will get the most demotivated people. And even if you really just want to be trained, you will get into an environment that will destroy you.

I wonder how Germans are faring with this.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#35

Post by StefanBatory »

general1465 wrote: post #22
pythonic_hell wrote: post #3

This is also true for universities in Europe and America.

For private universities in Europe it is true. For public (state owned) universities much less so. This is simply because public university does not look on student like on a customer who put some good money on the table to get the final paper. While private universities do. This is also a reason why in Europe when you have a diploma from private university, nobody really takes that seriously and looks at you like yo…

Yup - I'm Polish, and vast majority of people faced with a diploma from private university would think "You bought your degree because you were too dumb to get into public university."

There are some good private ones; but most of them are degree mills.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#36

Post by badpun »

general1465 wrote: post #22
pythonic_hell wrote: post #3

This is also true for universities in Europe and America.

For private universities in Europe it is true. For public (state owned) universities much less so. This is simply because public university does not look on student like on a customer who put some good money on the table to get the final paper. While private universities do. This is also a reason why in Europe when you have a diploma from private university, nobody really takes that seriously and looks at you like yo…

> This is simply because public university does not look on student like on a customer who put some good money on the table to get the final paper.

Even 10 years ago, this used to be the case in Poland. But now, with demographic decline (current generation of students significantly smaller than previous ones), universities are desperate to fill the seats. If they don't, they lose public funding, which means layoffs - and no one wants that (the university, as any institution, first and foremost serves its employees).

One approach used is to attract foreigners (mostly students from Asia and, to lesser degree, Africa - the main draw is the EU visa), another one is to keep lowering expectations.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#37

Post by markus_zhang »

keiferski wrote: post #12

Well, they used to be, but the modern industrial age needed institutions that could train workers - and universities fit the bill. I don’t think it’s possible to detach the credential aspect from universities without a parallel work-focused system existing, and even then, the prestige of universities will still mean that the wealthy and privileged will prefer universities, which means that that prestige will trickle…

You can start a group with people who pursue the same topics and hire a teacher, that’s the easiest and most affordable way IMO.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#38

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

raincole wrote: post #31
keiferski wrote: post #12

Well, they used to be, but the modern industrial age needed institutions that could train workers - and universities fit the bill. I don’t think it’s possible to detach the credential aspect from universities without a parallel work-focused system existing, and even then, the prestige of universities will still mean that the wealthy and privileged will prefer universities, which means that that prestige will trickle…

> here’s no real reason why someone can’t start a student-operated (to keep costs down) university that focuses on the liberal arts, classics, mathematics, etc that is affordable enough for the average person. ... so a book club?

I've never been to a book club which discusses partial differential equations.

But maybe that's just me.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#39

Post by radialstub »

aaplok wrote: post #20

The elephant in the room here is that perhaps the biggest difference between the two learning experiences that OP is describing is himself. He might just have discovered he is more mature at 30 than he was at 18...

There is a difference between learning about things that you find interesting at your own pace, and learning about things that interest other people with tight deadlines. Even if I enjoy learning, there were absolutely courses that were just a waste of time.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#40

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

dmos62 wrote: post #18
Lyngbakr wrote: post #14

This was exactly like my experience, although mine was in the UK maybe 15 years earlier. I went to university and studied a particular subject so that I'd be employable and didn't enjoy what I was learning. (It's debatable whether I learnt much at all, though.) Like the author, many years later I also came across computer science and found it exciting and engrossing, but I have a slightly different take on that: > Ab…

Same. I didn't know how to express my passions, and I didn't know that I didn't know. I've since been (re?)discovering this. I'm still working on it. I wish that we didn't talk down to kids to teach them, and instead approached them as equals, so that they wouldn't think that their passions and interests are below that of "grown ups". I recently learned that there's a term for that. Well sort of. It's "andragogy", wh…

Historically universities began as church schools, and (more or less) existed to educate priests in persuasion and nobility in leadership.

You might think that's archaic, but that's still the primary purpose of the Ivy League in the US and the older equivalents around the world. The caste system works slightly differently, with priests (persuaders and marketers) replaced by economists, lawyers, and politicians, and nobility (doers with financial/political agency) by CEOs, financiers, and oligarchs. But it's recognisably the same idea.

There are also supporting castes - the military, which has its own pipeline, and researchers/technicians, which are a weird hybrid caste. Some have limited political agency - which peaked around fifty years ago, and has been declining since - but most are just worker bees.

The idea that universities are there for personal and cultural intellectual development is relatively recent, and much more tentative. There's still a lot of hostility to it because the primary purpose of the system is to maintain power differentials, not to erode them.

The point being that the modern system is the vector sum of at least four different competing trends. There's political hierarchy, there's increasing financialisation of assets and processes (which actually conflicts with research and education), there's a need for workers who are accredited and educated enough, but not too educated and independent-minded, and there are the personal expectations of students, which depend on personality, talent, and acculturation.

There isn't a stable solution for this problem.

A recent trend is the availability of university-level teaching outside of universities. Textbook piracy, YouTube videos, and AI are all making it much easier for motivated people to learn - pretty much anything.

I'm not convinced the formal system is sustainable. But it's clear current ideas about employment aren't sustainable either. So there's going to be a period of complete chaos, and - at best - some new system of semi-formal self-motivated open education is going to replace what we have now, perhaps with some kind of external testing and accreditation for specific skills and abilities.

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