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Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

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Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

#61

Post by jseliger »

One big problem: professors don't have a lot of incentives to educate. They have incentives to publish, which helps explain grade inflation: http://jseliger.com/2011/04/02/grade-inflation-what-grade-in.... The current higher education system hasn't really designed around the needs of undergraduates, which a lot of people don't understand.

This is part of the reason I wrote How Universities Work, or: What I Wish I’d Known Freshman Year: A Guide to American University Life for the Uninitiated -- http://jseliger.com/2010/09/26/how-universities-work-or-what... , which I give to my freshmen every semester.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

#62

Post by entangld »

gruseom wrote: post #54
entangld wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you attempting to attack her credibility or can you address her point? Steve Jobs never graduated college. I would still take his opinion on education. This is an argument that can be logically debated without having to go to credentials. Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory. -- Leonardo da Vinci

Considering that da Vinci very likely never said that, your invocation of his authority is ironic. http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=argumen... http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Leonardo_da_Vinci Edit: I retract that last bit. Quoting someone isn't necessarily arguing from their authority. But it almost certainly isn't Leonardo.

I could care less who said what. I have thousands of quotes. The quotes help me learn whose books I should read. I copied and pasted that quote because I had it.

The words are more important than where they came from. I don't have much respect for authority in the first place. I would just rather spend more time debating actual arguments than arguing about credentials.

RE: Leonardo - Well until we find out who said it, I'm attributing it to him. I don't throw away theories until they're disproven.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

#63

Post by hugh3 »

kjksf wrote: post #42
rdtsc wrote: post #11

> they only look like a bubble because we’ve learned to treat education as a market-driven commodity rather than a social good how can you not treat it as a market-driven commodity when a 4 year college degree can cost $120K ?

In the U.S. That is not the case in every country in the world (many have free college education) so it's not an inherent property of higher ed to be "marked-driven commodity". Therefore it's valid to criticize the U.S. implementation for being that given that it doesn't have to be.

It's notable, however, that on any ranking of the world's top universities you'll find the US absolutely dominant, holding over half of the top one hundred, two hundred, whatever... spots. This suggests there must be something going right.

And having spent time at various universities in various different countries I gotta tell you that the existence of a lot more money floating around the average US university certainly helps a lot.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

#64

Post by hugh3 »

maqr wrote: post #58
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #19

Without acceptance criteria -- some neutrally-given test that yields a yes or no -- you can't really measure the function of something. Education has been notorious for refusing to create or abide by acceptance criteria. So it becomes a brand-name game. You pay for the brand, you spend some time getting indoctrinated (most likely to how important this particular brand is) and you get your piece of paper. Somebody sai…

You had me up to here: > You don't really know if it's worth what you spent, because the seller is purposely keeping you in the dark about the value, continuing to assure you that this type of purchase at these rates is absolutely necessary. This isn't like buying a car or a house. My degree has no monetary value, as far as I can tell. I'd love to sell it to the highest bidder, but it's non-transferable. I essentiall…

In my opinion, there's already a term for all this debate around the education 'bubble': "Buyer's remorse".

Half of it is buyers' remorse, the other half is sour grapes. There are three types of people in the world: those who went to university and are glad, those who went to university and regret it, and those who didn't go to university and want to be reassured that they didn't miss anything important. Only folks in the latter two categories are writing articles on this subject. (Oh, and the occasional embittered professor who thinks things aren't nearly as good as they were in his day.)

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

#65

Post by entangld »

hugh3 wrote: post #55
entangld wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you attempting to attack her credibility or can you address her point? Steve Jobs never graduated college. I would still take his opinion on education. This is an argument that can be logically debated without having to go to credentials. Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory. -- Leonardo da Vinci

Well shit, all I can say on the subject is exactly what an originality-challenged dean would say to his class of incoming freshmen (if deans actually addressed classes of incoming freshmen): what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. Want to take advantage of being able to spend four years learning from some of the best minds in every field of human endeavour? Four years set free on hundreds of possible…

what you get out of it depends on what you put into it

If the average quality varies that much, we should be paying a lot less for it.

High prices (in general) imply a level of quality. They don't necessarily indicate quality, but you're not paying a lot for no reason. If the quality from a BMW was highly variable the price would need to decrease to account for that level of risk. In education the student takes all of the risk and pays a high price for it.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

#66

Post by billswift »

arohner wrote: post #33
shii wrote: post #25

These kinds of posts always pop up in a row, like a volley of arrows. Bemoaning education as failing students, falling in value, rising in cost, etc etc etc. What actual concrete alternatives are there for alarmed students (such as myself) that read these types of posts, jump through all the hoops, and still face a massive bill from Podunk U to get a BS or BA? Most of you all here have already gone through the rites…

The current system is completely broken for people who don't get useful degrees, but only annoying for people who do get useful degrees. 1) Have a plan. Go into college with a measurable goal. Say "I'm going to get a degree in X, because that will help me get into my desired profession". Don't say "I'm going to go to become a well rounded person". 2) Get a useful degree. Generally, a useful degree is something that i…

As an extension of your number three: Take all the math and linguistics courses you can without shorting your major - these are among the most generally useful and hardest to learn on your own courses. By linguistics, I mean phonology, syntax, and semantics, our knowledge of how language works; languages are also well worth learning, but Berlitz and Pimsleur are at least as good as university courses at teaching them.

Also take all the lab courses associated with your major - they will give you more tacit knowledge, knowledge of how things actually work, than theory courses.

Note, I'm mostly self-taught (including calculus), these are the kind of things I wish I had learned in school when I was there.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

#67

Post by maxharris »

cparedes wrote: post #23
Tycho wrote: post #13

I was thinking about this today. I remember I used to think 'well, if you do a degree, at least you'll be an expert in something , even if you can't find a good job with it.' When I think of it now, the notion is almost laughable. University students don't become experts in anything. For a non-technical subject, the knowledge gained isn't really going to beat a normal member of the public with an interest in the subj…

> University students don't become experts in anything. You're absolutely right. A bachelor's degree is supposed to be a mark of well roundedness, not specialization. > English literature students, for example, just leave with some long essays under their belts, they don't graduate as well-read authorities on different epochs of literature. They're not supposed to be authorities - if they wanted to dedicate time to b…

A bachelor's degree is supposed to be a mark of well roundedness, not specialization.

What is "well-roundedness" and why is it a good thing? I went to a good school, and I was forced to take all of the worthless general requirements that had nothing to do with anything I cared about. The only thing I still have from those classes is debt. Most people I know tell me that they've had the same experience I did.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

#68

Post by kragen »

WalterBright wrote: post #24
Tycho wrote: post #13

I was thinking about this today. I remember I used to think 'well, if you do a degree, at least you'll be an expert in something , even if you can't find a good job with it.' When I think of it now, the notion is almost laughable. University students don't become experts in anything. For a non-technical subject, the knowledge gained isn't really going to beat a normal member of the public with an interest in the subj…

I've seen very, very few people able to learn calculus outside of a school system. Most will just go to elaborate lengths to avoid using calculus and justify why they don't need to learn it.

I did, more or less, but I was pretty motivated. If I hadn't been so strongly motivated, I wouldn't have been able to do it at all. As it was, I switched to taking calculus classes at the first opportunity.

The funny thing is, though, I did a lot better on the AP exam than the kids who did take a calculus class, the same class I would have taken if I'd finished the prerequisite class in time. And, after a semester of taking it in a class, I'd pretty much lost interest.

("more or less": This was in high school. I failed to put in much time on it during the summer, since I was busy traveling to Japan and falling in love, so I signed up for "study hall" as an elective, and spent that time studying calculus with a textbook. The structured time without much distraction was very helpful in making it through enough of the book to do well on the exam.)

What are some other topics that you very rarely see people learn other than by schooling? Machine learning, physics, surgery?

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

#69

Post by tsotha »

georgieporgie wrote: post #4

I have a sneaking suspicion that people overestimate their own intelligence and the rigor of their education. I'm skeptical that education has truly gotten worse, and suspect that people like this lady have forgotten how dumb they used to be.

The percentage of people going to college in the US has climbed pretty steadily over the years, so it probably is true the average college student is getting dumber. When I went to high school guidance councilors would steer you into the manual trades if your school work marked you as not being "college material". That just doesn't happen any more.
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