5 ms·

One university decided to change signs on toilets. Single label costs $400, it has to be in brail and match various regulations. I think education is ripe for

by jkot 10y ago

One university decided to change signs on toilets. Single label costs $400, it has to be in brail and match various regulations. I think education is ripe for disruption. We will see rise of bootcamps and online education. Also university in foreign country costs peanuts.

jessaustin 10y ago
That's right, but the missing element would be a set of widely-respected testing firms. An "A" from the "Harvard of test companies" might be as impressive as attending Harvard itself, which would benefit autodidacts.
- pc86 10y ago
  Harvard isn't Harvard because it's exceptionally hard to get an A. It's Harvard because it's exceptionally hard to get in. I've heard Harvard and Harvard Extension are basically opposites. It's nearly impossible to get into Harvard, but you'll almost certainly graduate and will probably have a decent GPA. It's nearly impossible not to get into Harvard Extension but a large number of people fail out pretty quickly and spectacularly (I have no associated with either institution).
  - bbctol 10y ago
    Which is hopefully motivation to move away from old models of academia, although I really don't think that's feasible in the near future. Elite schools are just as much about pre-selecting smart people for others' benefit as they are about teaching, and this effect stacks: you can get a great job largely because of a prestigious graduate degree, which was easier to get because of your prestigious undergraduate degree, which you got by being an overachiever in high school... until the person you were at 17, despite the clear differences with who you are today, becomes awfully important.
    - douche 10y ago
      This may not be a comfortable statement, but it's no less true in the world we live in. It's as much signalling as anything else, and while you can overcome it with talent and hard work, it's going to take it.
bad_user 10y ago
Bootcamps in our industry are a fraud and I sure hope that such fraudulent activities aren't the answer to a classic college education. And online courses don't work well, being effective only on adults that already have an education. You can talk about disruption all you want, but there's no substitute for an old fashioned college education. And in many European countries this education is subsidised by the state. Even in the US college would be affordable if you would cut the evil from its source and that would be college loans.
- swagasaurus-rex 10y ago
  The web development consulting agency I work for has been hiring a good number of individuals who have been trained for development at a bootcamp. The demand for developers exceeds the supply and companies are willing to take on the burden of training.
- yodsanklai 10y ago
  > And online courses don't work well, being effective only on adults that already have an education. Even in that case, I wouldn't put a coursera certificate on my resume. They are watered-down versions of good college courses and they're not really selective.
  - chrisseaton 10y ago
    I'll proudly put my Coursera machine learning certificate on my resume next time I update it, right after my PhD and MEng. It shows I'm still seeking out ways to learn more and keep current. It would make a good impression on me if I was reviewing someone else's resume as well.
- mafribe 10y ago
  effective only on adults that already have an education. Why is that a bad thing? It's already a sizable demographic, and one that self-selects for being interested in education.
  - bad_user 10y ago
inputcoffee 10y ago
Your comment makes an important point though: who will take care of people who are visually impaired or who need other accommodations? The online MOOCs aren't going to introduce braille. I am kind of glad they spent that money to accommodate those students. Aren't you? That's not what is raising the cost of education. EDIT: I did work on a mouse that provides haptic feedback including texture years ago, so I am aware that it is possible to provide braille like feedback over the web. EDIT2: Many people have pointed out that MOOCs do add accessibility features. This is true, and good. I think the MOOCs are largely run by well meaning people.
- jkot 10y ago
  Door labels in brail are useless. Just close your eyes and try it yourself. And even with brail it should cost under $40 Blind (or otherwise disabled) people should have an assistant to help them around. Some MOOCs are already brail reader friendly. And online education in general has very little barriers.
- orbitur 10y ago
  > The online MOOCs aren't going to introduce braille. No, but they can (and do) add accessibility features.
- jkaptur 10y ago
  > The online MOOCs aren't going to introduce braille. In general, putting content online makes learning more accessible. As a specific example, Khan Academy has done important work developing tools in this area: http://engineering.khanacademy.org/posts/tota11y.htm http://engineering.khanacademy.org/posts/tota11y.htm. I see where you're coming from - many "dispuptive" services have (shamefully, in my opinion) resisted making their services accessible, but I don't think MOOCs really fall into that class.
  - inputcoffee 10y ago
    I think MOOCs are run by well meaning people, but it also doesn't cost that much to make them accessible. I suppose that is the point though: the market decides, as opposed to an entity deciding that it is in the public good.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
_RPM 10y ago
I don't think you can simply apply technology to solve something that isn't a technical problem.
mikeash 10y ago
Is the cost related to regulatory compliance, or are they just being taken for a ride or failing to control costs? A brief search turns up ADA-compliant bathroom signs for under $20 each. It certainly doesn't seem like the sort of thing that should cost a ton.
- jkot 10y ago
  http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/27/mizzou-renames-unisex-restrooms-because-term-isnt-inclusive-enough/ http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/27/mizzou-renames-unisex-rest...
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
The longer I've been on here, the more I've come to see "Disruption" mean "I truly have no idea how complex and regulated and culturally cemented an industry is, but I work in software and my only limit is imagination." No educational system will ever supplant higher education as we know it today, as we have known it for hundreds of years. The only discussion here is about the degree of tweaks. When you grow up in a family of university administrators and scientists and faculty, and then work for a university as professional staff, you realize how laughable most outsiders' naive perspectives are, from the idea that a proper university can be run like a business (ha), or that people will rationally select a college that gives them the best bang for their buck (haha), or that educational complements like boot camps and MOOCS will ever replace what higher education offers (hahahahaha). While we're toiling away at our degrees, we often argue that it's just "a piece of paper." But that piece of paper matters. Unless you have a lot of paid work exprience, the inexperienced Ivy grad wins out to the mildly experienced community college grad almost every time. Yes, it's a shitty system but to change it you need to change global culture, maybe even human nature. As far as boot camps go, they're a good idea but even if you pass one with flying colors and could make an iOS app with one hand and a Rails server with another, the perception is still that you're somehow less qualified than a college graduate. Again, it sucks, but a hiring manager is going to ask themselves whether they could get blamed more for hiring a college grad that turns out to suck at their job, or a boot camp graduate that turns out to suck at their job. Honestly, if you really want to "disrupt" education, you're barking up the wrong tree. The best education is a good job. The best people to teach you how to do your job are the ones doing it with you. I firmly believe that the best way to provide good jobs and valuable skills is to heavily promote - and perhaps even subsidize - paid apprenticeships. Nothing says "I am worth paying $X for this job" like a resume that says "I was paid $X for this job."
- jkot 10y ago
  But I am talking about overhead. People should not pay 10x price, while being educated by temporary postdocs. In that sense foreign universities are already disrupting US education with much lower overhead. Take a 4 year bootcamp which operates in semesters, and you got something very similar to university.
amyjess 10y ago
We had disruption. It was called ITT Technical Institute. It wound up being an exploitative nightmare, and it eventually got shut down for it.
- smsm42 10y ago
  That's like saying all internet commerce is a fraud because you got an email from a Nigerian prince and fell for it. Of course there's fraud in education, just as anywhere else. That doesn't make every innovation in education space a fraud.

by jkot 10y ago

jessaustin 10y ago

That's right, but the missing element would be a set of widely-respected testing firms. An "A" from the "Harvard of test companies" might be as impressive as attending Harvard itself, which would benefit autodidacts.

pc86 10y ago
Harvard isn't Harvard because it's exceptionally hard to get an A. It's Harvard because it's exceptionally hard to get in. I've heard Harvard and Harvard Extension are basically opposites. It's nearly impossible to get into Harvard, but you'll almost certainly graduate and will probably have a decent GPA. It's nearly impossible not to get into Harvard Extension but a large number of people fail out pretty quickly and spectacularly (I have no associated with either institution).
- bbctol 10y ago
  Which is hopefully motivation to move away from old models of academia, although I really don't think that's feasible in the near future. Elite schools are just as much about pre-selecting smart people for others' benefit as they are about teaching, and this effect stacks: you can get a great job largely because of a prestigious graduate degree, which was easier to get because of your prestigious undergraduate degree, which you got by being an overachiever in high school... until the person you were at 17, despite the clear differences with who you are today, becomes awfully important.
  - douche 10y ago
    This may not be a comfortable statement, but it's no less true in the world we live in. It's as much signalling as anything else, and while you can overcome it with talent and hard work, it's going to take it.

bad_user 10y ago

Bootcamps in our industry are a fraud and I sure hope that such fraudulent activities aren't the answer to a classic college education. And online courses don't work well, being effective only on adults that already have an education. You can talk about disruption all you want, but there's no substitute for an old fashioned college education. And in many European countries this education is subsidised by the state. Even in the US college would be affordable if you would cut the evil from its source and that would be college loans.

swagasaurus-rex 10y ago
The web development consulting agency I work for has been hiring a good number of individuals who have been trained for development at a bootcamp. The demand for developers exceeds the supply and companies are willing to take on the burden of training.
yodsanklai 10y ago
> And online courses don't work well, being effective only on adults that already have an education. Even in that case, I wouldn't put a coursera certificate on my resume. They are watered-down versions of good college courses and they're not really selective.
- chrisseaton 10y ago
  I'll proudly put my Coursera machine learning certificate on my resume next time I update it, right after my PhD and MEng. It shows I'm still seeking out ways to learn more and keep current. It would make a good impression on me if I was reviewing someone else's resume as well.
mafribe 10y ago
effective only on adults that already have an education. Why is that a bad thing? It's already a sizable demographic, and one that self-selects for being interested in education.
- bad_user 10y ago

inputcoffee 10y ago

Your comment makes an important point though: who will take care of people who are visually impaired or who need other accommodations? The online MOOCs aren't going to introduce braille. I am kind of glad they spent that money to accommodate those students. Aren't you? That's not what is raising the cost of education. EDIT: I did work on a mouse that provides haptic feedback including texture years ago, so I am aware that it is possible to provide braille like feedback over the web. EDIT2: Many people have pointed out that MOOCs do add accessibility features. This is true, and good. I think the MOOCs are largely run by well meaning people.

jkot 10y ago
Door labels in brail are useless. Just close your eyes and try it yourself. And even with brail it should cost under $40 Blind (or otherwise disabled) people should have an assistant to help them around. Some MOOCs are already brail reader friendly. And online education in general has very little barriers.
orbitur 10y ago
> The online MOOCs aren't going to introduce braille. No, but they can (and do) add accessibility features.
jkaptur 10y ago
> The online MOOCs aren't going to introduce braille. In general, putting content online makes learning more accessible. As a specific example, Khan Academy has done important work developing tools in this area: http://engineering.khanacademy.org/posts/tota11y.htm http://engineering.khanacademy.org/posts/tota11y.htm. I see where you're coming from - many "dispuptive" services have (shamefully, in my opinion) resisted making their services accessible, but I don't think MOOCs really fall into that class.
- inputcoffee 10y ago
  I think MOOCs are run by well meaning people, but it also doesn't cost that much to make them accessible. I suppose that is the point though: the market decides, as opposed to an entity deciding that it is in the public good.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

_RPM 10y ago

I don't think you can simply apply technology to solve something that isn't a technical problem.

mikeash 10y ago

Is the cost related to regulatory compliance, or are they just being taken for a ride or failing to control costs? A brief search turns up ADA-compliant bathroom signs for under $20 each. It certainly doesn't seem like the sort of thing that should cost a ton.

jkot 10y ago
http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/27/mizzou-renames-unisex-restrooms-because-term-isnt-inclusive-enough/ http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/27/mizzou-renames-unisex-rest...

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago

The longer I've been on here, the more I've come to see "Disruption" mean "I truly have no idea how complex and regulated and culturally cemented an industry is, but I work in software and my only limit is imagination." No educational system will ever supplant higher education as we know it today, as we have known it for hundreds of years. The only discussion here is about the degree of tweaks. When you grow up in a family of university administrators and scientists and faculty, and then work for a university as professional staff, you realize how laughable most outsiders' naive perspectives are, from the idea that a proper university can be run like a business (ha), or that people will rationally select a college that gives them the best bang for their buck (haha), or that educational complements like boot camps and MOOCS will ever replace what higher education offers (hahahahaha). While we're toiling away at our degrees, we often argue that it's just "a piece of paper." But that piece of paper matters. Unless you have a lot of paid work exprience, the inexperienced Ivy grad wins out to the mildly experienced community college grad almost every time. Yes, it's a shitty system but to change it you need to change global culture, maybe even human nature. As far as boot camps go, they're a good idea but even if you pass one with flying colors and could make an iOS app with one hand and a Rails server with another, the perception is still that you're somehow less qualified than a college graduate. Again, it sucks, but a hiring manager is going to ask themselves whether they could get blamed more for hiring a college grad that turns out to suck at their job, or a boot camp graduate that turns out to suck at their job. Honestly, if you really want to "disrupt" education, you're barking up the wrong tree. The best education is a good job. The best people to teach you how to do your job are the ones doing it with you. I firmly believe that the best way to provide good jobs and valuable skills is to heavily promote - and perhaps even subsidize - paid apprenticeships. Nothing says "I am worth paying $X for this job" like a resume that says "I was paid $X for this job."

jkot 10y ago
But I am talking about overhead. People should not pay 10x price, while being educated by temporary postdocs. In that sense foreign universities are already disrupting US education with much lower overhead. Take a 4 year bootcamp which operates in semesters, and you got something very similar to university.

amyjess 10y ago

We had disruption. It was called ITT Technical Institute. It wound up being an exploitative nightmare, and it eventually got shut down for it.

smsm42 10y ago
That's like saying all internet commerce is a fraud because you got an email from a Nigerian prince and fell for it. Of course there's fraud in education, just as anywhere else. That doesn't make every innovation in education space a fraud.