81–90 of 247 posts
I'm actually not a big fan of bootcamps, but most of the reason is that most of them talk a big game yet don't really open job opportunities. I am not at all opposed in principle.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
12 years of school, not 12 years of age. In the US, a student would be 17 or 18 after their full 12 years.
I understand this - I didn't assume that the student would start at age zero. If we're going into vocational training in their teen years, they'll have to starting teaching the classics and philosophy to tweens.
The crazy thing is that most colleges have evolved non-academic party tracks, or simple tuition-extraction tracks: https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-eliz... . Talking about "college," as if it's just one big unified thing, doesn't make sense today (if it ever did). I spent ten years teaching college, and I wish this point were better emphasized in the media narratives.
> The crazy thing is that most colleges have evolved non-academic party tracks, or simple tuition-extraction tracks: I suffered through a computer science degree. I didn't make much progress figuring things out after the first year (on account of my head injury [0]). My father values my degree more than I do. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17734058 When I was finishing up my first year at teh university, I…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if there were humanities bootcamps? That probably sounds like a joke...but why should a traditional expensive university be the only structured way to get exposure to broader human knowledge? An intensive bootcamp model doesn’t actually make sense for breadth (they are designed for the opposite)...but if you told me I could be part of a structured organization in my city where I’d be introduced to interesting br…
But would you be 5 months off of work and $15,000 interested?
There is a value to history, the arts, humanities. But that value isn't always well captured by our current society.
Optimization systems (like our economy) optimize for what I'd easy to measure, and ignore what's hard. A lot of those fields accrue value to the commons, which is value which is hard to measure, as a result their dollar reward is often lower than the value they produce.
There isn't an easy solution - and often when faced with hard problems the answer taken is fall back to the tools were used to using to measure.
If students are coming out of 12 years of general education needing more general education, that is a failure of the public school system. We should fix that instead of pushing people into more school. After 12 years of general education, how do you justify more? In my opinion, we should be pushing specialized education at a younger age. When students exit high school, they should have skills that they can expand or…
* College prep for the college-bound
* Day-care for the non-college-bound
In contemporary high schools, if you're not college-bound, you might as well not exist. You will be ignored by teachers, administrators, and guidance counselors (unless you are a troublemaker).
If students are coming out of 12 years of general education needing more general education, that is a failure of the public school system. We should fix that instead of pushing people into more school. After 12 years of general education, how do you justify more? In my opinion, we should be pushing specialized education at a younger age. When students exit high school, they should have skills that they can expand or…
You could devote your whole life to the pursuit of knowledge and still not have a good understanding of the world. That is how I'd justify the fact that 12 years of access to education is not enough.
I completely agree that people should continue their education throughout their entire lives. However, I do not think it should be forced, and I don't think that people who pursue a different style of education should be looked down upon. Especially when the standard and accepted system has so many flaws.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a successful college dropout, and I completely disagree. One of the strongest motivators for me leaving school after 1 year was the realization that virtually all of my classes gave me no more benefit than if I had just purchased the textbook and read it myself. As for every other classroom benefit, there are brilliant mentors all over the internet I can discuss what i'm learning with whenever I choose, without h…
> One of the strongest motivators for me leaving school after 1 year was the realization that virtually all of my classes gave me no more benefit than if I had just purchased the textbook and read it myself. And did you? Have you read and mastered all the textbooks necessary to allow you to pass the necessary exams to get a degree or to get a solid score on the GRE for your academic specialization? If not, that reali…
I am under the impression it is not possible to CLEP computer science classes or in any way get recognition for this. Is that correct?
Edit: specify CLEP for computer science
One of the nice things about the bootcamp movement is that it has legitimized vocational schooling for at least part of the software development industry. I'm actually not a big fan of bootcamps, but most of the reason is that most of them talk a big game yet don't really open job opportunities. I am not at all opposed in principle.
One thing that is always missing from these articles is the idea that it’s actually good for individuals (and for our society) to get an expansive view of human knowledge rather than a narrow training to turn you into a worker on a production line (or at a computer). Of course right now that’s a path that’s not accessible to many people, and people may have other financial reasons for going to trade schools, but I th…
I think this is a valid point, but ... The way the tertiary education "system" works is built on a premise that is contradictory to that. Within a generation or two we went from a university system that was intended to educate and socialize (for lack of a better term) wealthy people to a university system that educates regular people. The premise for this was/is "human capital." That is the idea that wealth isn't jus…
Aka Bryan Caplan’s signalling theory of education:
https://blog.press.princeton.edu/2018/01/23/bryan-caplan-on-...