My daughter(6 years old) asked me the other night at dinner when she would learn which which berries in the forest are poisonous, high school or college. I explained to her that she would not be learning these things in school, she will have to learn them from other places like books. At which point she tells me she is not sure she wants to go to college if she isn't going to be learning important things.
Khan Academy Founder Proposes a New Type of College
41–50 of 94 posts
Re: Khan Academy Founder Proposes a New Type of College
#42There are several interesting comments on this article that relate to company hiring procedures. With the help of other HN participants, I have gradually compiled references to build a FAQ file on that subject, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4613543 which seems to be well liked by other participants here. To relate what the research says to what Salman Khan is proposing, it is a widely replicated finding all ove…
"A college or university that says to the world, "Our graduates who obtain our diplomas demonstrate their competence with work-sample tests, the results of which we list on their official academic records" would rapidly gain notice from companies with research-based hiring procedures. (And why would anyone want to work for a company with hiring procedures that are contrary to the best research?)" This is exactly the…
I once had an education entrepreneur who had built 3 schools tell me in private that ITT techs business model is overtly designed to target quote: "The welfare market". ITT is ignored because it's a known parasite. If you look at ripoff report.com and search ITT tech you'll get a list of complaints. The cultural underpinning and intent of an institution actually has a strong affect on it's "cultural" outgrowth imho. You can't really measure this of course. I work at a school that is intertwined with the entertainment industry and unfortunately a large part of it is more culturally "entertainment industry"-ish (with all the shallow business and marketing psychology) than education-ish. So there is a rift between promoting something as a marketing strategy and really having the idea as part of the cultural framework that you believe in and intend to deliver on.
Re: Khan Academy Founder Proposes a New Type of College
#43And the pendulum swings back. While there are differences, fundamentally the proposition of mentors, internship-based learning, and living on site is not that different from apprenticeships. There's a wider exposure to ideas, perhaps (because maybe you jump between internships instead of staying with one), but at its most basic level the proposed idea is training people to do jobs instead of trying to expand their th…
...somehow we mutated universities into a place where everyone goes in order to get a job
Yes, and universities have been complicit in this, and the result is that the personal economic consequences of not getting a job are considerable.
Re: Khan Academy Founder Proposes a New Type of College
#44My first thought (as a student) is that it is not easy. During my internships, I was usually spent at the end of the day; I only wanted to chill out after work. I tried to take online courses at the same time, and it turned out to be horrible. It would require a lot of discipline and motivation to make it work. This is not for everyone.
It is better separate the working and the learning. A model like the co-op program offered by University of Waterloo may works better. In the program, students study and do internship alternatively every 4 months. When they graduate (after 5 years), students would have 5-6 internships in their CV. So far most students in the program that I have met are excellent!
Re: Khan Academy Founder Proposes a New Type of College
#45And the pendulum swings back. While there are differences, fundamentally the proposition of mentors, internship-based learning, and living on site is not that different from apprenticeships. There's a wider exposure to ideas, perhaps (because maybe you jump between internships instead of staying with one), but at its most basic level the proposed idea is training people to do jobs instead of trying to expand their th…
I agree that having a population highly capable of reasoning and critical thinking is a good thing. But I do think this vision of an enlightened society is a little bit of an ivory tower fantasy.
We don't live in a society where people have a large amount of freedom and exist as free independent agents.
Most people need to be employees. And if you are an employee you will exist in a dictatorship with a military-like structure, and doing critical thinking and proper reasoning will be downright dangerous.
"Um excuse me Mr. Manager, but your proposal for the future of the division has a logical error in the reasoning, and your conclusion is actually false"
Nope, Mr Manager is always right. Because you have to play the game of corporate politics if you want any chance of success, and avoid being labeled as difficult and abrasive.
As long as the large majority of job postings and companies are looking for obedient workers of a certain skill, most people will want an education to become an obedient worker of a certain skill. And universities need to adapt to demand in order not to have a decrease in applicants..
Re: Khan Academy Founder Proposes a New Type of College
#46There are several interesting comments on this article that relate to company hiring procedures. With the help of other HN participants, I have gradually compiled references to build a FAQ file on that subject, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4613543 which seems to be well liked by other participants here. To relate what the research says to what Salman Khan is proposing, it is a widely replicated finding all ove…
But there is no incentive for colleges and universities to change anything about their practices. Demand for college education has never been higher and is increasing even still.
The question to ask is, if our higher education system is in such dire need of reform how come it is so popular? Why are people willing to going into a lifetime of debt just to participate in this system which, according to your linked research is so woefully inadequate?
Re: Khan Academy Founder Proposes a New Type of College
#47And the pendulum swings back. While there are differences, fundamentally the proposition of mentors, internship-based learning, and living on site is not that different from apprenticeships. There's a wider exposure to ideas, perhaps (because maybe you jump between internships instead of staying with one), but at its most basic level the proposed idea is training people to do jobs instead of trying to expand their th…
Caveat: I'm a co-founder of Dev Bootcamp (http://devbootcamp.com), so I have strong opinions. :D
"The problem is this: somehow we mutated universities into a place where everyone goes in order to get a job."
No, I don't think that's fair. There's no "we." Everyone -- students and institutions -- have a different answer to "what is the purpose of an education?"
In the US, we've been experimenting with the full spectrum of answers for the last 150 years.
For some students "an education" is the promise of livelihood, for others it's about needs higher up on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Some reasons people "go to school":
* Access to expertise and high-quality curriculum
* Ability to connect with similarly-motivated people over an extended period of time (think: MBAs)
* Credentialing, or in general access to a certificate valued by the market
* Cultivating their own internal or external life, becoming a better person, citizen, etc.
None of these are better or worse than others, however these mandates often contradict each other.
I studied mathematics and linguistics at the University of Chicago and the thing I loved most about the university was that it had a very strong opinion about how to answer “What is an education?” That answer wasn’t for everyone, but the school was comfortable not being “for everyone.”
In my mind, by taking care of a small subset of those mandates, Dev Bootcamp helps free universities to have a strong opinion about that question again.
Sal Khan wants to call it a "new kind of college," which confuses things a bit. To me it's about understanding all the ways people answer the question "What is an education?" and unbundling those needs.
Re: Khan Academy Founder Proposes a New Type of College
#48"Mr. Khan conjures an image of a new campus in Silicon Valley where students would spend their days working on internships and projects with mentors, and would continue their education with self-paced learning similar to that of Khan Academy." Because of course the entire world centers around SV and tech. And even if you are just trying to work as a manager at a regional chain in Kansas there is something you can lea…
I think your criticism isn't completely fair. I'm fairly certain that the narrow design and location of his thought experiment is because he is most familiar with the finance and tech industries (His degrees are in Math, EE, and Business). He's clearly spent a lot of time in school and is familiar with his pain points and would like to fix them (for better or worse)[1]. If I was in the same position I wouldn't bother…
My experience has been that Community Colleges already do a lot of what he's suggesting (at least mine did) and I doubt his university style campus could compete on cost with a CC.
I bet it is the other way around.
Smart potential mentors know the value of finding good people early, I don't think that will cost nearly as much as you would fear.
Re: Khan Academy Founder Proposes a New Type of College
#49“Traditional universities proudly list the Nobel laureates they have on campus (most of whom have little to no interaction with students),”
They only have little to no interaction with students because students are stupid. When I started college, I was a physics major. After one year, I found the field of solid-state physics particularly interesting. I found out that Prof. Albert Overhauser was at Purdue (if you don't know who he is, just know that there is a very important spin-transfer effect named after him), and it turns out there were many opportunities to interact with him that almost nobody took advantage of.
Consider office hours alone: You've signed up for a lecture from a smart and talented person in a field you are interested in, and they are paid to set aside time to talk to you. If you are most students, you don't bother to go.
Re: Khan Academy Founder Proposes a New Type of College
#50And the pendulum swings back. While there are differences, fundamentally the proposition of mentors, internship-based learning, and living on site is not that different from apprenticeships. There's a wider exposure to ideas, perhaps (because maybe you jump between internships instead of staying with one), but at its most basic level the proposed idea is training people to do jobs instead of trying to expand their th…
>> I don't think the point of getting higher education is getting a job. This may be true for traditional students (18 year olds going right to college from High School who need to learn about life/ the world). But for lots of people, the goal of going to college is 100% to get a better job. 40% of college students today are non-traditional (older, single parent, works part time more than 35 hours per week, etc). The…
Hmm, I know many non-traditional students who went to college because it was something on their bucket-list, not because they wanted a better job (they were happy with their career).
On the other-hand, for nearly every person I know who went to college straight out of highschool it was with the intention of improving job prospects.