Google's Plan to Disrupt the College Degree Is Absolute Genius • Hacker News Board

Re: Google's Plan to Disrupt the College Degree Is Absolute Genius

#81

Post by blackflame7000 » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

Jimmc414 wrote: post #79

blackflame7000 wrote: post #12

Half the classes they make you take at universities are worthless anyways. They're just there to keep you 4 years and get more money. A CS major doesn't need to learn about Greek Mythology.

To be fair, I'd probably hire the programmer with the knowledge of greek mythology over the one without. Personal preferences aside, great programmers are very rarely one dimensional

That may vary well be true, but why does one have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to learn it from a university when they are there to get a degree in computer science?

Re: Google's Plan to Disrupt the College Degree Is Absolute Genius

#82

Post by thehappypm » Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

Jimmc414 wrote: post #78

thehappypm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that’s completely untrue. College degrees are well worth the investment — the earning potential increases of having a college degree vastly dwarf tuition costs. When people are young, debt is a problem, but those same people continue to see (exponential) income growth over the course of their careers and eventually beat the debt, and then some. Folks without degrees struggle with income growth.

Are you basing this on your experience or the current market realities?

Study: https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2019/06/despit...

Re: Google's Plan to Disrupt the College Degree Is Absolute Genius

#83

Post by 908B64B197 » Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #70

gostsamo wrote: post #6

Is there such a term as "edmill"? A process of mass producing cheap labor for low-paid positions. This post just smells of hype and marketing for something like that.

Short answer: Yes, highly-focused skills-centric but narrow education has a long history. Longer answer: It's useful to keep in mind the (usually) unstated goals of educational systems: - Produce a technically-skilled, but politically pliable, working class. - Produce a managerially competent, but not revolutionary, management and professional class. - Persist existing power structures, whatever their form; political…

I would argue the first polytechnic is the École Polytechnique (1794) in France. It served as a model for institutions in Germany and especially Canada (Polytechnique Montreal, 1873).

The French one, however, was founded as a military school but the general course structure and focus on engineering transcended time.

Re: Google's Plan to Disrupt the College Degree Is Absolute Genius

#84

Post by 908B64B197 » Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

blackflame7000 wrote: post #12

Half the classes they make you take at universities are worthless anyways. They're just there to keep you 4 years and get more money. A CS major doesn't need to learn about Greek Mythology.

Half is an exaggeration.

But I agree that it's not obvious what's the direct immediate benefit of a Mythology class, versus Medieval History or Classical Literature. But I do believe they all share a long term indirect benefit.

The fundamental skills I expect a college grad to have are the ability to learn new concepts fast, be able to ingest and process a lot of -often unstructured- information and synthesize it clearly. That's something you'll get from studying unrelated subjects (at least, at a decent university). Often these courses forces you to read a lot of material and write about it.

That's the practical goal of humanities.