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How the Internet will disrupt higher education’s most valuable asset: Prestige

57 points by chewymouse 11y ago

fiatmoney 11y ago
The real reason class sizes are limited isn't to maintain an "air of exclusivity", it's because the social networks that allow kickbacks and mutual aid only work if they're limited to a certain size. "Prestige" isn't a naked payoff, it's a proxy for access to that social network.
- jostmey 11y ago
  Agreed. I think the top Universities will maintain their prestige, but people will begin to question the value of an education from a run-of-the-mill University. The education won't be that different, but the top schools will offer access to the rich and powerful.
- lordCarbonFiber 11y ago
  Scarcity creates value. The value of a college degree has, and continues to be, the fact that the university spent a great deal of time and expense selecting you. That filtering process, combined with the student's subsequent graduation, makes for a fairly reliable signaling mechanism for employers. The raw information presented in the curricula is the least valuable part of the entire experience; the market reflects this fact.
  - shmerl 11y ago
    Except it's not the true value. Real value is knowledge, not artificial limiting of it.
  - eru 11y ago
    > The value of a college degree has, and continues to be, the fact that the university spent a great deal of time and expense selecting you. How does your theory hold up in countries where universities accept everyone, but degrees are still useful?
    - lordCarbonFiber 11y ago
      I'd like to see examples of said countries; at least of any of the developed nations I'm familiar with, I've never heard of such a scheme. In universal education schemes, like what are common in Europe, competition for top schools is extremely high, a single test score determines the trajectory of a student's life in many cases. In systems like that are present in places China, performance not only dictates your school but also your profession with highest performers tracked for the engineering and sciences and working its way down (unless of course you are independently wealthy to the point of seeking foreign education). I suspect, from my personal experience; n=small etc, the value in the ~knowledge~ of a 4 year bachelor's degree in the united states is very close to 0, honestly. Especially for the people in this community, I would be extremely surprised if what was taught in schools came up anywhere bu a white board interview from a pretentious company. I would love to hear counter anecdotes or be presented data to the contrary
      - eru 11y ago
        > I've never heard of such a scheme. In universal education schemes, like what are common in Europe, competition for top schools is extremely high, a single test score determines the trajectory of a student's life in many cases. I am most familiar with the German system (as of a decade ago). We just don't have that many globally relevant top schools, and for the ones we have, competition isn't that tough (outside of specific fields like medicine). If you want to study, say, maths basically everyone who clears the threshold can just sign up to any university. And the `single testscores' aint so, it's usually an average of your last two years of high school grades (=Abiturnoten). These are easily gamed, of course. If you are willing to wait, there's also a queue for eg medicine to get in with worse grades. It's not all roses---partly because of almost no selection on entry, attrition rates especially in first year can be truly atrocious.
- tomp 11y ago
  I don't think that's true. The MBA class at Colombia is 700 people. Every year. That's not a social network. It's a number of social networks. It's inevitable that you'll only connect with a smaller number of classmates, and AFAIK classes are even organized with that in mind (the whole generation is split into smaller groups that then have classes together).
  - nostrademons 11y ago
    They're pretty closely intertwined, though, in the sense that you can probably find people in your network who share a person or network in common with someone you're trying to reach. At least that was how it was at my small, elite liberal arts college of 400 people/year. I didn't know everyone in my class, but if someone went there at the same time as me, it's almost guaranteed that there is at least one person there we knew in common. The whole point of networking is so you don't have to cold-approach someone and there'll be someone or something you have in common. The whole point of social networking tools (LinkedIn, Facebook) is so you know who that person is.
  - fiatmoney 11y ago
    Sure, and the formation of interlinked sub-networks is an artifact of the overall size - the goal isn't that you'll be BFFs with everyone on campus, but that you'll be able to find enough socially & professionally compatible classmates that you can effectively collude, but and not so many that the value of the collusion is spread out over unacceptably many people, or that it becomes impossible to actually find that guy you heard of whose uncle is a BFD at the Malaysian fed or whatever.
praveenster 11y ago
Not entirely true. Granted, you might be able to gain a lot of knowledge via MOOCs, however, I feel that the experience of human interaction with other students and the professor cannot be replicated via the internet. Additionally, I think the issue of prestige is a self fulfilling prophecy in that good schools get bright students and the interaction between them increases the overall intellect of the student community in that school.
- fma 11y ago
  I share the same feeling about MOOC in general (whether prestige, or not). It's like saying online porn will replace sex - since at the end, you orgasm.
  - return0 11y ago
    Someone should research the statistics, what percentage of orgasms are remotely induced.
fma 11y ago
As long as the good ol boy's network exist - people will always want to go to Ivy League and other prestigious universities. It will continue till the top CEOss graduate from "Southern New Hampshire University"...and I doubt shareholders and board of directors want to nominate a CEO from "Southern New Hampshire University" so you probably want to be a founder.
- ashark 11y ago
  Someone[1] commented on another, similar thread a while back that one important function of top private universities is to launder the educations of children of the rich—that is, to ensure that, provided they can put in enough effort to not fail out entirely, they'll have credentials that look very similar to those of only the smartest and most-driven students from the other 99% of society. I'd never looked at it that way, but it makes a lot of sense. Fits right in with your "who wants a CEO from Southern New Hampshire U?" notion. In exchange, I suppose, the poorer students get to network with the people who may later fund their business. [1] Don't remember who, so I can't provide credit
roymurdock 11y ago
Title is misleading. As the Internet chips away at the practical reasons for limiting the student population, the real reason Yale limits the size of its classes will become more obvious. Decreased barriers to entry of getting a degree will draw attention to the fact that it is (and arguably always has been) 20% about what you learn, 80% about who you meet. MOOCs are not going to disrupt prestige, they're going to make it even more important as a signal in an increasingly noisy market.
- fma 11y ago
  Yep...MOOC will disrupt community colleges and your run of the mill state school.
  - petra 11y ago
    Just like in the UK , the open university is equivalent or better(because it shows self-motivation) than most schools , excepts the top , like Cambridge.
lordCarbonFiber 11y ago
This author seems to think the value of prestige arises from nothing; as if the fact that someone can get through one class on open courseware means they are equally qualified as any other graduate. One quote in particular stuck with me "few students are accepted to Yale but almost all graduate". What exactly did he expect? Why would admissions accept people they think are unlikely to be successful? The whole article is written as if candidates are chosen by a simple dice roll, uniformly taken across the population (mirroring those who now have access via the internet). The value, from an employment standpoint at the very least, is not what you learned in school, but the reasons you were selected to participate in the community doing the learning. The elite institutions spend considerable time and expense collecting a curated group of top performers to a single location. From a creative and developmental perspective this is huge for the students. From a signalling perspective this huge for employers. My prediction, perhaps as laughably misguided as I think this article is, is that the paridime shift will come from employers. As taboos against training wear away, and groups begin to see how much cheaper it can be to hire and train high school graduates the demand for college graduates will abate. This probably won't effect the Columbias, or the Yales of the world, but will likely eliminate most of the hugely expensive less prestigious institutions.
cubano 11y ago
I've become more and more convinced over the years that "higher education" is much more about signalling and not-so-much about learning, although of course part of the signal is showing your ability to learn on demand and just "show-up" and do what you are told. Of course, networking has always been a big part of the benefit being accepted to an elite university, so while I accept the learning part of it will be easily disrupted, I am not really convinced (yet) that the signalling and the networking can be replaced so easily. [edits]
- eanzenberg 11y ago
  Admission is literal supply & demand. You have a limited number of spots at Harvard and Stanford every year, and >10x the applicants for each spot. Their criteria for admission is therefore much more stringent than if you have 1.5x-2x times the applicants per spot. The institution feeds the student body which feed the institution. Many students apply to these schools because their prestige and rank and the schools can therefore be selective of their student body. Admissions at Harvard or Stanford doesn't use a random number generator to determine admissions after a 'meets minimum requirements' filter. It would be as if a student got accepted to Harvard, Stanford, MIT, 5 state schools and 10 community colleges and then used a coin flip to determine where to go.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    My university just allows anyone into first semester, but then has quite hard courses and exams there already – by the end of the second semester, 90% have already failed. That’s another way to solve the >10x applicants issue.
    - roymurdock 11y ago
      That's actually a genius way to reduce administrative overhead as well. Problem is that the exams select only for people that are good at taking exams. Not always the most interesting/well rounded students.
      - 11y ago
WalterBright 11y ago
If I had attended Caltech remotely, I wouldn't have lasted a semester. I had a lot of generous help from others, mostly fellow students, and sometimes a professor. Besides, being around a pack of intelligent, highly motivated people (what their admissions select for) 24/7 was incredibly fun. I mean, you're around people who build CPUs out of 7400 ttl chips, people who build stereo equipment from scratch just because it's fun, people who build a working railroad running through the dorms, and on and on. If you want to see what it was like, see the movie "Real Genius", which was based on events at Caltech. The movie exaggerates, but not as much as you might think :-) Edit: I also have to admit that the embarrassment of failing was a motivator that wouldn't exist if I attended remotely, along with the shared camaraderie of working on and succeeding at something hard.
- petra 11y ago
  I'm curious what would happen , if we gather a few classes of intelligent highly motivated students , arrange them a cheap nice place to live , give them them great educational content(not the stuff you get out of today's mooc's , the good stuff that the UK's open university - an expert in remote learning - designed over decades) , give them some support and some tools(labs , parts, etc) , and connect them through the web to their respective communities. Surely that could be much cheaper. But would be just as good ? maybe. And as for prestige ? if you build the admission process on extremely high standards , and offer something unique that the big universities won't offer , maybe you'll manage to get extremely talented students. And that's the key for building prestige. Makes sense ? EDIT: one more question - once you're an esteemed graduate of this institution ,sort of a "navy seal", in this day and age where talent is the limited resource in making money(and surviving in business), how hard would it be to arrange the networking ? Ans isn't all this kinda like what ycombinator did?
  - WalterBright 11y ago
    I think that still underestimates the effect the professor has on the students. There's nothing like a professor who is excited about the topic of his lectures. Take a look at some of Feynman's youtube lectures, and imagine hearing that stuff in person! It's like the difference between listening to a CD and going to a concert.
hapless 11y ago
Everyone has always known that paying for an Ivy diploma means purchasing the prestige and connections required to enter America's elite. The conceit that it was a superior education has always been, to some extent, a fig leaf. MOOCs are tearing frantically at the fig leaves, but the underlying business model is entirely unharmed. The best students will still crawl over bodies to gain admittance. Tuitions will remain high. The alumni will still make extraordinary endowments.
zecho 11y ago
Thought I was reading The Onion for a moment. Nobody cites Frank Bruni as a source unironically, do they? >"...it will be harder and harder for Yale to explain what it offers for all that money except a piece of paper that says you went to Yale." Yale has been clear about that since roughly 1693.
jimhefferon 11y ago
I checked a number of times. It seems that the article is from this week, but it sure reads like any number of articles from five or six years ago. Just as a for instance, putting everyone in a MOOC proves to be more of a problem than it may at first seemed to some people.
sknuds 11y ago
“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.” - Randy Pausch
dluan 11y ago
I don't think the internet has quite figured out _prestige_. Twitter, BuzzFeed, Quora, Reddit, and even HN have certainly figured out popularity, network effects, and buzz, but I don't think social networks can develop prestige, because there's so much elasticity about your social network presence and where you spend your time. Prestige is such an interesting phenomena, in that it's a weird mix of purchasable brandname and non-purchasable exclusivity. I'm not even sure what the most prestigious website on the internet would be: wikipedia?
- petra 11y ago
  Why not ? at least before eternal september , wasn't the HN karma system pretty good ?
  - dluan 11y ago
    IMO voting based networks have some pretty big flaws, beyond obvious ones of gaming and a bias towards recency. Prestige partly works because it's technically hard to game or fake.
- laxatives 11y ago
  Barrier to entry is pretty tightly coupled (or at least correlated) to exclusivity. I'm sure it depends on the context, but in terms of knowledge based domains, universities/labs/peer reviewed journals are generally going to be the most prestigious. Occasionally a private company might have something exciting and new, but either way its not going to be something readily digestible or accessible. MOOC's service everyone else, who can't digest or access the "prestigious" stuff. At least by this definition of "prestige".
jrkelly 11y ago
YC is the only credible threat to elite higher education that I've seen come out of Silicon Valley.
- eru 11y ago
  Getting Facebook or Google on your resume probably also helps with getting another programming job.
noonespecial 11y ago
To successfully compete with the Ivy league, onlines will have to provide a way for their students to signal two things: 1) I'm the kind of person who can pay larger amounts of money than most for an education. 2) I know and am known by lots of people who fit into the group described by #1. Until that happens I don't think any ivy covered bricks are coming tumbling down any time soon.
- abcampbell 11y ago
  agree (to some extent). Sometimes it looks like the role of education in america is to sort people into relevant socio-economic classes. Not through any nefarious scheme, but rather, our system just depends on (and creates) some degree of inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics) #theUnicornEconomy
- eru 11y ago
  Compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11069197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11069197 : the universities also want smart people, even when they are poor. (They are offering financial help for that, especially at the Ivy league.)
jkyle 11y ago
I may be in a unique position in commenting on this phenomena. I graduated from a well regarded university as a undergraduate (too man) years ago and have been working in industry for approximately 12 years or so. As my career evolved, I realized I wanted to specialize and I've always appreciated the formality and rigors of school. But all those things that happen over 12 years of working made returning for a masters infeasible e.g. wife, kids, an appreciation for meals that do not involve ramen noodles and hotdogs... About a year ago I had the opportunity to apply to Georgia Tech's Online Master's of Computer Science program (OMSCS).[1][2] I'm currently 1/2 through the program. I've taken online courses before and I consistently (2 or 3 times a year) attended local community college classes on various topics or refreshers. But I feel the OMSCS program is doing it differently and, largely, is "getting it right". I'll try to cover the most common critiques of MOOC's and how I think OMSCS can, hopefully, serve as a model for other universities to expand into remote learning. Attending a University is as much about the culture/people/experience as the raw knowledge ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I completely agree. However, GATech's program has made collaboration between students a priority. We're given a lot of tools including weekly group video conferencing with TA's, very active student forums, actively engaged/participant professors and TA's, and local study groups for students in the same general area. In some ways, I feel even more connected to professors than I did when on campus. Generally the professor was available in class, office hours, and through email. Email response was often spotty or too a few days. I get responses from a professor, TA, or student within a day if not within hours on the forums. Student provided answers often receive a "+1" by TA's or professors or a correction/clarification if that is needed. However, it's true that the 'flow' of conversation is not as dynamic and as a consequence can be less engaging as in classroom settings given the delay of forum communication. Also, I'm sure the on campus students have access to many of these tools as well. For me personally, I was less likely to leverage the other tools if I'd already sat in class that day. Recruiters and employers look for the 'signal' that comes with a prestigious university program ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I feel this is over played. MIT, Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Berkeley, etc. are obviously good schools. But anyone whose been interviewing and hiring for any amount of time knows they're not guarantees and much more goes into a good employee than simply making it through a rigorous academic program. But you it does carry _some_ weight. Just not as much as many imply. One of the reasons I selected this program is the degree rewarded is indistinguishable from their on campus degree. The "signal" this provides for students and employers is the university is willing to put their full faith and credit behind the education I'm purchasing. If MOOC's are to succeed this is the only model that will work. Why should I pay the university if they insist on signaling that it is a lesser education through degree differentiation. If they are incapable of delivering the same rigor and quality, I'd rather just read a book or take a free course. MOOC's aren't a threat to prestigious education, just community colleges and small schools ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm not sure I agree. Community colleges are already very affordable. Georgia Tech is in the top 5 computer science programs in the country. That's a high degree of prestige. If they can deliver on their promise, maintain the quality of students & education their delivering, if they issue degrees indistinguishable from the on campus degrees, and if they can do so at higher volumes and good profit margins other high end universities should feel very threatened. Particularly since since the margins are quite large. All the tuition goes towards the professors, TA's, and a smidgin of an amount toward infrastructure. And they can handle much larger student bodies. That means more highly qualified STEM workers carrying your degree. Which incurs more prestige on your program and attracts more students...which you can actually accept if qualified. 1. http://www.omscs.gatech.edu http://www.omscs.gatech.edu 2. Full disclaimer: I work for AT&T, a partner in the creation of the OMSCS program with Georgia Tech & Udacity, though I had no involvement in that process other than benefitting as a student.
Scoundreller 11y ago
I dream of the day when prestigious PGP private keys are sold because of the prestige associated with them.
- eru 11y ago
  Isn't that bitcoin?
  - Scoundreller 11y ago
    In a way, but I meant a day where one buys a PGP private key for its good name/trust/prestige. Like buying a newspaper company today so you can control the output message.
rayiner 11y ago
I think it's pretty funny that MOOC's bought into the premise that the purpose of higher education was education. Seriously: what fraction of what you do on the job isn't something you couldn't have learned at a three-month company training course? Outside of highly specialized fields, it's probably not much. I think the universities understand a lot better than the MOOCs that the point was never that Stanford had education you can't get elsewhere, but that it lets you tell people you went to Stanford and other people didn't.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > I think it's pretty funny that MOOC's bought into the premise that the purpose of higher education was education. Er, they don't. MOOCs recognize that people come to higher education for several different purposes, including education, credentialing for employment, and networking (possibly others, but those are the big three.) Most MOOCs build on this understanding with a business model that gives away much (though, often, not all) of the "education" part away free-of-charge and selling credentialing as a premium service. > I think the universities understand a lot better than the MOOCs that the point was never that Stanford had education you can't get elsewhere, but that it lets you tell people you went to Stanford and other people didn't. I think MOOCs understand that. OTOH, the value proposition of MOOCs to users is that they unbundled some of the things bundled together in universities, so that people who don't need the things which .
- eru 11y ago
  > Seriously: what fraction of what you do on the job isn't something you couldn't have learned at a three-month company training course? It's actually quite a lot. Not so much any specific bit of knowledge, but just experience in hacking away. (That's not so much taught at uni, but still requires more time than three months.)
- harryh 11y ago
  What exactly are you signaling to employers with your Stanford admission though? It's not really clear to me. Intelligence? That's pretty easy to measure on its own. Hard work? Hoop jumping? I'm not really sure. And I say this as someone who hires programmers and sees a CS Degree from Stanford as a pretty strong positive.
johngalt 11y ago
I'm seeing a large number of comments talking about the in person effects of traditional education. Not just as it relates to education, but also ongoing employment. The two issues seem to boil down to: 1. Social status signaling. Including networking among alumni. 2. An environment with interpersonal interactions among the top performers will push you further than working solo. Rather than simply saying "MOOCs don't do 1&2", we should phrase it as "what will it look like when they do?". Clearly the internet can handle social status signaling. The internet can also organize groups around specific interests. There are unique social groups that exist now precisely because of the internet. For now MOOCs are a web version of correspondence courses. Is that all they will ever be? I doubt it. If I had to bet on education 100 years from now, I'd expect it to look more like MOOCs than the traditional collegiate experience. Certainly there are gaps in what exists today, but I'd expect those gaps to close faster than traditional colleges will adjust.
WalterBright 11y ago
Online education is not new. Before the internet, you could get a college degree by taking correspondence courses. It's how my grandfather got a degree (he was too poor for college). He liked it so much he became a salesman for the online courses, and met my grandmother through selling her mechanical engineering courses. (In 1920. Yes, there were women engineers then.)
FiatLuxDave 11y ago
I think that the biggest effect of prestige in the college market is that it is a barrier to entry for new colleges and universities. Forget MOOCs for a second. Just think about new, regular colleges. If half the faculty of Harvard quit tomorrow and started a new university (say, "New Cambridge University"), accepting half the number of new students that Harvard did, even though the education would be obviously on par with a Harvard education, the new university still would not have the prestige of Harvard. This effect is what is allowing the rent seeking behavior of administrators and contractors which is driving the increase in college costs [1]. The wages for professors, who provide the primary paid labor for the educational process, has not increased, and the move to reduce the cost of professors by switching to adjuncts has been extensively noted e.g. [2]. If professors felt free to simply start up a new college whenever they felt that the cost of administration was getting out of hand, they would be able to bid up the cost of their labor in step with the increase in tuition. But because the prestige effect is so strong, they have less power in the relationship than the administrators. Note that professors with star power reputations do not have this dynamic, as they have prestige of their own. I think that MOOCs may be the wrong direction to look for a solution. Prestige is strongly correlated with the age of an institution. The Ivy League was originally called such because the buildings were old enough to have ivy covering their walls, unlike the newer colleges of the time. It is also correlated with the accomplishments associated with an institution. A MOOC is just asking for trouble in the prestige department! Just look at how people with a Georgia Tech online masters have to explain it as being equal in worth to an in-person experience. You don't need to explain to your mom why Yale is close to Harvard in prestige. Maybe someday that will change, but it's not an answer to the problem today. Instead, a more low-tech but more likely to work answer is to restore control of the prestige to the faculty and take that power away from the administrators. This may take the form of internal changes to the existing universities, or maybe things will get bad enough that there will be a mass exodus of professors starting their own colleges. [1]http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2011/features/administrators_ate_my_tuition031641.php?page=all http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2... [2]http://www.thenation.com/article/why-is-college-so-expensive-if-professors-are-paid-so-little/ http://www.thenation.com/article/why-is-college-so-expensive...
stillsut 11y ago
I'd consider the #1 to #5 (out of 10,000 students) in Ng's MachineLearning Coursera more compelling than 'A' from his on-campus class. So by making it a national competition, MOOCs have an advantage for those companies seeking high quality candidates. Also, they deliver a more standardized training experience: Even if you took some interesting but non-conventional AI class at Harvey Mudd, it might be better for companies hiring junior devs to just know you're competent at the basics from your online work.

57 points by chewymouse 11y ago

The real reason class sizes are limited isn't to maintain an "air of exclusivity", it's because the social networks that allow kickbacks and mutual aid only work if they're limited to a certain size. "Prestige" isn't a naked payoff, it's a proxy for access to that social network.

jostmey 11y ago
Agreed. I think the top Universities will maintain their prestige, but people will begin to question the value of an education from a run-of-the-mill University. The education won't be that different, but the top schools will offer access to the rich and powerful.
lordCarbonFiber 11y ago
Scarcity creates value. The value of a college degree has, and continues to be, the fact that the university spent a great deal of time and expense selecting you. That filtering process, combined with the student's subsequent graduation, makes for a fairly reliable signaling mechanism for employers. The raw information presented in the curricula is the least valuable part of the entire experience; the market reflects this fact.
- shmerl 11y ago
  Except it's not the true value. Real value is knowledge, not artificial limiting of it.
- eru 11y ago
  > The value of a college degree has, and continues to be, the fact that the university spent a great deal of time and expense selecting you. How does your theory hold up in countries where universities accept everyone, but degrees are still useful?
  - lordCarbonFiber 11y ago
    I'd like to see examples of said countries; at least of any of the developed nations I'm familiar with, I've never heard of such a scheme. In universal education schemes, like what are common in Europe, competition for top schools is extremely high, a single test score determines the trajectory of a student's life in many cases. In systems like that are present in places China, performance not only dictates your school but also your profession with highest performers tracked for the engineering and sciences and working its way down (unless of course you are independently wealthy to the point of seeking foreign education). I suspect, from my personal experience; n=small etc, the value in the ~knowledge~ of a 4 year bachelor's degree in the united states is very close to 0, honestly. Especially for the people in this community, I would be extremely surprised if what was taught in schools came up anywhere bu a white board interview from a pretentious company. I would love to hear counter anecdotes or be presented data to the contrary
    - eru 11y ago
      > I've never heard of such a scheme. In universal education schemes, like what are common in Europe, competition for top schools is extremely high, a single test score determines the trajectory of a student's life in many cases. I am most familiar with the German system (as of a decade ago). We just don't have that many globally relevant top schools, and for the ones we have, competition isn't that tough (outside of specific fields like medicine). If you want to study, say, maths basically everyone who clears the threshold can just sign up to any university. And the `single testscores' aint so, it's usually an average of your last two years of high school grades (=Abiturnoten). These are easily gamed, of course. If you are willing to wait, there's also a queue for eg medicine to get in with worse grades. It's not all roses---partly because of almost no selection on entry, attrition rates especially in first year can be truly atrocious.
tomp 11y ago
I don't think that's true. The MBA class at Colombia is 700 people. Every year. That's not a social network. It's a number of social networks. It's inevitable that you'll only connect with a smaller number of classmates, and AFAIK classes are even organized with that in mind (the whole generation is split into smaller groups that then have classes together).
- nostrademons 11y ago
  They're pretty closely intertwined, though, in the sense that you can probably find people in your network who share a person or network in common with someone you're trying to reach. At least that was how it was at my small, elite liberal arts college of 400 people/year. I didn't know everyone in my class, but if someone went there at the same time as me, it's almost guaranteed that there is at least one person there we knew in common. The whole point of networking is so you don't have to cold-approach someone and there'll be someone or something you have in common. The whole point of social networking tools (LinkedIn, Facebook) is so you know who that person is.
- fiatmoney 11y ago
  Sure, and the formation of interlinked sub-networks is an artifact of the overall size - the goal isn't that you'll be BFFs with everyone on campus, but that you'll be able to find enough socially & professionally compatible classmates that you can effectively collude, but and not so many that the value of the collusion is spread out over unacceptably many people, or that it becomes impossible to actually find that guy you heard of whose uncle is a BFD at the Malaysian fed or whatever.

praveenster 11y ago

Not entirely true. Granted, you might be able to gain a lot of knowledge via MOOCs, however, I feel that the experience of human interaction with other students and the professor cannot be replicated via the internet. Additionally, I think the issue of prestige is a self fulfilling prophecy in that good schools get bright students and the interaction between them increases the overall intellect of the student community in that school.

fma 11y ago
I share the same feeling about MOOC in general (whether prestige, or not). It's like saying online porn will replace sex - since at the end, you orgasm.
- return0 11y ago
  Someone should research the statistics, what percentage of orgasms are remotely induced.

fma 11y ago

As long as the good ol boy's network exist - people will always want to go to Ivy League and other prestigious universities. It will continue till the top CEOss graduate from "Southern New Hampshire University"...and I doubt shareholders and board of directors want to nominate a CEO from "Southern New Hampshire University" so you probably want to be a founder.

ashark 11y ago
Someone[1] commented on another, similar thread a while back that one important function of top private universities is to launder the educations of children of the rich—that is, to ensure that, provided they can put in enough effort to not fail out entirely, they'll have credentials that look very similar to those of only the smartest and most-driven students from the other 99% of society. I'd never looked at it that way, but it makes a lot of sense. Fits right in with your "who wants a CEO from Southern New Hampshire U?" notion. In exchange, I suppose, the poorer students get to network with the people who may later fund their business. [1] Don't remember who, so I can't provide credit

roymurdock 11y ago

Title is misleading. As the Internet chips away at the practical reasons for limiting the student population, the real reason Yale limits the size of its classes will become more obvious. Decreased barriers to entry of getting a degree will draw attention to the fact that it is (and arguably always has been) 20% about what you learn, 80% about who you meet. MOOCs are not going to disrupt prestige, they're going to make it even more important as a signal in an increasingly noisy market.

fma 11y ago
Yep...MOOC will disrupt community colleges and your run of the mill state school.
- petra 11y ago
  Just like in the UK , the open university is equivalent or better(because it shows self-motivation) than most schools , excepts the top , like Cambridge.

lordCarbonFiber 11y ago

This author seems to think the value of prestige arises from nothing; as if the fact that someone can get through one class on open courseware means they are equally qualified as any other graduate. One quote in particular stuck with me "few students are accepted to Yale but almost all graduate". What exactly did he expect? Why would admissions accept people they think are unlikely to be successful? The whole article is written as if candidates are chosen by a simple dice roll, uniformly taken across the population (mirroring those who now have access via the internet). The value, from an employment standpoint at the very least, is not what you learned in school, but the reasons you were selected to participate in the community doing the learning. The elite institutions spend considerable time and expense collecting a curated group of top performers to a single location. From a creative and developmental perspective this is huge for the students. From a signalling perspective this huge for employers. My prediction, perhaps as laughably misguided as I think this article is, is that the paridime shift will come from employers. As taboos against training wear away, and groups begin to see how much cheaper it can be to hire and train high school graduates the demand for college graduates will abate. This probably won't effect the Columbias, or the Yales of the world, but will likely eliminate most of the hugely expensive less prestigious institutions.

cubano 11y ago

I've become more and more convinced over the years that "higher education" is much more about signalling and not-so-much about learning, although of course part of the signal is showing your ability to learn on demand and just "show-up" and do what you are told. Of course, networking has always been a big part of the benefit being accepted to an elite university, so while I accept the learning part of it will be easily disrupted, I am not really convinced (yet) that the signalling and the networking can be replaced so easily. [edits]

eanzenberg 11y ago
Admission is literal supply & demand. You have a limited number of spots at Harvard and Stanford every year, and >10x the applicants for each spot. Their criteria for admission is therefore much more stringent than if you have 1.5x-2x times the applicants per spot. The institution feeds the student body which feed the institution. Many students apply to these schools because their prestige and rank and the schools can therefore be selective of their student body. Admissions at Harvard or Stanford doesn't use a random number generator to determine admissions after a 'meets minimum requirements' filter. It would be as if a student got accepted to Harvard, Stanford, MIT, 5 state schools and 10 community colleges and then used a coin flip to determine where to go.
- kuschku 11y ago
  My university just allows anyone into first semester, but then has quite hard courses and exams there already – by the end of the second semester, 90% have already failed. That’s another way to solve the >10x applicants issue.
  - roymurdock 11y ago
    That's actually a genius way to reduce administrative overhead as well. Problem is that the exams select only for people that are good at taking exams. Not always the most interesting/well rounded students.
    - 11y ago

WalterBright 11y ago

If I had attended Caltech remotely, I wouldn't have lasted a semester. I had a lot of generous help from others, mostly fellow students, and sometimes a professor. Besides, being around a pack of intelligent, highly motivated people (what their admissions select for) 24/7 was incredibly fun. I mean, you're around people who build CPUs out of 7400 ttl chips, people who build stereo equipment from scratch just because it's fun, people who build a working railroad running through the dorms, and on and on. If you want to see what it was like, see the movie "Real Genius", which was based on events at Caltech. The movie exaggerates, but not as much as you might think :-) Edit: I also have to admit that the embarrassment of failing was a motivator that wouldn't exist if I attended remotely, along with the shared camaraderie of working on and succeeding at something hard.

petra 11y ago
I'm curious what would happen , if we gather a few classes of intelligent highly motivated students , arrange them a cheap nice place to live , give them them great educational content(not the stuff you get out of today's mooc's , the good stuff that the UK's open university - an expert in remote learning - designed over decades) , give them some support and some tools(labs , parts, etc) , and connect them through the web to their respective communities. Surely that could be much cheaper. But would be just as good ? maybe. And as for prestige ? if you build the admission process on extremely high standards , and offer something unique that the big universities won't offer , maybe you'll manage to get extremely talented students. And that's the key for building prestige. Makes sense ? EDIT: one more question - once you're an esteemed graduate of this institution ,sort of a "navy seal", in this day and age where talent is the limited resource in making money(and surviving in business), how hard would it be to arrange the networking ? Ans isn't all this kinda like what ycombinator did?
- WalterBright 11y ago
  I think that still underestimates the effect the professor has on the students. There's nothing like a professor who is excited about the topic of his lectures. Take a look at some of Feynman's youtube lectures, and imagine hearing that stuff in person! It's like the difference between listening to a CD and going to a concert.

hapless 11y ago

Everyone has always known that paying for an Ivy diploma means purchasing the prestige and connections required to enter America's elite. The conceit that it was a superior education has always been, to some extent, a fig leaf. MOOCs are tearing frantically at the fig leaves, but the underlying business model is entirely unharmed. The best students will still crawl over bodies to gain admittance. Tuitions will remain high. The alumni will still make extraordinary endowments.

zecho 11y ago

Thought I was reading The Onion for a moment. Nobody cites Frank Bruni as a source unironically, do they? >"...it will be harder and harder for Yale to explain what it offers for all that money except a piece of paper that says you went to Yale." Yale has been clear about that since roughly 1693.

jimhefferon 11y ago

I checked a number of times. It seems that the article is from this week, but it sure reads like any number of articles from five or six years ago. Just as a for instance, putting everyone in a MOOC proves to be more of a problem than it may at first seemed to some people.

sknuds 11y ago

“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.” - Randy Pausch

dluan 11y ago

I don't think the internet has quite figured out _prestige_. Twitter, BuzzFeed, Quora, Reddit, and even HN have certainly figured out popularity, network effects, and buzz, but I don't think social networks can develop prestige, because there's so much elasticity about your social network presence and where you spend your time. Prestige is such an interesting phenomena, in that it's a weird mix of purchasable brandname and non-purchasable exclusivity. I'm not even sure what the most prestigious website on the internet would be: wikipedia?

petra 11y ago
Why not ? at least before eternal september , wasn't the HN karma system pretty good ?
- dluan 11y ago
  IMO voting based networks have some pretty big flaws, beyond obvious ones of gaming and a bias towards recency. Prestige partly works because it's technically hard to game or fake.
laxatives 11y ago
Barrier to entry is pretty tightly coupled (or at least correlated) to exclusivity. I'm sure it depends on the context, but in terms of knowledge based domains, universities/labs/peer reviewed journals are generally going to be the most prestigious. Occasionally a private company might have something exciting and new, but either way its not going to be something readily digestible or accessible. MOOC's service everyone else, who can't digest or access the "prestigious" stuff. At least by this definition of "prestige".

jrkelly 11y ago

YC is the only credible threat to elite higher education that I've seen come out of Silicon Valley.

eru 11y ago
Getting Facebook or Google on your resume probably also helps with getting another programming job.

noonespecial 11y ago

To successfully compete with the Ivy league, onlines will have to provide a way for their students to signal two things: 1) I'm the kind of person who can pay larger amounts of money than most for an education. 2) I know and am known by lots of people who fit into the group described by #1. Until that happens I don't think any ivy covered bricks are coming tumbling down any time soon.

abcampbell 11y ago
agree (to some extent). Sometimes it looks like the role of education in america is to sort people into relevant socio-economic classes. Not through any nefarious scheme, but rather, our system just depends on (and creates) some degree of inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics) #theUnicornEconomy
eru 11y ago
Compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11069197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11069197 : the universities also want smart people, even when they are poor. (They are offering financial help for that, especially at the Ivy league.)

jkyle 11y ago

I may be in a unique position in commenting on this phenomena. I graduated from a well regarded university as a undergraduate (too man) years ago and have been working in industry for approximately 12 years or so. As my career evolved, I realized I wanted to specialize and I've always appreciated the formality and rigors of school. But all those things that happen over 12 years of working made returning for a masters infeasible e.g. wife, kids, an appreciation for meals that do not involve ramen noodles and hotdogs... About a year ago I had the opportunity to apply to Georgia Tech's Online Master's of Computer Science program (OMSCS).[1][2] I'm currently 1/2 through the program. I've taken online courses before and I consistently (2 or 3 times a year) attended local community college classes on various topics or refreshers. But I feel the OMSCS program is doing it differently and, largely, is "getting it right". I'll try to cover the most common critiques of MOOC's and how I think OMSCS can, hopefully, serve as a model for other universities to expand into remote learning. Attending a University is as much about the culture/people/experience as the raw knowledge ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I completely agree. However, GATech's program has made collaboration between students a priority. We're given a lot of tools including weekly group video conferencing with TA's, very active student forums, actively engaged/participant professors and TA's, and local study groups for students in the same general area. In some ways, I feel even more connected to professors than I did when on campus. Generally the professor was available in class, office hours, and through email. Email response was often spotty or too a few days. I get responses from a professor, TA, or student within a day if not within hours on the forums. Student provided answers often receive a "+1" by TA's or professors or a correction/clarification if that is needed. However, it's true that the 'flow' of conversation is not as dynamic and as a consequence can be less engaging as in classroom settings given the delay of forum communication. Also, I'm sure the on campus students have access to many of these tools as well. For me personally, I was less likely to leverage the other tools if I'd already sat in class that day. Recruiters and employers look for the 'signal' that comes with a prestigious university program ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I feel this is over played. MIT, Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Berkeley, etc. are obviously good schools. But anyone whose been interviewing and hiring for any amount of time knows they're not guarantees and much more goes into a good employee than simply making it through a rigorous academic program. But you it does carry _some_ weight. Just not as much as many imply. One of the reasons I selected this program is the degree rewarded is indistinguishable from their on campus degree. The "signal" this provides for students and employers is the university is willing to put their full faith and credit behind the education I'm purchasing. If MOOC's are to succeed this is the only model that will work. Why should I pay the university if they insist on signaling that it is a lesser education through degree differentiation. If they are incapable of delivering the same rigor and quality, I'd rather just read a book or take a free course. MOOC's aren't a threat to prestigious education, just community colleges and small schools ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm not sure I agree. Community colleges are already very affordable. Georgia Tech is in the top 5 computer science programs in the country. That's a high degree of prestige. If they can deliver on their promise, maintain the quality of students & education their delivering, if they issue degrees indistinguishable from the on campus degrees, and if they can do so at higher volumes and good profit margins other high end universities should feel very threatened. Particularly since since the margins are quite large. All the tuition goes towards the professors, TA's, and a smidgin of an amount toward infrastructure. And they can handle much larger student bodies. That means more highly qualified STEM workers carrying your degree. Which incurs more prestige on your program and attracts more students...which you can actually accept if qualified. 1. http://www.omscs.gatech.edu http://www.omscs.gatech.edu 2. Full disclaimer: I work for AT&T, a partner in the creation of the OMSCS program with Georgia Tech & Udacity, though I had no involvement in that process other than benefitting as a student.

Scoundreller 11y ago

I dream of the day when prestigious PGP private keys are sold because of the prestige associated with them.

eru 11y ago
Isn't that bitcoin?
- Scoundreller 11y ago
  In a way, but I meant a day where one buys a PGP private key for its good name/trust/prestige. Like buying a newspaper company today so you can control the output message.

rayiner 11y ago

I think it's pretty funny that MOOC's bought into the premise that the purpose of higher education was education. Seriously: what fraction of what you do on the job isn't something you couldn't have learned at a three-month company training course? Outside of highly specialized fields, it's probably not much. I think the universities understand a lot better than the MOOCs that the point was never that Stanford had education you can't get elsewhere, but that it lets you tell people you went to Stanford and other people didn't.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> I think it's pretty funny that MOOC's bought into the premise that the purpose of higher education was education. Er, they don't. MOOCs recognize that people come to higher education for several different purposes, including education, credentialing for employment, and networking (possibly others, but those are the big three.) Most MOOCs build on this understanding with a business model that gives away much (though, often, not all) of the "education" part away free-of-charge and selling credentialing as a premium service. > I think the universities understand a lot better than the MOOCs that the point was never that Stanford had education you can't get elsewhere, but that it lets you tell people you went to Stanford and other people didn't. I think MOOCs understand that. OTOH, the value proposition of MOOCs to users is that they unbundled some of the things bundled together in universities, so that people who don't need the things which .
eru 11y ago
> Seriously: what fraction of what you do on the job isn't something you couldn't have learned at a three-month company training course? It's actually quite a lot. Not so much any specific bit of knowledge, but just experience in hacking away. (That's not so much taught at uni, but still requires more time than three months.)
harryh 11y ago
What exactly are you signaling to employers with your Stanford admission though? It's not really clear to me. Intelligence? That's pretty easy to measure on its own. Hard work? Hoop jumping? I'm not really sure. And I say this as someone who hires programmers and sees a CS Degree from Stanford as a pretty strong positive.

johngalt 11y ago

I'm seeing a large number of comments talking about the in person effects of traditional education. Not just as it relates to education, but also ongoing employment. The two issues seem to boil down to: 1. Social status signaling. Including networking among alumni. 2. An environment with interpersonal interactions among the top performers will push you further than working solo. Rather than simply saying "MOOCs don't do 1&2", we should phrase it as "what will it look like when they do?". Clearly the internet can handle social status signaling. The internet can also organize groups around specific interests. There are unique social groups that exist now precisely because of the internet. For now MOOCs are a web version of correspondence courses. Is that all they will ever be? I doubt it. If I had to bet on education 100 years from now, I'd expect it to look more like MOOCs than the traditional collegiate experience. Certainly there are gaps in what exists today, but I'd expect those gaps to close faster than traditional colleges will adjust.

WalterBright 11y ago

Online education is not new. Before the internet, you could get a college degree by taking correspondence courses. It's how my grandfather got a degree (he was too poor for college). He liked it so much he became a salesman for the online courses, and met my grandmother through selling her mechanical engineering courses. (In 1920. Yes, there were women engineers then.)

FiatLuxDave 11y ago

I think that the biggest effect of prestige in the college market is that it is a barrier to entry for new colleges and universities. Forget MOOCs for a second. Just think about new, regular colleges. If half the faculty of Harvard quit tomorrow and started a new university (say, "New Cambridge University"), accepting half the number of new students that Harvard did, even though the education would be obviously on par with a Harvard education, the new university still would not have the prestige of Harvard. This effect is what is allowing the rent seeking behavior of administrators and contractors which is driving the increase in college costs [1]. The wages for professors, who provide the primary paid labor for the educational process, has not increased, and the move to reduce the cost of professors by switching to adjuncts has been extensively noted e.g. [2]. If professors felt free to simply start up a new college whenever they felt that the cost of administration was getting out of hand, they would be able to bid up the cost of their labor in step with the increase in tuition. But because the prestige effect is so strong, they have less power in the relationship than the administrators. Note that professors with star power reputations do not have this dynamic, as they have prestige of their own. I think that MOOCs may be the wrong direction to look for a solution. Prestige is strongly correlated with the age of an institution. The Ivy League was originally called such because the buildings were old enough to have ivy covering their walls, unlike the newer colleges of the time. It is also correlated with the accomplishments associated with an institution. A MOOC is just asking for trouble in the prestige department! Just look at how people with a Georgia Tech online masters have to explain it as being equal in worth to an in-person experience. You don't need to explain to your mom why Yale is close to Harvard in prestige. Maybe someday that will change, but it's not an answer to the problem today. Instead, a more low-tech but more likely to work answer is to restore control of the prestige to the faculty and take that power away from the administrators. This may take the form of internal changes to the existing universities, or maybe things will get bad enough that there will be a mass exodus of professors starting their own colleges. [1]http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2011/features/administrators_ate_my_tuition031641.php?page=all http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2... [2]http://www.thenation.com/article/why-is-college-so-expensive-if-professors-are-paid-so-little/ http://www.thenation.com/article/why-is-college-so-expensive...

stillsut 11y ago

I'd consider the #1 to #5 (out of 10,000 students) in Ng's MachineLearning Coursera more compelling than 'A' from his on-campus class. So by making it a national competition, MOOCs have an advantage for those companies seeking high quality candidates. Also, they deliver a more standardized training experience: Even if you took some interesting but non-conventional AI class at Harvey Mudd, it might be better for companies hiring junior devs to just know you're competent at the basics from your online work.