8 ms·

A new crop of hands-on universities

60 points by tdaltonc 10y ago

adamnemecek 10y ago
I kind of don't understand how this is not the standard. It it 1786?
- eru 10y ago
  What's special about that date? If you want to understand where modern university come from a look at the Prussian education reforms after their defeat by Napoleon is instructive. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_reforms#Education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_reforms#Education
thefastlane 10y ago
“Companies often sponsor the projects and provide instructors” welcome to costco, i love you...
vonnik 10y ago
you want hands on, try Deep Springs: http://www.deepsprings.edu/ http://www.deepsprings.edu/
0xCMP 10y ago
Curious how these school end up doing. When I was deciding what to do for college I really liked a place in Florida called New College. Horrible area (lots of old people) and apparently the place is weird (never visited), BUT the idea they have of creating contracts per semester and graduation based on completion of the required number of contracts is pretty cool version of this. It sounded like a whole college exp of basically self-researching/learning. Didn't think it'd be good for CS so I didn't, but I imagine that's what the most successful of these schools will do to keep people creative and avoid the whole "one person does all the work"-group-projects.
- deskglass 10y ago
  I faced the same decision you did, had the same concern, and chose New College. I was fortunate in that CS at NCF has blossomed recently. A couple more professors were hired recently and there's increased student interest in the field. I've graduated, but I imagine there's also cross-pollination with the Data Science masters program that NCF founded this year. As for what it's like to attend - the experience is less radical than you may think. People generally stick to taking listed courses. Creating your own course (tutorial) and finding a professor to sponsor it takes work. You can do it, I took several, but it's rare and the ease probably varies with your major. With that said, even if you stick to taking courses, you'll still have to do an independent project each January and a thesis project before you graduate. Also, the experience of taking courses at NCF is different from the experience elsewhere. The size enables more discussion-based classes and the pass-fail/narrative evaluation grading changes student incentives and culture.
Kephael 10y ago
I cringe when I see articles such as this, leading research universities will always be superior to "teaching" schools. Not only is conducting quantitative research far more difficult than teaching, the research garners prestige and leads to higher rankings which attracts a more intelligent and ambitious student body. Ultimately the real value of a degree comes from the networking and signaling ability granted by it, I can always learn on my own by working through textbooks or reading journal articles. What I'd really like out of a university experience is to befriend people who will be starting innovative companies or researchers publishing in top journals.
- roymurdock 10y ago
  I cross-registered for a class at Olin (featured in the article) which turned out to one of the top 3 classes I took in college. We inherited the designs for a portable vegetable grater from 6 previous semesters of work, and iterated further upon its design. We then produced 4 prototype graters and went to Ghana to sell them to rural Cassava farming women who generally have to grate the cassava by hand or use dirty, broken communal graters. We worked closely with the local university and metal shop. By the end of the semester we were ready to hand off plans to get a batch of 10 graters produced on the next trip, and with further plans to get a pilot of 50 produced in Ghana in tandem with Ghanaian engineers and metalsmiths, and had plans to set up an unorthodox supply and distribution chain once the successive groups had secured grant funding. I wouldn't discount the value imparted by a class that throws you into a project with smart people with strong personalities and tells you to figure things out in 3 months before putting your product in front of paying customers. Also, this type of "hands-on" class is generally a capstone that comes after the basic engineering classes that all of the Olin students take freshman and sophomore year. Our professor was a brilliant guy and could have easily just focused on research and churned out great results, but he found it much more fulfilling to be hands on with our project and to guide us through the actual gritty process of creating a product and a business.
- avs733 10y ago
  There are a series of logical fallacies in this post...to the point that it is nonsense. For starters, what is a "teaching" school? is it the same as a teaching focused university? If so, not only do the faculty at teaching focused produce research of their own, much of which is extremely high quality, but the research often includes undergraduates in far more structured and educationally meaningful ways than occurs in similar programs at R1 type universities. Another...and I'm going to stop after this...why the narrowing to quantitative research? Your incorrect assertion that research is more difficult than education goes against not only what we know about education, but against basic logic itself. Education is immensely more complicated than most research, its just a complication that people chose to ignore (because hey, your education worked sufficiently for you). I have worked with several of the schools mentioned in this article (and if you want to know anything about me check out my prior comments and profile)...you say research universities are superior. On what metric? a lot of Olin students chose Olin over MIT. A lot of Deep Springs students (mentioned lower in the thread) choose it over places like Harvard and Yale. I feel like you might be better off reading some of the responses to your last effort to 'solve' education on HN.

60 points by tdaltonc 10y ago

adamnemecek 10y ago

I kind of don't understand how this is not the standard. It it 1786?

eru 10y ago
What's special about that date? If you want to understand where modern university come from a look at the Prussian education reforms after their defeat by Napoleon is instructive. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_reforms#Education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_reforms#Education

thefastlane 10y ago

“Companies often sponsor the projects and provide instructors” welcome to costco, i love you...

vonnik 10y ago

you want hands on, try Deep Springs: http://www.deepsprings.edu/ http://www.deepsprings.edu/

0xCMP 10y ago

Curious how these school end up doing. When I was deciding what to do for college I really liked a place in Florida called New College. Horrible area (lots of old people) and apparently the place is weird (never visited), BUT the idea they have of creating contracts per semester and graduation based on completion of the required number of contracts is pretty cool version of this. It sounded like a whole college exp of basically self-researching/learning. Didn't think it'd be good for CS so I didn't, but I imagine that's what the most successful of these schools will do to keep people creative and avoid the whole "one person does all the work"-group-projects.

deskglass 10y ago
I faced the same decision you did, had the same concern, and chose New College. I was fortunate in that CS at NCF has blossomed recently. A couple more professors were hired recently and there's increased student interest in the field. I've graduated, but I imagine there's also cross-pollination with the Data Science masters program that NCF founded this year. As for what it's like to attend - the experience is less radical than you may think. People generally stick to taking listed courses. Creating your own course (tutorial) and finding a professor to sponsor it takes work. You can do it, I took several, but it's rare and the ease probably varies with your major. With that said, even if you stick to taking courses, you'll still have to do an independent project each January and a thesis project before you graduate. Also, the experience of taking courses at NCF is different from the experience elsewhere. The size enables more discussion-based classes and the pass-fail/narrative evaluation grading changes student incentives and culture.

Kephael 10y ago

I cringe when I see articles such as this, leading research universities will always be superior to "teaching" schools. Not only is conducting quantitative research far more difficult than teaching, the research garners prestige and leads to higher rankings which attracts a more intelligent and ambitious student body. Ultimately the real value of a degree comes from the networking and signaling ability granted by it, I can always learn on my own by working through textbooks or reading journal articles. What I'd really like out of a university experience is to befriend people who will be starting innovative companies or researchers publishing in top journals.

roymurdock 10y ago
I cross-registered for a class at Olin (featured in the article) which turned out to one of the top 3 classes I took in college. We inherited the designs for a portable vegetable grater from 6 previous semesters of work, and iterated further upon its design. We then produced 4 prototype graters and went to Ghana to sell them to rural Cassava farming women who generally have to grate the cassava by hand or use dirty, broken communal graters. We worked closely with the local university and metal shop. By the end of the semester we were ready to hand off plans to get a batch of 10 graters produced on the next trip, and with further plans to get a pilot of 50 produced in Ghana in tandem with Ghanaian engineers and metalsmiths, and had plans to set up an unorthodox supply and distribution chain once the successive groups had secured grant funding. I wouldn't discount the value imparted by a class that throws you into a project with smart people with strong personalities and tells you to figure things out in 3 months before putting your product in front of paying customers. Also, this type of "hands-on" class is generally a capstone that comes after the basic engineering classes that all of the Olin students take freshman and sophomore year. Our professor was a brilliant guy and could have easily just focused on research and churned out great results, but he found it much more fulfilling to be hands on with our project and to guide us through the actual gritty process of creating a product and a business.
avs733 10y ago
There are a series of logical fallacies in this post...to the point that it is nonsense. For starters, what is a "teaching" school? is it the same as a teaching focused university? If so, not only do the faculty at teaching focused produce research of their own, much of which is extremely high quality, but the research often includes undergraduates in far more structured and educationally meaningful ways than occurs in similar programs at R1 type universities. Another...and I'm going to stop after this...why the narrowing to quantitative research? Your incorrect assertion that research is more difficult than education goes against not only what we know about education, but against basic logic itself. Education is immensely more complicated than most research, its just a complication that people chose to ignore (because hey, your education worked sufficiently for you). I have worked with several of the schools mentioned in this article (and if you want to know anything about me check out my prior comments and profile)...you say research universities are superior. On what metric? a lot of Olin students chose Olin over MIT. A lot of Deep Springs students (mentioned lower in the thread) choose it over places like Harvard and Yale. I feel like you might be better off reading some of the responses to your last effort to 'solve' education on HN.