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The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

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Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#41

Post by foobarqux »

fecklessyouth wrote: post #31
foobarqux wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nelson doesn't lament that his mind wasn't adequately "cultivated" but that he wasn't taught some basic skills that he quickly, but probably painfully, acquired on the job and which presumably he found critical in his career. This isn't a question of "mental development" but of having useful things pointed out so that you don't have to suffer whatever damage accrues from not knowing them.

I suppose we're splitting hairs here about what he's aiming for, but consider his comments, first, about what he learned on the job: >"My first six months, what did the consulting firm teach me? They didn't teach me the basics of how they do business. They taught me how to think. I didn't know how to check my work. I didn't think about order of magnitude. and then his goals for Minerva: >"We want to teach you how to…

I agree that some of his comments muddy the waters; I can't say that I know exactly what he intends to do. But take this first comment for example which I think would be made by many people who had recently started working in IB or management consulting:

> I didn't know how to check my work. I didn't think about order of magnitude.

I suspect in these cases he learned some useful trick or mode of thinking in a matter of minutes by having someone point it out to him. Not so much "basic" as "simple".

And irrespective of whatever Minerva claims to do I think it is clear that many "elite" graduates feel there are simple, useful things not being taught in schools which ought to be.

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#42

Post by 001sky »

fecklessyouth wrote: post #31
foobarqux wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nelson doesn't lament that his mind wasn't adequately "cultivated" but that he wasn't taught some basic skills that he quickly, but probably painfully, acquired on the job and which presumably he found critical in his career. This isn't a question of "mental development" but of having useful things pointed out so that you don't have to suffer whatever damage accrues from not knowing them.

I suppose we're splitting hairs here about what he's aiming for, but consider his comments, first, about what he learned on the job: >"My first six months, what did the consulting firm teach me? They didn't teach me the basics of how they do business. They taught me how to think. I didn't know how to check my work. I didn't think about order of magnitude. and then his goals for Minerva: >"We want to teach you how to…

One issue with Economics, as an undegrad major its denial or downplaying the utility of 'fiction'. ie, it treata fiction as the wrong half a dichotomy: truth:fiction == rational:irrational. Yet real world problem solving requires not just deduction, but imagingation (ie, possible alternative priors from which to base deductions). Like any good crime detective ;). TLDR: fiction-->imaginitive pre-visualization-->creative problem solving. STEM and wanna-be STEM subjects like econ are good for benhcmarking discrete problem solving, and for providing technical priors. for that there is no doubt. Its just not the whole picture of problem solving (esp. dealing with people, etc).

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#43

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ahelwer wrote: post #15

I'll post a small anecdote, which I promise is not an exercise in narcissistic banality. A couple of my friends attend Green College[0] at the University of British Columbia (UBC). I crashed in their residence room for two nights during a cross-Canada road trip at the end of July. The short time at Green College restored my love of higher education, which had been flagging toward the end of a drawn-out CS degree at t…

I once attended a conference and Jesus College, Oxford. I got the same feeling that you did, just the dining hall experience was way beyond what I ever experienced at UW.

But these experiences are quite expensive. It is not clear that they scale to our current egalitarian and pragmatic educational system.

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#45

Post by davidmr »

fecklessyouth wrote: post #20

Nelson's remarks exemplify a disturbing trend amongst technologists, and especially those trying to reform education: Misidentifying sub-par educational experiences and areas of studies as "the liberal arts," and then attributing insufficient outcomes to the liberal arts themselves. If he went to Wharton Business school for undergrad, he does not have a liberal-arts education. History and literature are liberal arts,…

> In the Nelson dream curriculum, all incoming students take the same four yearlong courses. His common core won't make students read the Great Books. "We want to teach you how to think," Mr. Nelson says. A course on "multimodal communications" works on practical writing and debating skills. A "formal systems class" goes over "everything from logic to advanced stats, Big Data, to formal reasoning, to behavioral econ."

I, like you, have a very hard time understanding the logic behind this. I don't have any idea how one could go about teaching a young person to think critically by sitting them down and saying, "to think critically, do A, B, C". I'm all for experimentation, and if Nelson thinks that he can do it better, I'll gladly give him the benefit of the doubt and wait for the data. I think it's hubris of the highest order for him to say that he's going to teach people to think. What he will do if he's successful is teach people how to compete in a modern technological economy, which is certainly a laudable goal.

Taking this a step further and claiming as he seems to that the Great Books are no longer necessary for students to learn critical thought seems absurd.

Just for the record as people read my comment, I will admit to being as biased as is possible to be on this subject, having gone to both the most liberal arty of all the liberal arts colleges[1] and a large liberal arts university[2].

[1] http://www.stjohnscollege.edu/admissions/learnmore/admission...

[2] https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/academics/

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#46

Post by seanmcdirmid »

tzs wrote: post #37

> Professors get flexible, short-term contracts, but no tenure. At a place like MIT or Caltech, almost all the professors are also researchers. Undergraduates have a lot of opportunity to get involved in that research. What research opportunities will be available for Minerva students?

It cuts both ways:

At a place like MIT or Caltech, almost all professors are also researchers. They really like research, and teaching is kind of a drag.

What learning opportunities will be available for MIT or Caltech students?

Now, admittedly, the above institutions take teaching seriously, and the students will get a great experience. But the same isn't true in many public flagship universities where professors prioritize research over teaching.

That being said, I prefer being a researcher to being a teacher, which is probably why I'm not a professor.

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#47

Post by argumentum »

rjbond3rd wrote: post #25
argumentum wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if "Minerva" was $1/year, the question is one of value . A degree from Harvard at $50k/year is more valuable than a free one from a UC Berkeley Dean's scholarship student (which is probably about the same difficulty to attain), simply due to the perception it engenders from people that matter.

No offense to anyone, but I'll take that Berkeley kid any day.

As may I .. that's not the point.

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#48

Post by MisterBastahrd »

So a guy with no experience teaching in a classroom decides that he has what it takes to found a university, and then instead of trying to create a transformative experience, he's going to turn out a bunch of trust fund babies with non-accredited general studies degrees who will be almost certainly deprived of the ability to do real research on par with even small directional universities. Oh, and elite professors will just FLOCK to this school in one of the most expensive cities in the world and be rewarded with.... no tenure and no resources to conduct research.

Brilliant.

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#49

Post by _delirium »

fecklessyouth wrote: post #20

Nelson's remarks exemplify a disturbing trend amongst technologists, and especially those trying to reform education: Misidentifying sub-par educational experiences and areas of studies as "the liberal arts," and then attributing insufficient outcomes to the liberal arts themselves. If he went to Wharton Business school for undergrad, he does not have a liberal-arts education. History and literature are liberal arts,…

As a minor quibble, I'm not sure it's fair to saddle technologists with the likes of Ben Nelson. He made money in a technological milieu, sure, but as a purely biz guy. Neither his background nor his mindset nor his interests involve technology, and he has not contributed to the advancement of technology.

Technologists can have dumb ideas too, of course. But this particular dumb idea doesn't come across as a techie's idea.

Re: The Man Who Would Overthrow Harvard

#50

Post by argonaut »

fecklessyouth wrote: post #20

Nelson's remarks exemplify a disturbing trend amongst technologists, and especially those trying to reform education: Misidentifying sub-par educational experiences and areas of studies as "the liberal arts," and then attributing insufficient outcomes to the liberal arts themselves. If he went to Wharton Business school for undergrad, he does not have a liberal-arts education. History and literature are liberal arts,…

I don't think you make a very strong argument as to why studying for a specific liberal arts major, as opposed to receiving a generalized American-style "liberal arts education" (referring to the uniquely American method of having a core curriculum and general education requirements), is advantageously able to impart these vaguely defined "critical thinking" skills. You haven't given any solid reasons as to why a pre-professional economics degree does not impart critical thinking skills, especially since even those degrees require classes with a great deal of theoretical abstraction, discussion, and argument.

There's a reason that "Communications" programs have a reputation for being full of fluff. If you want to learn how to communicate, communicate. Trying to "study" it isn't get to help you personally.

I think this is awfully pedantic. Your are making an assumption that for some reason this class won't involve communication, and will just involve studying, based on a quoted snippet of what Ben Nelson said.

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