Ask HN: How do we build the new remote education system

Possible arrangement for university-level education: have the accrediting organizations administer exams for course credits and award degrees instead of individual universities.

The goal would be to open up choices. People could self-study, his tutors, or attend university. Even mix them up. It'd be like transfer credits. I could see a cottage industry of tutors and specialized labs, because the accrediting organizations' standard exams let them honestly say, "We can help you with part of your degree." Internships wouldn't have to be coordinated with universities; good employers would assign enough work relevant to the exams.

Universities would still be a useful service: pay the tuition and get access to a bunch of professors (bonus if they take on student research assistants), other students, labs, research material, the "university experience", and (let's be honest) prestige. Universities could even provide venues for exams, like with the GRE (which is a standard exam administered by a central body).

Another real-world example is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. Anyone can register. I self-studied and took the N5 (easiest) exam in 2019. After that, I realized I need some help to keep progressing, so I've signed up for some paid online education services. When the pandemic passes, I'll look into getting a tutor. If local universities offered Japanese courses, I'd gladly pay to sit in.

That's great to hear but I'm guessing your wife's school is located in an upper class neighborhood where there's plenty of room and time for homeschooling, at least one member of the household can take care of the kids at any time, and in general education problems are no issue. The reality for not-so-well-doing families is a very different one, starting from there being no quiet place in the apartment, let alone for multiple kids at the same time, no equipment for home schooling, and parents being busy with work and not able to take care or help. These problems being amplified by the pandemic is tragic, to say the least, for a whole generation. It's also extremely frustrating for those who've fought for inclusion and against social determination in elementary schools for all their professional life. This problem will definitely come back biting society.

There's no lack of schooling software. In fact, preparing high quality digital materials for education in a "literal" style such that attendees could comprehend and change those themselves has been a major use case for 1990s (HyTime and SGML) media authoring systems, with high profile figures (TechnoTeacher/Dr Macro) being editors or sitting on the board of said standards. But the truth is that as long as public schooling doesn't get properly funded to pay many more teachers, there's no chance to maintain education standards. Right now, in my country teachers are expected (or at least were expected in the latter half of last year) to be present in school and organize home schooling at the same time, all the while being exposed to Covid, which can't possibly work. The priority of the school administration/government seems to be to avoid giving any legal reason for a right to repeat years or appeal final exams because that would break HR and financial means.

>> I'm a professor at a US university. The honest answer (at least at the university level) -- probably we don't.

>> From what I can tell, there's very little enthusiasm for online education, on the part of either professors or students.

This isnt surprising -- you are probably polling people inside the system -- what about the many more people who cant join the system? I'll bet they have a very different opinion.

The US educational system, especially graduate education, is a game of money. Even those graduate students who are on grants are only the lucky ones who don't have sufficiently large family obligations to fulfill and can therefore stay on a graduate grant. Think of how many people need to work at their parents' shop, have to take care of a grandparent, sick elderly parents at home, those who are also caring for younger siblings, those w/o sufficient disposable income to sit around at quads sipping lattes.

Consider all the people who couldn't pay to play that game. I'm sure they would love an alternative.

Also consider the opposite problem -- people with money who do not want to take off two years (without income) to get a graduate degree, or worse, move their families to one of several key cities with top universities. They would also like an alternative that is mostly remote.

> You need to stop the lecturer and ask them to go over the point you didn't understand, or ask for additional time after the lab, or at a push, make a complaint to the course leader that the lecturer isn't teaching you well enough.

I foresee this strategy ending badly for a number of professors I've had.

To build upon this answer a little bit, people want to go back in person not for the educational reasons but for social reasons. While you can learn in an online format and (with enough work/investment) make the experience similar to in-person classes, you cannot replace the social aspects of college with an online environment.

US colleges have been moving from a learning experience towards a social experience build on to of learning (see, for example, https://www.nber.org/papers/w18745).

My university was in person last fall but classes mostly online, students still socialized (e.g., partied) even if health recommendations were strongly recommend against it.