The shrinkflation of higher ed?
Will make it a lot cheaper and more accessible.
Students fight back over course taught by AI
61–70 of 146 posts
Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI
#62This 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.
It certainly has increased. The question isn't whether the increase is enough, but rather if the destination of the funds is the right location.
There's also an issue with home life that heavily impacts educational outcome.
My own school district spent a fortune making a palace for the district admin. Meanwhile, the public schools are falling apart with the kids packed in like sardines. They've literally started adding cheap prefab trailers to the school grounds to accommodate.
Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI
#63I just had a pretty amazing 4 hour session with gpt 5.1 going over my son's rare disease. Chat broke it all down for me in a really deep and clear way in the back and forth. Insights I've never gotten to from talking to docs, reading papers, reading bio textbooks etc. I guess some small percentage of it was hallucinated, but if you want to call it a teacher/student relationship, it was pretty amazing.
Next try it on something rare you're an expert in, and be amazed at the low quality.
Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI
#64Earlier 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.
The UK collapsed the poly/uni distinction thirty or so years ago, as it was seen as a source of class discrimination.
Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI
#65That's the Baumol effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect
1) Two-Sector Economy: In Baumol and Bowen's observations, the economy is divided into two parts:
- A Progressive Sector: Productivity grows rapidly due to technology and automation (e.g., manufacturing, data processing).
- A Stagnant Sector: Productivity grows slowly, if at all, because the service is labor-intensive (e.g., a string quartet performance, a haircut, K-12 teaching).
2) Wage Linkage: Both sectors compete for labor from the same pool of workers. As productivity gains allow wages to rise in the progressive sector, the stagnant sector must also increase its wages to attract and retain employees.
3) Divergent Cost Impact:
- In the progressive sector, the higher wages are offset by the gains in productivity. The labor cost per unit of output can remain stable or even decrease.
- In the stagnant sector, there are no corresponding productivity gains to offset the higher wages. The labor cost per unit of service must therefore increase.
4) Resulting Price Trend: The prices for services in the stagnant sector (e.g., concert tickets, college tuition, healthcare) must therefore rise and faster than the prices for goods from the progressive sector (e.g., electronics, cars). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect#/media/File:Pric...
5) A lot of European countries fund these expensive services through general taxation rather than direct user fees. In the US that's not going to fly, so cost pressure incentivizes orgs to cut corners and reduce quality and automate as much as possible.
Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI
#66This 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.
In Ohio (USA) primary/secondary education funding hasn't outpaced inflation based on this data from 2009-2024 https://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Finance-and-Funding/Overvi...
Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 agenc…
In my school district, the only new facilities being built are charter schools. We have unlimited funds, it seems, to send to these private organizations but not enough funds to build or expand a public school or hire teachers/aids.
Some of my kids school aids have been homeless because the pay isn't high enough. The aids and teacher all work second jobs.
Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI
#68It 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 has been many years that most courses in most universities have inferior lectures than just watching a great series of YouTube videos. This is too extreme of a generalization. There are obviously bad professors and universities that are not worth your money, but most professors at any halfway decent university are going to put a good deal of effort into teaching well. Getting a job as a professor is surprisingly…
In my experience some of the best courses in my college are taught not by “professors” but by “lecturers.” The distinction is that professors need to do research and teach, so they necessarily have divided focus. But lecturers only have teaching duty, are not tenured, so they are focused on teaching.
Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI
#69It 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…
This is why the first day of every semester I ask my students "why are you here, in this room with all these other people, spending $$$, instead of sitting at home at YouTubeU watching this content better produced in 4K resolution with graphics and animations?"
You always get the typical "because I was told to" or "I need it for my degree" answers, but ultimately students will bring up:
- they tried that already and they couldn't pay attention past a few lectures
- they didn't have anyone they could ask questions to. This is less true with the advent of AI but still, many students are very skeptical of AI (as they should be).
- they appreciate having a local community of peers to study with
- they are motivated when competing against other students for a top grade
- they are motivated by showing off their abilities to their peers
- they are looking for mentorship and guidance from someone in the field, whether that be in research directions or professional career advice.
- they are looking to build a network with peers and researchers which they can leverage in the future
My takeaway is that the students attend university for their education differ from those who would be fine just watching YouTube videos in that they view their education as a sort of team sport or collective activity; rather than an individualized goal they are achieving for themselves, they approach their education as a journey they are on with their friends.
Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI
#70I just had a pretty amazing 4 hour session with gpt 5.1 going over my son's rare disease. Chat broke it all down for me in a really deep and clear way in the back and forth. Insights I've never gotten to from talking to docs, reading papers, reading bio textbooks etc. I guess some small percentage of it was hallucinated, but if you want to call it a teacher/student relationship, it was pretty amazing.
There's no problem with that. It's when you take that conversation you just had, make it into a PowerPoint, and try to sell it for 10000x what you spent on the credits that it really becomes lazy. Why expect anyone pay for that when they could have just asked the AI themselves?
I mean, to be fair, a lot of economic activity is like that. Why pay thousands of dollar for a plumber or an electrician? Most of what they do is going to Home Depot, buying a $15 part, and replacing it. But it's one less skill for a homeowner to learn, so you delegate.
The problem isn't that someone learns to prompt AI and is selling the output. The problem is that the customer thinks they're paying for human instruction and they're getting something else.