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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

#771

Post by eterevsky »

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…

> "We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten."

I don't think Altman is making any two-year short-term prediction in this thread. If anything it's closer to ten-year timespan.

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

#772

Post by ZephyrBlu »

wolverine876 wrote: post #695
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I studied mechanical engineering and a bit of CS, though I didn't complete the degree. I work as a SWE now. Regarding knowledge and intellectual skills, the vast majority of my knowledge gained in the last ~5 years has been from self-teaching or exploring things I found interesting and I think I developed far more intellectual skills from doing that than going to university. University felt extremely intellectually r…

I wonder if that's a difference between STEM and the humanities - and I wonder how much of the perception of college on HN is based on that experience. In the humanities, learning in depth (to express it superficially), exploration, and learning the skills of how to learn in those ways, is fundamental; it's the point. Try a humanities program - you would love it!

I get where you're coming from, but at this point I'm highly skeptical of university's value-add.

From my perspective most faculty add very little value, so in terms of learning and exploration there's not much point in paying boatloads of money to attend when I could go through the material (Or similar) myself if I'm interested.

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

#773

Post by gwd »

ethbr0 wrote: post #487
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…

I remember (this would have been in the 90s) my father getting crap from his peers because he listed his grad students before himself on research papers. In his words, "Why would I not? They did most of the work."

That must depend on the field. In my field (operating systems), the primary professor was always listed last; so you knew the first author was the grad student who did the most work, and the last author was the prof who oversaw the whole thing.

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

#774

Post by grapeskin »

10 years ago when I was in college, I remember reading HN and being fairly convinced by the "college is on the verge of collapse. Get out while you can" stuff. Thankfully I didn't buy into the idea completely. Because, let's be honest, if you're not a person who can enter Stanford on a red carpet thanks to being born in an upper class family, you're probably better off making your own connections in college.

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

#775

Post by shafyy »

eterevsky wrote: post #770
shafyy wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sam Altman and his buddies are incredibly out of touch with the real world. In a related tweet, he said [0]: > A version of college replacement I'm super interested in: Find the smartest and most driven 18 year olds in the world, and give them 'tenure'--say a decade+ of salary, resources to work on whatever they want, and a smart peer group--in exchange for small % of future earnings. Completely agree with your state…

> I would question if Altman is good at anything He leads OpenAI > Find the smartest and most driven 18 year olds in the world, and give them 'tenure'--say a decade+ of salary, resources to work on whatever they want, and a smart peer group--in exchange for small % of future earnings. Why do you think this is a bad idea?

> He leads OpenAI

And OpenAI has strayed away from their initial "vision" considerably.

> Why do you think this is a bad idea?

Because it's a very libertarian and capitalistic view of how life and society should work.

It's very one dimensional. 18-year-olds should not be put in an environment where their goal is to make money for a sicko in Silicon Valley who then takes a percentage of their future earnings. 18-year-olds should be encouraged to take time to enjoy their youth, travel, learn about a lot of different things and about themselves.

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

#776

Post by eterevsky »

shafyy wrote: post #775
eterevsky wrote: post #770

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would question if Altman is good at anything He leads OpenAI > Find the smartest and most driven 18 year olds in the world, and give them 'tenure'--say a decade+ of salary, resources to work on whatever they want, and a smart peer group--in exchange for small % of future earnings. Why do you think this is a bad idea?

> He leads OpenAI And OpenAI has strayed away from their initial "vision" considerably. > Why do you think this is a bad idea? Because it's a very libertarian and capitalistic view of how life and society should work. It's very one dimensional. 18-year-olds should not be put in an environment where their goal is to make money for a sicko in Silicon Valley who then takes a percentage of their future earnings. 18-year-…

> And OpenAI has strayed away from their initial "vision" considerably.

It's still very successful.

> It's very one dimensional.

It doesn't pretend to solve multiple problems. From what I understand, Altman wants to boost innovation by incentivising talented young people.

> 18-year-olds should not be put in an environment

If anything like this program were implemented, 99% of 18-year-olds wouldn't be affected by it. There are 18-year-olds that want to enjoy youth and travel and there are others that are driven to achieve things. I don't see why is it bad to boost some of the latter ones.

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

#777

Post by pca006132 »

LeroyRaz wrote: post #481
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…

If you have a physist who is at the leading edge of their field you very much do want them teaching. How do you think you get the next generation of great physists? It is similar to how when growing crops, like wheat, you should take the best of your harvest and use it for seed. Historically that is one of the most important and also one of the hardest things to teach farmers. + Many of the greats have loved teaching…

Some great researchers don't teach very well, and some great teachers can't do great research. Even if some of the great researchers can teach very well, you have to consider the opportunity cost of that. This is what specialization is for...

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

#778

Post by grobclaw »

mellavora wrote: post #754
jerojero wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think access to education is a human right? I find your last paragraph a bit troubling, I agree that becoming a part of the elite does not really have a significance with regards to your own worth. But the USA is not a country that revolves around the middle class, its a country that revolves around the elites. In America not being part of the elite is a failure because the political and economical system is m…

What is troubling about that last paragraph? First, by definition, not everyone can be elite. Hell, you can't even get more than 50% of the population to be better than average! -- its math. And if "In America not being part of the elite is a failure because the political and economical system is made to benefit, empower and sustain elites." is true (which seems likely), then maybe that is what needs to change. A goo…

Probably not relevant to the point you want to make, but you seem to be confusing average and median.

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

#779

Post by randomdata »

qiskit wrote: post #602

I agree with most of his premises but I don't see how his premises lead to his conclusion - US collge education is near to collapse. 1. School loan debts aren't ideal and we should look for ways to eliminate them permanently. It's ridiculous that american students have to start their adult lives with so much debt. However, the fact that so many students are willing to go into debt for college shows that they there is…

> I've never worked with anyone in tech who didn't have at least some college education. Maybe the college education wasn't in CS, but they all had some college education. So the idea that tech companies are going to hire people without some college education seems suspect to me.

I have worked with some, but they were the type who could succeed in college if they had reason to. Whereas a lot of the population simply cannot hack the academic rigor, and these people tend to struggle in the workplace for the same reason.

I expect what he is trying to say, which is something we've known for a long time, is that college looks good by the numbers only because it does a good job of filtering out those destined to fail, so to speak. If we take it to the logical extreme, we know someone with, say, down syndrome is unlikely to go to college and unlikely do well in the workplace and we understand that it is their disability that produces that outcome, not because they didn't 'pull up their bootstraps' and work hard. The same idea applies across the continuum of the population.

What employers want are the people on the right side of that continuum. The people born to be successful. Coupled with the social pressure for the capable to attend college, meaning that most people on the right side attend, it has served as a really good proxy for employers to evaluate. However, tech has found even more reliable methods for determining where one sits on said continuum, so that's where things are starting to break down. In terms of people, tech is incredibly small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, though. It's not clear if other industries have figured out the same.

All that said, at this point, college has become religion. Even if we can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is entirely useless, people will still want to spend their life savings on it to satisfy their inner craving for a sense of meaning in the same way that other religions attract that mindset. A collapse is laughable. That is like saying that Christianity will collapse because businesses no longer require you to pledge your allegiance to God.

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

#780

Post by Chris2048 »

pengaru wrote: post #338
synergy20 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

college is delaying young people to become mature, we're producing giant babies these days, thanks to endless parenting, online gaming, social screen time, now probably even metaverse, you name it. on the STEM subject, teens good at math are never teacher's favorites, instead they're called nerds and some are even isolated from the rest, it's quite the opposite in Asia, or even in Europe. That's the root cause we nee…

> college is delaying young people to become mature, we're producing giant babies these days, thanks to endless parenting, online gaming, social screen time, now probably even metaverse, you name it. It persists into the professional space, just look at how infantilizing Silicon Valley became, trying to turn the workplace into a playpen complete with propeller head hats.

Can you explain how those things are "infantilizing" beyond pure bias?

Instead of playing foosball and gaming online, we should be playing cards and drinking like previous generations?

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