Established education providers v new contenders • Hacker News Board

Re: Established education providers v new contenders

#51

Post by garysieling » Mon, Jan 16, 2017, 6:17 PM UTC

misterhtmlcss wrote: post #49

garysieling wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought part of the value of a degree was the people you meet, so if you're getting a degree purely through online interaction it's hard to see how the school could compete long-term.

Wow paying $10k+ to network, that's great value. I might as well go shoot myself now, because that's just idiotic. Sorry for being harsh, but that's something I couldn't disagree with more and sounds like someone coming from a very very privileged background too.

Well, I grew up probably under the federal poverty line, which tends to make undergrad cheaper, and in that sense I'm quite privileged ;)

I got a CS degree so that I could be employed, but have come to greatly appreciate the friendships that I made in school. MBAs are sometimes sold on the basis of the networking benefits, so my perception comes from that.

Re: Established education providers v new contenders

#52

Post by TACIXAT » Mon, Jan 16, 2017, 11:51 PM UTC

garysieling wrote: post #44

TACIXAT wrote: post #38

I am really disappointed by my Masters program online courses because of the quality of the low cost online courses available on the web. I pay 3000 dollars a course for a professor reading slides and forced discussion. On the other side I have paid 27$ for 70 hours of very high quality content. Professors in universities are not primarily educators. Many are contract or research focused. Teaching is their secondary…

I always thought part of the value of a degree was the people you meet, so if you're getting a degree purely through online interaction it's hard to see how the school could compete long-term.

Yea, I hear that a lot more with MBAs and law degrees. For my CS masters I am concerned with advanced technical content.

Re: Established education providers v new contenders

#53

Post by garysieling » Tue, Jan 17, 2017, 1:28 AM UTC

TACIXAT wrote: post #52

garysieling wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought part of the value of a degree was the people you meet, so if you're getting a degree purely through online interaction it's hard to see how the school could compete long-term.

Yea, I hear that a lot more with MBAs and law degrees. For my CS masters I am concerned with advanced technical content.

Yeah, I hear you. The reason I brought it up is other parts of this thread are about differences between a university setting and online videos - even though I studied CS for the content, people I know from school gave me job opportunities as well.

Re: Established education providers v new contenders

#54

Post by bootload » Wed, Jan 18, 2017, 12:54 AM UTC

garysieling wrote: post #31

bootload wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nice @gary, spent a bit of time finding things I'm researching. Not sure how you'd describe it, Search engine for ^stuff^ (vid,sound) on learning? One thing I had trouble finding was Hal Ableson, 6.001 MIT lectures. [0] I know where it is, but I couldn't find it, searching for it by terms. Terms tried: * lisp algorithms * MIT lisp algorithms * MIT lisp Hal ableson How come? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Abels…

Good question - short answer is I've been focusing on finding collections that people don't know about, but I'm working on adding the MIT lectures - should be up in a day or two :) I'd describe this as a discovery engine for lectures - the goal is to replicate some of the experience of browsing a library for interesting books (vs. traditional search, which is more about minimizing clicks between you and an answer)

"I'd describe this as a discovery engine for lectures"

I like that idea. Thx @gary for this work, interesting in its own right, could prove ^very useful^.

Re: Established education providers v new contenders

#55

Post by posterboy » Fri, Jan 20, 2017, 7:29 PM UTC

posterboy wrote: post #21

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Machine Learning by Andrew Ng https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning The maths is fairly straightforward and the concepts are explained well.

I started that one and feel like the format doesn't take much advantage of the medium: the videos are very much like traditional lectures. Of course being free is an immense plus, but then so are many books. Specifically, I take issue with NG's foreign accent. That's just me looking for a reason, but it's the second time after Agarwal on MITx (and that wanted me to purchase his book). Also, I can already record lectu…

note to myself: otoh, paying a fee for the effort to run a course is most reasonable if the value added comes in form of a book to keep. Actually that's what I am missing in those courses, where instructors don't provide even scripts.