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Students fight back over course taught by AI

theguardian.com

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Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#51

Post by jaccola »

gonzo41 wrote: post #22

In a case of the worst person you know makes a great point, Jordan Peterson was remarking a few years back about how Youtube and MOOC's were really the new universities of the modern age. If you want knowledge it's there for the taking. The legacy institutions really are just a stamp / sorting hat for young people these days. For the money people spend these days on education, you'd think there'd be grounds for refun…

The thought experiment I do when speaking with graduates is: assume you could just buy the certificate from the institution you went to for the same price as the tuition you paid, would you do that?

I do not always get a "yes" but most of the time I do.

These are generally people who went to top universities and now have well paying and respected jobs. I suspect if I asked most students of lower tier universities the answer would be "I'd rather pay for neither".

Thankfully, things are generally shifting, there is a push for apprenticeships and one can even become a solicitor or barrister via the apprenticeship route now. University will go down as one of the largest economic wastes in human history.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#52

Post by HeinzStuckeIt »

zulban wrote: post #7

It has been many years that most courses in most universities have inferior lectures than just watching a great series of YouTube videos. Many professors have no passion or training in teaching, they just want to do research. Or they have no time or pay to prepare a course. So of course they use AI slop wherever they can. Even if they record their lectures, that's almost never better than the best free ones out there…

It really depends what field. In some branches of history, archaeology, and linguistics, for instance, many matters of emerging consensus often reach students only through lecturers’ handouts that are not put online. What a curious person will find on the internet and in general-reference books can be a decade or more behind, and viewed within the field as horribly out of date.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#53

Post by ecshafer »

HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #47
_yvnd wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All universities outside of the US Edit: Apparently not. Thanks for the insight, I stand corrected. I really should think twice before posting!

Your post is very naive. In the UK, some universities are so dependent now on foreign students paying high fees to break even, that it has been widely reported in the media. And in a few EU countries, polytechnics have been upgraded to university status (at least in their English-language names) in order to attract fee-paying students from the developing world. Finnish polytechnics, for example, run whole marketing c…

Are Polytechnics not considered universities in Europe? RPI (Rensalear Polytechnic Institute) or CalPoly (California Polytechnic Institute) for example in the US are just normal universities, usually with more of a technical, engineering focused. But they are essentially the same "level" as a university.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#54

Post by danaris »

_yvnd wrote: post #42
j45 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which universities aren't commercial and about cashflow?

All universities outside of the US Edit: Apparently not. Thanks for the insight, I stand corrected. I really should think twice before posting!

Plenty of US colleges and universities are primarily about education and/or research, even today. Far from all, to be sure—and some are primarily about connections and the school name (primarily Ivies), rather than any of the above.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#55

Post by ModernMech »

marknutter wrote: post #41
ModernMech wrote: post #24

This is the culmination of decades of cuts to education. I mean, what else was going to be the end point of having teachers buy supplies for their own kids, demonizing professors, demonizing higher education and the idea of education generally, not training enough teachers, and underpaying the teachers you already have. In America we have to deal with school shootings, the latest religious group mandating the 10 comm…

Spending on education has increased over the last couple decades, not decreased. Outcomes, however, have gotten worse. You're entire premise is flawed.

This is America, we have perfected the art of spending more to get less. That doesn't mean cuts to education aren't happening. See also: the entire healthcare system.

I specifically mentioned: teachers paying for supplies out of their own pockets, underpaying teachers, not investing in safe teaching environments, increased litigation, demonizing the profession, increased political targeting, and lack of teacher agency in disciplining students.

Fact is when I look at my district, over the last decade we've had to do more with less, and I don't know a single teacher who can say the opposite. So it is true we are spending more overall, it's not true we aren't cutting education.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#57

Post by HeinzStuckeIt »

ecshafer wrote: post #53
HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post is very naive. In the UK, some universities are so dependent now on foreign students paying high fees to break even, that it has been widely reported in the media. And in a few EU countries, polytechnics have been upgraded to university status (at least in their English-language names) in order to attract fee-paying students from the developing world. Finnish polytechnics, for example, run whole marketing c…

Are Polytechnics not considered universities in Europe? RPI (Rensalear Polytechnic Institute) or CalPoly (California Polytechnic Institute) for example in the US are just normal universities, usually with more of a technical, engineering focused. But they are essentially the same "level" as a university.

In Finland, the institutions that now call themselves “Universities of Applied Science” in English for marketing reasons, are still known in Finnish as ammatikorkeakoulu “tertiary professional-training institutions” and this is a rung below actual universities (yliopisto) in terms of both quality of education and social prestige.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#58

Post by josefritzishere »

IAmBroom wrote: post #45
josefritzishere wrote: post #31

What peice of trash thought that was an appropriate thing to do?

The real question. Some human decision-maker is responsible.

Were I a student I'd be coordinating a class-action lawsuit. The impropriety and lack of responsibility is staggering.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#59

Post by throwawaysleep »

jjmarr wrote: post #38

AI will continue to stratify education. The typical student will get AI generated course content by the cheapest models. Other children will spend $1000s/month on multimodal AI tutors spinning up Python code to check their math homework. Those students will easily surpass others without individualized support.

I kind of wonder whether we are past the point where waiting to be trained is feasible.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#60

Post by Der_Einzige »

IAmBroom wrote: post #46
j45 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teaching isn't bi directional. Understanding before application are two different steps. The issues you're outlining can be solved by arranging technology to go through a process to satisfy the above. Still, instruction, and instructors aren't really needing to be replaced, it's the silent elephant in the room that is rarely talked about that hopefully considers evolving.

> Teaching isn't bi directional. ... said no decent teacher, ever. The flows aren't symmetrical, but they are bidirectional.

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