Universities should be more than toll gates • Hacker News Board

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#61

Post by tgv » Sun, Sep 21, 2025, 1:05 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #44

tgv wrote: post #28

In contrast to many comments, I had a great time studying. Sure, the staff didn't have great teaching skills (classical prof with an unruly hairdo reading from the syllabus in a large hall), but after the first year, classes became smaller and teaching was --while not passionate-- certainly inspired in many cases. It was a period in which students could still pick an academic topic and write a (small) thesis for grad…

> It became very financially oriented. > The number of students kept rising, norms kept dropping All due to the student loans scam. https://professorconfess.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-first-myth... https://professorconfess.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-second-myt... https://professorconfess.blogspot.com/2013/03/myth-3-college... https://professorconfess.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-last-myth....

In the US perhaps, but it happened in Western Europe too, even where there weren't student loans. Simplistic explanation: the right wing parties were in favor of "austerity" measures, i.e. budget cuts, and the left-wing ones of getting as many people through college as possible. Unfortunately, both got what they wished for.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#62

Post by cbluth » Sun, Sep 21, 2025, 1:05 PM UTC

Dumblydorr wrote: post #60

They’re so much more, sad the comments aren’t seeing it. Making lifelong friends, learning independence, true freedom to explore topics and interests, higher challenge and opportunity for scholars. The toll gate function only makes sense from a Birds Eye view. If anything community colleges are more like toll gates. Pay a small fee to use a locally shared resource to then get your job.

You don't need universities to make lifelong friends or finding your learning independence

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#63

Post by macbr » Sun, Sep 21, 2025, 1:05 PM UTC

StefanBatory wrote: post #34

gjgtcbkj wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People always say these schools are “looked down on” and rightly so they are mostly scams. Virtually all tradespeople like this have relatives in that trade. The idea these school would actually be equivalent to a college is laughable.

For us in Poland we have normal high schools, technikum - which is similar, but year longer and you are trained in a job, and zawodówka - which is vocational. And issue with them is not the school itself, but the type of teenagers that attend them. As much as it pains me, for zawodówka schools - you will get the most demotivated people. And even if you really just want to be trained, you will get into an environment…

A Fachhochschule (Wikipedia calls them "university of applied sciences") in Germany is very similar to a university but as they're less research oriented and usually (with some notable exceptions) don't have the ability to grant doctoral degrees. AFAIK none have the permission to grant the ability to become professor (Habilitation). They also usually have a limited selection of subjects.

There are also Technische Universitäten (Technical University) which are "proper" universities with the ability to grant doctorates and the ability to become professor.

So Fachhochschulen are a separate thing from both Berufsschule (vocational school) and universities.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#64

Post by 999900000999 » Sun, Sep 21, 2025, 1:05 PM UTC

Everyone has a different path.

I ran out of money, dropped out of college and self taught myself straight to 6 figures.

Thank you Brendan Eich for JavaScript. Without it I'd probably still be making minimum wage, or working in a Java shop which might be worse.

I finished my useless BA just to hang it on my wall.

College should not be a job training program. It's valuable on its own merits, but the loop of you need a degree to get a job, and you need money to get a degree, so you can get a job to pay off your loans is stupid.

If anything, and this is an American perspective, high school has failed.

You should be able to read and write to a point of employability.

If you want to go to college, it should be optional. Do it after work or part time.

Outside of maybe medicine, law( which is debatable, you can technically just take the bar after a clerkship in a few states), and maybe a few other careers, college isn't needed.

Why in God's name would you get a Masters in Art, the loan payments will make it impossible to survive.

Just make the art!

Draw.

Write poems!

Want to make games, make games!

Knowledge is basically free, we're still adapting to this.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#65

Post by Planktonne » Sun, Sep 21, 2025, 1:08 PM UTC

> Absolute joy turned into anger, and anger into resentment, as I wondered how different my life might have been if I’d been taught subjects I actually cared about by professors who cared too. Then I caught myself, realizing I was being melodramatic about a decade-old grievance.

This is incredibly self-indulgent. You were given opportunities you refused to engage with and are now continuing that pattern by blaming everyone else for your failures.

University has no value beyond credentialism only if you don't put any in.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#66

Post by macbr » Sun, Sep 21, 2025, 1:08 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #50

general1465 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For private universities in Europe it is true. For public (state owned) universities much less so. This is simply because public university does not look on student like on a customer who put some good money on the table to get the final paper. While private universities do. This is also a reason why in Europe when you have a diploma from private university, nobody really takes that seriously and looks at you like yo…

Yes, German universities don't do entrance exams, there is also no grading on a curve to artificially weed out students. What they do instead is just simply have really difficult exams with a failure rate of 30% and higher for first semester students. The linear algebra exam I passed had a 50% failure rate and most passing students got something equivalent to a D in the American system.

To be fair: if you're doing a Masters degree the grade you end up getting on your Bachelors degree is pretty unimportant and Masters usually isn't graded that harshly.

But yeah, we had exams with 70% failing.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#67

Post by aleph_minus_one » Sun, Sep 21, 2025, 1:11 PM UTC

radialstub wrote: post #39

aaplok wrote: post #20

The elephant in the room here is that perhaps the biggest difference between the two learning experiences that OP is describing is himself. He might just have discovered he is more mature at 30 than he was at 18...

There is a difference between learning about things that you find interesting at your own pace, and learning about things that interest other people with tight deadlines. Even if I enjoy learning, there were absolutely courses that were just a waste of time.

> Even if I enjoy learning, there were absolutely courses that were just a waste of time.

My university experience is somewhat different, and I believe whether this holds true or not depends a lot on the degree course:

- In mathematics, there are barely any "filler courses". Basically all of them were interesting in their own right (even though because of your own interests, you will likely find some more exciting than others).

- On the other hand, computer science more felt like every professor had their own opinion how the syllabus should be, and the hodgepodge that came out of it was adopted as syllabus (design by committee). Thus, there were quite a lot of interesting things to learn, but also "filler courses". Additionally, the syllabus did not feel like a "consistent whole" with a clear vision, but rather like lots of isolated courses that you had to pass.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#68

Post by orwin » Sun, Sep 21, 2025, 1:24 PM UTC

tgv wrote: post #61

matheusmoreira wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It became very financially oriented. > The number of students kept rising, norms kept dropping All due to the student loans scam. https://professorconfess.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-first-myth... https://professorconfess.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-second-myt... https://professorconfess.blogspot.com/2013/03/myth-3-college... https://professorconfess.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-last-myth....

In the US perhaps, but it happened in Western Europe too, even where there weren't student loans. Simplistic explanation: the right wing parties were in favor of "austerity" measures, i.e. budget cuts, and the left-wing ones of getting as many people through college as possible. Unfortunately, both got what they wished for.

On this particular issue, i think all parties that reach power want the same thing: more educated people, cheaper (because let's be honest, a "left-wing" party in Europe that conquer power in Europe is at most a "third way"-type party, sometime with a green tint), and are all equally at fault for the situation.

The meaningfull difference between right-wing and left-wing parties is how the University should be organized, with right-wing party pushing for centralized, more powerful unis that can reach international "power rankings", and left-wing parties usually push for a decentralization (that's how you get university branches in small towns usually). Also most right-wing/third way parties seems to want the admin staff to have power over the education staff, that there's that shift too (the exact same stuff is happening in hospitals).

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#69

Post by thunky » Sun, Sep 21, 2025, 1:26 PM UTC

Planktonne wrote: post #65

> Absolute joy turned into anger, and anger into resentment, as I wondered how different my life might have been if I’d been taught subjects I actually cared about by professors who cared too. Then I caught myself, realizing I was being melodramatic about a decade-old grievance. This is incredibly self-indulgent. You were given opportunities you refused to engage with and are now continuing that pattern by blaming ev…

> You were given opportunities you refused to engage with

That's not what I read at all. They went to a good university and got good grades. They did what they were supposed to do.

Then they later realized how little of value the actual education was.

The university missed an opportunity to educate them, not the other way around. The student is not responsible for having a bad teacher.

Re: Universities should be more than toll gates

#70

Post by fzwang » Sun, Sep 21, 2025, 1:31 PM UTC

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #43

Makes me think of the "The purpose of a system is what it does" axiom. Universities were always about credentials whether professional or just to indicate social class. They can at the same time be places of learning, and many still are in some disciplines. The problem is that value of the credential is now worth more (to most people) than the value of the learning/knowledge. So universities adapted to the that model…

I agree with your general assessment, but not sure if the blame could be placed on employers mostly/entirely. They're also limited by bounded rationality and cannot (or should not) dictate what the purpose of an education should be. There's such diffusal of accountability that no one is really designing the system, just reacting to it. To your point, the system just do what it does. The ultimate unaccountability machine, per Dan Davies [1].

I think we're witnessing the collapse of the university value proposition. In the decades post WW2, the attendance/competition within universities was quite modest compared to today. Relatively fewer people went, and it was essentially a social class sorter, with a liberal education sprinkled throughout. This actually creates a better learning environment, as once you're "in", you can focus on the experience. Nowadays, the university is just another hamster wheel in the grind, in a never-ending arms race against the sea of other students/degrees/credentials. Failure to deliver results means you didn't consume enough, and must consume more. Eventually this dilutes the value of the degree, both from a signaling and a financial perspective. It seems like we're in the peak enshitification stage of higher ed.

For employers, requiring a degree doesn't cost them anything. So they're happy to keep piling on the requirements. I guess the question is what type of employers would actually be the first to decouple their recruiting/hiring from credentialism and rely on other metrics of competency?

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unaccountability_Machine