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I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

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Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#661

Post by yaur »

beambot wrote: post #494
mattkrause wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grants are even crazier than that. Most of the actual work is done by trainees who are a) learning how to do for the first time and b) may never actually do it again because they're going to move onto something else. The profs are, at best, managing them and even that's often a bit iffy. Everybody's obviously got to learn somewhere, but universities and research funders are oddly weird about experience and expert…

The professor job is an absurd ask: - Enterprise sales rep with a $500k-$1M annual quota (aka grants). - R&D manager of a team comprised almost entirely of junior employees - Lecturer and administration for teaching. - Administrator & volunteer within the department, chair roles for key academic conferences, and editor on major journals -- all to check the "service" box for tenure. - Because they aren't a proper CEO,…

the successful professors that I've seen out source everything but number 1 and get a healthy cut of number 5.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#662

Post by bell-cot »

imgabe wrote: post #312

Higher education in the US is trying to fulfill so many roles it's unsustainable. - teaching marketable skills so people can get jobs - teaching "how to think" and learning about art and culture - Performing cutting edge research - minor league sports teams The large state schools are trying to fulfill all these conflicting roles. We should probably break them out to separate entities. If you have a physicist who's a…

Sadly, I think you're overlooking the extremely feudal nature of higher education - especially at the "leading" institutions - and how strongly many people want to be associated with the modern equivalent of the pomp, pageantry, and glory of the Sun King's court in the beautiful Palace of Versailles. No matter how expensive that is...

Of course, the ever-growing expense of all the pomp and palaces will eventually bankrupt the whole system - just as the expense of the French King's court at Versailles eventually lead to the French Revolution.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#663

Post by erosenbe0 »

uncomputation wrote: post #608
imgabe wrote: post #312

Higher education in the US is trying to fulfill so many roles it's unsustainable. - teaching marketable skills so people can get jobs - teaching "how to think" and learning about art and culture - Performing cutting edge research - minor league sports teams The large state schools are trying to fulfill all these conflicting roles. We should probably break them out to separate entities. If you have a physicist who's a…

There was an article on HN a few weeks ago talking about the slowing pace of “innovation” in the modern world, the lack of an Einstein or a Bohr or a Feynman. I have no evidence of this and maybe the entire notion is unfounded in the first place but I think this framing: - teaching marketable skills so people can get jobs - teaching "how to think" and learning about art and culture is part of the problem. When you go…

Unfounded. There are billions more literate people than in Einstein's day.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#664

Post by crackercrews »

chaps wrote: post #651
crackercrews wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our education was built around testing because if our school got bad testing, then the school would lose funding. > Getting rid of SATs from my perspective sounds like a fantastic idea. There are two types of standardized tests. The first kind you reference measures the school. They are not used for college admissions. They can affect school funding. The second type of test measures the student. Sometimes a school…

Hm, nah. Consider this: if the schools weren't dependent on the test scores, then they could use that same energy-for-testing to teach their students methods for improving their SAT scores. I genuinely doubt they'll switch energy, but the fact remains that the requirement to game a test-well-or-lose-funding system by necessity removes education opportunity for students in order to focus on the tests over education, e…

I don't understand what you are trying to argue. Your first GGP comment talks about school testing and then ends with a conclusion about the SAT. That is not a school test. It is a student test.

Your immediate parent comment indicates that if school testing were eliminated then students would improve their SAT scores. I agree with that. But it is beside the point. This thread is about whether the SAT should be eliminated, not whether school testing should be eliminated.

At the end, you start to make a point about correlation between "lost education opportunity" and SAT scores. But my reading is that you're saying there's a correlation between LEO and SAT scores. Are you saying it's a positive correlation? Or are you saying students are spending time prepping for SATs, and what they are learning there is negatively correlated with actual learning?

I am trying to understand what you mean. Are you advocating elimination of the SAT? If so, why?

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#665

Post by maccolgan »

esperent wrote: post #648
bigmadshoe wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about the second paragraph. I went to the University of Edinburgh, and being Scottish, the government paid around $2.5k per year for me to attend. Around half of students in my course (CS) there were from outside of Europe, and were paying $50k per year to attend. Was the debt really avoided in my case, or was it just transferred to others?

It seems more likely that 50k is the actual cost and you're getting a 95% subsidy. Which seems reasonable - should a government be expected to subsidize international students? Not sure where I stand on that. Besides which, I think EU countries do subsidize students from other EU countries so an Irish person can study in Sweden, for example, without paying high fees (need to confirm this). Also, $50k is way higher th…

The subsidies are irrelevant, US college degrees can indeed cost around 50k, if European universities have the same cost (despite having lower GDP PPP per capita) that's a even larger problem, except the taxpayer is in trouble.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#666

Post by gzer0 »

Much of this originates from a fundamental aversion to higher education, information, and the capacity to think critically. If you haven't noticed, there has been a concerted effort to purposely limit and/or obstruct people's capacity to think critically.

It appears as though a certain party has determined that it is preferable if their constituents remain illiterate and are doing everything in their power to push laws and regulations that do just that.

In Arizona, Florida, and Indiana, students have to seek permission from parents before being taught about “human sexuality”. Local pressures against “critical race theory” have led to educators self-censoring, districts abandoning equity initiatives. In at least 10 states, legislators have proposed bills that would require administrators to list every book, reading, and activity that teachers use in their lessons, a process that educators argue would be cumbersome and expensive.

A lot of people are concerned with a growing concentration of wealth in the top 1%; however, I think an even more concerning problem will be the growing inequality we see with those that are learned, and those that are not.

It is clear what one side wants. And it is not a good outcome for any of us.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#667

Post by somethoughts »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #634
WoodenChair wrote: post #605

Sam Altman makes a lot of grandiose predictions and statements. For example, in 2019 he said “Human radiologists are already much worse than computer radiologists. If I had to pick a human or an AI to read my scan, I’d pick the AI.” [0] However, most people with domain knowledge in this space still would not want their scan not to be read by a human. The AI radiology apps are generally narrowly focused and useful for…

I don’t think it’s unwise or wise per se. It’s just simply the case of - I’ve got the money, and hence I’ve got an audience, and (hence or not) I’ve got an urgent need to make random proclamations. Founder of this site does that a lot too and just like this post almost always gets a lot of attention. Some people can just afford to do and have people listen to their useless brain flatulations and on the side are often…

I'm curious what the motivation is as well. Just clicks? Like couldn't he have shown some metrics about the YC idea that is going to disrupt higher education - Lambda school - is doing better? I haven't seen as many updates recently.

Or is the idea to get people to drop out early so his startup and other YC startups don't have to pay high starting salaries for college educated engineers.

To be clear I don't necessarily disagree with the tweet thread - just as usual twitter provides no context and is to short to understand the real motivation for the tweet.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#668

Post by rapind »

seneca wrote: post #607
bradleyjg wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the ratio of tenured professors to total staff from, say, 1970 to today? Colleges were captured by professional administrators. That’s what’s changed, and the results are entirely predictable. See, also, hospitals.

> Colleges were captured by professional administrators. This is, as I understand it, correct. Administrators as a percentage of university staff has ballooned. The explanation I've seen for this is that they are needed to handle ever increasing amounts of regulations. This is the same problem faced by hospitals.

> needed to handle ever increasing amounts of regulations

I’m cynical about this. “These damn regulations! It would be so much better for us… I mean for the public… if we could get rid of them.”

Too simplistic and too much incentive to blame regulations. No doubt it’s a burden, and some regulations are overzealous and misguided, but there’s probably more to it.

It’s a significant burden to the chemical factory when you make it illegal for them to dump their waste in the river (greed bad!). It’s also a burden to society because now we have to police their douchebaggery. Then there’s the (inevitable) chance that this policing is corrupted or becomes inefficient (regulations bad!). Probably a flawed analogy, but it’s what I think of whenever there’s an argument for or against regulation.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#669

Post by erosenbe0 »

shigawire wrote: post #489
bradleyjg wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the ratio of tenured professors to total staff from, say, 1970 to today? Colleges were captured by professional administrators. That’s what’s changed, and the results are entirely predictable. See, also, hospitals.

Hospitals require an army of admins because the regulatory burden is so high. And for that we can only blame our convoluted insurance model.

Not just insurance model. 1/3 of the population is on government funded insurance and we still have a mess. Healthcare is polluted up and down with regulation that tends to maximize profit or create rent-seeking.

Re: I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears

#670

Post by lvs »

smt88 wrote: post #617
WoodenChair wrote: post #605

Sam Altman makes a lot of grandiose predictions and statements. For example, in 2019 he said “Human radiologists are already much worse than computer radiologists. If I had to pick a human or an AI to read my scan, I’d pick the AI.” [0] However, most people with domain knowledge in this space still would not want their scan not to be read by a human. The AI radiology apps are generally narrowly focused and useful for…

To add to this, I would suggest that if Altman were able to predict the future, he wouldn't be betting so hard on the idiotic/alarming WorldCoin boondoggle, nor would his previous startup have failed. The only thing he seems to have succeeded at is convincing Paul Graham he should lead YC.

One guy who makes grandiose predictions about the future convinced another guy who pretends to be a philosopher. It's the blind leading the blind. In truth, they both just make bets as any gambler does.
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