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Students fight back over course taught by AI

theguardian.com

41–50 of 146 posts

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#41

This is the culmination of decades of cuts to education. I mean, what else was going to be the end point of having teachers buy supplies for their own kids, demonizing professors, demonizing higher education and the idea of education generally, not training enough teachers, and underpaying the teachers you already have. In America we have to deal with school shootings, the latest religious group mandating the 10 comm…

Spending on education has increased over the last couple decades, not decreased. Outcomes, however, have gotten worse. You're entire premise is flawed.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#42
post #37
post #12

Outrageous at the least. These universities already became so commercial that they show photos of some Victorian era buildings as their campus, but most students never set foot in those buildings, as all classrooms are held in rented building outside of campus, and the main buildings are kept only as ornamental pieces. Also, there are hardly any good teachers left. Most are hired on sharing basis, who shuttle between…

Which universities aren't commercial and about cashflow?

All universities outside of the US

Edit: Apparently not. Thanks for the insight, I stand corrected. I really should think twice before posting!

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#43

I just had a pretty amazing 4 hour session with gpt 5.1 going over my son's rare disease. Chat broke it all down for me in a really deep and clear way in the back and forth. Insights I've never gotten to from talking to docs, reading papers, reading bio textbooks etc. I guess some small percentage of it was hallucinated, but if you want to call it a teacher/student relationship, it was pretty amazing.

Well, that's certainly one piece of anecdata. I guess that refutes the experience of all the college students.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#46
post #28

AI can help with content generation or scaffolding, but teaching is still a bidirectional feedback process. When the model can’t adapt to misunderstanding or context, students immediately feel the gap. It’s a UX failure more than a “should AI be allowed” issue

Teaching isn't bi directional. Understanding before application are two different steps. The issues you're outlining can be solved by arranging technology to go through a process to satisfy the above. Still, instruction, and instructors aren't really needing to be replaced, it's the silent elephant in the room that is rarely talked about that hopefully considers evolving.

> Teaching isn't bi directional.

... said no decent teacher, ever. The flows aren't symmetrical, but they are bidirectional.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#47
post #42
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which universities aren't commercial and about cashflow?

All universities outside of the US Edit: Apparently not. Thanks for the insight, I stand corrected. I really should think twice before posting!

Your post is very naive. In the UK, some universities are so dependent now on foreign students paying high fees to break even, that it has been widely reported in the media. And in a few EU countries, polytechnics have been upgraded to university status (at least in their English-language names) in order to attract fee-paying students from the developing world. Finnish polytechnics, for example, run whole marketing campaigns in the Indian Subcontinent in order to get people to come and pay those sweet, sweet foreign-student fees.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#48
post #42
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which universities aren't commercial and about cashflow?

All universities outside of the US Edit: Apparently not. Thanks for the insight, I stand corrected. I really should think twice before posting!

The University mentioned in this article is in England.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#49
post #42
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which universities aren't commercial and about cashflow?

All universities outside of the US Edit: Apparently not. Thanks for the insight, I stand corrected. I really should think twice before posting!

The original article is about a UK university. Cashflow and revenue generation is a very important topic for UK universities. They have copied the approaches of US universities, and in many cases have created overseas campuses when they have some name recognition. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_branch_campus for examples.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#50
post #37
post #12

Outrageous at the least. These universities already became so commercial that they show photos of some Victorian era buildings as their campus, but most students never set foot in those buildings, as all classrooms are held in rented building outside of campus, and the main buildings are kept only as ornamental pieces. Also, there are hardly any good teachers left. Most are hired on sharing basis, who shuttle between…

Which universities aren't commercial and about cashflow?

Allegedly most of them, since they have non-profit mandates and are often tax-exempt.

The University of Staffordshire is a public university and is funded by the government to provide education to British people. Its mandate isn't "about cashflow".

In reality, that particular school created a private commercial subsidiary called "Staffordshire University Services". All new employees are hired by that subsidiary, which does have a mandate to generate cashflow.

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