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Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

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Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#81

Post by jkhaui »

bko wrote: post #32
skocznymroczny wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this might not be received well by the HN crowd, but I feel like the classes and networking are secondary, the main value of a reputable college is having a reputable college you can put on your résumé.

Bryan Kaplan argues that the majority of the value of a reputable college is signaling. > Suppose your law firm wants a summer associate. A law student with a doctorate in philosophy from Stanford applies. What do you infer? The applicant is probably brilliant, diligent, and willing to tolerate serious boredom. If you’re looking for that kind of worker—and what employer isn’t?—you’ll make an offer, knowing full well…

I really enjoyed Bryan's book. I'd always thought uni was ridiculously overpriced, but hearing it straight from the mouth of a professor really hammered the point home for me. I believe we are on the verge of the education bubble bursting, just like the housing bubble a decade earlier

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#83

Post by Cthulhu_ »

isoprophlex wrote: post #77

This is what you get in a litigious society where the "free market" sets tuition prices. Of course students are pissed off at not getting the college experience anymore, given how expensive some of those schools are. What will be even more fun is watching the house of cards fall apart once the lockdowns extend into the new year and international students stay home. Now there's a cash drain no university can cope with…

Yup; if people wanted an online course, they could've taken that instead. In their home country as well.

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#84

Post by whymauri »

red_admiral wrote: post #67
supernova87a wrote: post #2

I remember wondering aloud at MIT/Harvard putting their courses online for free for anyone to listen to, and saying, well what is the value add then of paying to physically go to college? I guess we're going to find out whether the networking, friends, social aspect is worth it. There's also something about the competitive aspect of seeing other people in person do better than you or have better ideas than you. Which…

One thing I've definitely noticed in CS is that having a TA sit next to you in the computer lab and help you debug your code is a huge value add, and if it's only to track down a misplaced comma in "Introduction to C". Doing the same over $ONLINE_SERVICE is not quite the same experience, just like a terminal-emulator-in-a-browser isn't quite the real thing when you have slightly higher and jittery lag. And an async/a…

Currently a student, and I completely agree. The strain is both ways, too. Since timezones are now a very fluid concept, you're seeing courses accommodating completely new challenges in TA-ship. Some TAs have relocated entirely, which means that the course staff can be much smaller than anticipated.

For some students, they can only receive advice asynchronously and it makes it difficult to meet deadlines based on EDT timezones. Even video debugging/office hours for people in EDT is awful, despite advances in screen sharing/Zoom.

Also, I helped transition a professor to virtual instruction. They had never installed the Internet in their house before. They own no smartphone. They communicate entirely through landline and a dated desktop PC in their office. When absolutely necessary (course admin, journal paper updates) they will use Pine for email. This prof taught a 30-person graduate course in neurobiology having never touched any of the technologies they had to use. Bless that class.

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#85

Post by intended »

gibolt wrote: post #4

As much as I wish it were better, most online courses offered by universities do not come close to the in-person experience. Their real goal/outcome is to increase access. Professors are trained (most at least) to teach in-person and have assignments and curriculums that match. They can't redo that appropriately to be equally effective within a week or two. Few could do it well given over a year doing online only. To…

Education has been disrupted.

The disruption taught us that education is more than what we think of when we imagine the word studying.

Khan Academy exists, and has existed for a while.

The MOOC rush is over. We know the organic retention rates are abysmal.

Online education was/is the holy grail of 2000 era layman ideas of education.

Free, world class, available at your finger tips, at any time, educational content.

Yet We know that with this world class information and self selected motivated students (!!) only a tiny fraction of the class will finish.

In contrast, most people who get in, finish college.

In person education beats online education hollow.

Matter of fact even the work from home enthusiasm will wane and return to office work.

There are too many things people do by being in proximity to each other which may have nothing to do with the “mission”, but make the mission possible.

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#86

Post by tootahe45 »

shawnps wrote: post #55

Online classes can work, but it makes sense that students are frustrated by courses put together quickly due to unforeseen circumstances. I've been a student of Georgia Tech's online Master's program for a few semesters now. They've had years to iterate based on previous students' feedback. I am learning an incredible amount for a decent price. But it is a Master's program and involves a lot of self-motivated researc…

Online classes are $8 a month and usually better quality than most uni lectures. If people wanted online classes they would've avoided uni altogether.

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#87

Post by supernova87a »

cat199 wrote: post #75
supernova87a wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very true! I believe (don't have a good reference) that companies in the past had more incentive and means to cultivate or train people on the job, and thus, a formal signal of education wasn't as important. (and until 1950s(?), wasn't as available to many) I seem to observe that now many companies generally want to pick the already-developed crop of people who fit the bill to a T, have had education or previ…

> Maybe it's due to the increasing cost of hiring people ... perhaps put another way, the 'professionalization' of HR?

I also meant, when employing someone for any kind of position of responsibility costs $100k minimum, you don't make big bets on unproven people.

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#88

Post by tootahe45 »

jmspring wrote: post #16
tetris11 wrote: post #7

And so they should. My experience at uni usually involved going to the lecture, not quite grasping the rushed material, then heading to the computer lab after to stream a YouTube video on the same topic to actually understand it. Why was I going to the lectures then? Who knows, on the offhand chance I might ask a question. Now I'm on the other side of the looking glass, I see three types of uni students - those who g…

Horseshit. The instructor has a serious impact on how the material is presented. I had transform mathematics from David Huffman of Huffman coding fame at the same time I had a similar physics math course. Both got to the same end, but I only passed both because of the approach and the notes I had from Huffman. Everyone learns differently and that situation where a professor can convey things on a way that clicks isn’…

I trust youtube videos rated well by millions of people over the average professor's ability to convey info. Few people go to the top colleges with the best professors.

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#89

Post by detaro »

tootahe45 wrote: post #88
jmspring wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horseshit. The instructor has a serious impact on how the material is presented. I had transform mathematics from David Huffman of Huffman coding fame at the same time I had a similar physics math course. Both got to the same end, but I only passed both because of the approach and the notes I had from Huffman. Everyone learns differently and that situation where a professor can convey things on a way that clicks isn’…

I trust youtube videos rated well by millions of people over the average professor's ability to convey info. Few people go to the top colleges with the best professors.

"top colleges" are "top" because of rankings prioritizing research output. Don't expect them to have a monopoly on the best teachers.

Re: Unimpressed by online classes, college students file lawsuits for refunds

#90

Post by wccrawford »

unishark wrote: post #71
red_admiral wrote: post #58

If I go into a restaurant and order pork, but get served beef, I have a right as a customer to complain. It doesn't matter whether beef is in some way better than pork, or whether other customers are perfectly happy with beef, or whether I eat beef myself at other times. I order pork, I expect pork. If the restaurant can't serve me pork, for example because they've run out, then the right answer is still not to just…

This analogy can still go either way. You ate half the meal. Then there they had to kick you out to finish at home with a doggy bag. You're losing out on some ambience, but the thing you showed up to achieve will be achieved. Note that there are already refunds for at least some of the in-person stuff such as dorms and gym access. So were already in a position of compromise and partial refund. It's just an argument o…

The first half of the meal, the portion they ate, was what they paid for. The meal was suddenly changed halfway through, but there was no option to stop paying. And in this case, the first half of the meal doesn't mean anything without the second half.
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