I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears • Hacker News Board

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#481

Post by LeroyRaz » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 2:33 AM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #312

Higher education in the US is trying to fulfill so many roles it's unsustainable. - teaching marketable skills so people can get jobs - teaching "how to think" and learning about art and culture - Performing cutting edge research - minor league sports teams The large state schools are trying to fulfill all these conflicting roles. We should probably break them out to separate entities. If you have a physicist who's a…

If you have a physist who is at the leading edge of their field you very much do want them teaching. How do you think you get the next generation of great physists?

It is similar to how when growing crops, like wheat, you should take the best of your harvest and use it for seed. Historically that is one of the most important and also one of the hardest things to teach farmers.

+ Many of the greats have loved teaching and benefited from the process. E.g. Richard Feynman, etc...

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#482

Post by skinnymuch » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 2:33 AM UTC

jerojero wrote: post #454

ufmace wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I think that this factor: > If the upper class want someplace to send their kids to read poetry and binge drink for 4 years Is the heart of the problem. For a long time, this was basically the core function of universities - to make people part of the elite. We told ourselves that it was actually about the things being taught rather than social connections. Maybe to a certain extent it even was. But then, opera…

Do you think access to education is a human right? I find your last paragraph a bit troubling, I agree that becoming a part of the elite does not really have a significance with regards to your own worth. But the USA is not a country that revolves around the middle class, its a country that revolves around the elites. In America not being part of the elite is a failure because the political and economical system is m…

Look up US vs Europe university statistics and the population. Also look at what socioeconomic classes in Europe and the US go to and finish university. The data is very close to one another. To the point arguing one is decidedly better woule be too much.

Status and class in the US blows. It doesn’t seem to be much different in Europe either.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#483

Post by ZephyrBlu » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 2:34 AM UTC

hackernewds wrote: post #426

glued wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was on track to go to a prestigious university in high school when my fundamentalist christian parents kicked me out of the house at the age of 16. I ended up jumping around to live with different friends then eventually my grandparents. I had no money and thought I had no future. The stress was killing me, my grades and SAT score suffered. I ended up at a small state school in rural Georgia because of this. Today…

Although I'm glad it worked out for you, this sounds like a very niche case that would fail every single measure of exampination. Neither is working at a FANG company a signal of intelligence.

> Neither is working at a FANG company a signal of intelligence

You really believe that? I find it extremely hard to believe that the distribution of intelligence for engineering roles at a FAANG company is the same as that of the general population.

It seems far more likely that the distribution is shifted 10-15 points to the right.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#484

Post by judge2020 » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 2:35 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #246

wolverine876 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the SAT is increasingly considered "racist" because it reveals racial disparities in learning Could you provide an example of that claim? Usually the SAT is considered discriminatory because the way the testing is done favors wealthy, well-educated people, and gives negative results for equally talented people who lack those advantages. Colleges have found that the SAT is excluding a large part of the talent pool.…

> Could you provide an example of that claim? Usually the SAT is considered discriminatory because the way the testing is done favors wealthy, well-educated people, and gives negative results for equally talented people who lack those advantages. The alternatives, such as essays, are even more highly correlated with wealth: https://cepa.stanford.edu/content/essay-content-strongly-rel... As to predicting outcomes, tha…

> LSAT is highly predictive of bar exam performance. Students who score less than 150 (on a 120-180 scale) are virtually guaranteed to fail the bar.

Source? Or do you mean "taking LSAT at the same time as taking the bar for fun"? Because LSAT is typically done before you enter law school, while you take the bar after you get out.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#485

Post by 1auralynn » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 2:36 AM UTC

georgeburdell wrote: post #425

synergy20 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

college is delaying young people to become mature, we're producing giant babies these days, thanks to endless parenting, online gaming, social screen time, now probably even metaverse, you name it. on the STEM subject, teens good at math are never teacher's favorites, instead they're called nerds and some are even isolated from the rest, it's quite the opposite in Asia, or even in Europe. That's the root cause we nee…

I think your views on how kids view their peers who are good at math are outdated. For example, NASA gear has, fairly recently, become a fashion trend [1]. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/9tk0jw/w...

I graduated high school in 1998, was great at math, and most teachers liked me, some loved me. MAYBE if you're talking about going to high school in the 70's or 80's, or in a more small football-centered town or something, this was accurate at some point.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#486

Post by BeetleB » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 2:37 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #225

wolverine876 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> STEM jobs are the main viable path for economic stability and freedom. People repeat that but what is it based on? Most of the population, including most people who have economic stability and freedom, have not had STEM jobs and very likely will not have STEM jobs. More importantly, college is about much more than job training. College prepares people to be adults in every way, not to be a resource for corporations…

> College prepares people to be adults in every way, not to be a resource for corporations. Only 2% of Bangladeshis go to college. Are the rest not adults? Indeed, I’d say the opposite is true. Apart from job training, the main function of college in America seems to be extending adolescence and deferring dealing with the real world. 18 year olds in Bangladesh are a lot more “adult” than many college-educated 30-some…

Since you brought Bangladeshis into it, my experience with those that came to the US (mostly for graduate studies) (all guys):

1. They complain that they have to cook

2. They complain that they have to do laundry.

3. They complain they have to iron their clothes.

4. They complain they have to tidy up the apartments.

5. They mostly care about sports, movies, and if they're not religious, getting drunk. Of course, that's not necessarily true for those that go to top universities for their PhDs, but those are the minority, in any case.

6. They boast about how great it was that they didn't take humanities in their undergrad. Talking to them, it's also clear they have little understanding of the arts.

I've also met some very responsible, intellectual Bangladeshis.

There are problem people in every society.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#487

Post by ethbr0 » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 2:37 AM UTC

mattkrause wrote: post #423

readingnews wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have worked at three universities. This is pretty insanely accurate. You left out one item though. The main role US institutions are trying to fill right now is: hire new faculty, have faculty pull in 5+ Million dollar grants in order to get tenure. After tenure, pull in multi-million dollar grants each year. Teaching? Never heard of it. OH! That thing the actual customers are paying us for... yes, have graduate st…

The grants are even crazier than that. Most of the actual work is done by trainees who are a) learning how to do for the first time and b) may never actually do it again because they're going to move onto something else. The profs are, at best, managing them and even that's often a bit iffy. Everybody's obviously got to learn somewhere, but universities and research funders are oddly weird about experience and expert…

I remember (this would have been in the 90s) my father getting crap from his peers because he listed his grad students before himself on research papers.

In his words, "Why would I not? They did most of the work."

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#488

Post by nostrebored » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 2:38 AM UTC

ModernMech wrote: post #462

Retric wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also go to a school where professors are employed for their ability to teach. Choosing to go to a research institution seems like such an obviously poor choice it’s strange people get suckered into it. But it’s clear education is a low priority for both students and collages.

> Choosing to go to a research institution seems like such an obviously poor choice it’s strange people get suckered into it. The best educations happen in research labs. Undergraduates should get a good foundation years 1 and 2, and then find their way as a junior research assistant years 3 and 4 if they want to make the best of their University years. These days you can follow along with any course you want on YouT…

Strongly disagree with this for CS. At top universities, you’re paying for access to similarly interested/capable students and top internship programs. Having done undergrad research, it was both underwhelming and worse experience than my friends who did internships at FAANG.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#489

Post by shigawire » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 2:38 AM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #450

noobermin wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me explain a line of reasoning that would refute the explanation you provide for the ballooning debt. Universities have not generally changed the way they do things, universities have always been the four things OP listed since forever, even when you likely got your degree (assuming you did, or at the very least most of hacker news did), they were those four things too! Therefore, there is no inherent thing to un…

What’s the ratio of tenured professors to total staff from, say, 1970 to today? Colleges were captured by professional administrators. That’s what’s changed, and the results are entirely predictable. See, also, hospitals.

Hospitals require an army of admins because the regulatory burden is so high. And for that we can only blame our convoluted insurance model.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#490

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 2:39 AM UTC

roughly wrote: post #475

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, take a look at the next "who's hiring" page. Ad supported webapps seem pretty well represented. This is hackernews. The organization that founded this site has mostly made its billions by investing in web properties. They are branching out these days, but that's the demographic. > battery technology isn't advancing. Academic physics research is not very useful economically because we've defined "useful econ…

> First off, I don't think most physics labs are researching anything even remotely useful to improving batteries. But for the ones that are, let's do fund them. The problem is, we don't know which ones those are. We won't know, until the discoveries and advancements they make are refined to the point where they can produce batteries. That's my point - the actual work that needs to happen to make something new that c…

> We have a different definition of "rapidly", and a different definition of need. Battery density is the single largest brake on the day-to-day usefulness of electronic devices right now. 3x is nothing. 10x is better, 100x is what we probably need.

I think we probably disagree on two points. First, it seems unlikely that it is even physically possible to beat current lithium ion energy density by 100x. That would imply batteries that are 2x as energy dense as gasoline. I think there's pretty good reason to believe that is not possible -- i.e. there is no easily reversible configuration of atoms that will yield that level of density.

Even if it were physically possible, I doubt that we'd be there today even if we had bent the entire productive capacity of the planet to this problem excluding all others for the last thirty years. You can't make a baby in a month even if you have nine willing mothers to be.

If you're inclined to strengthen the argument you're presenting here, I have one suggestion. If there is widespread underfunding of battery or precursor research, experts in the field are probably talking about this fact. You should be able to find some talk by a respected academic showing that particular worthy ideas likely to add value that aren't being researched for lack of funds. Another option would be to demonstrate that recent advances in battery technology resulted from blue-sky research in the past of the kind that 1. isn't being funded today and 2. could not reasonably have been foreseen to lead to improvements in battery energy density.

(I should also just point out that the whole thesis that we have stopped funding basic research is not even true, see here: https://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/2020-05/FunctionNON... -- general science funding, after adjusting for inflation, has increased substantially over time.)

I also question your estimate of the importance of energy density, but that's a secondary issue, since I think your views on how fast the technology could be developed are unrealistic under any spending scenario.