5 ms·

Interesting, for for ~$250k (or ~400k if you do it via loan and include repayment cost) you can buy a nice house to your kid instead of burning that on 4y pseud

Interesting, for for ~$250k (or ~400k if you do it via loan and include repayment cost) you can buy a nice house to your kid instead of burning that on 4y pseudo education. Knowledge (from best universities as well) is free nowadays. I'm sure for 4y in solitude of your own house and internet knowledge you can advance your skills a lot.

sabujp 10y ago
Depends on what you really want to do. If you want to be a life sciences researcher then you need all the expensive equipment that only institutions can afford.
- RandomOpinion 10y ago
  >If you want to be a life sciences researcher then you need all the expensive equipment that only institutions can afford Agreed. The same goes for most engineering fields too. Software development is one of the few high-tech fields where one can reasonably attempt to get an education through online courses, but it's becoming so commoditized that the bottom is going to drop out and drop out hard, eventually.
- mysterypie 10y ago
  But you can't play with all that expensive equipment until you get to at least the graduate level. Take chemistry for example. For your entire undergraduate degree you're doing strictly cookbook procedures in the lab. Other than a bit of technique, everything you learn in undergraduate labwork you could have learned from a book. Try going to the lab instructor and asking him or her if you can come back later at night to run some of your own experiments. You'll get a hearty laugh. The expensive equipment becomes an argument in favor of a traditional education only after you get to the post-grad level when you have real access to that equipment.
  - Ar-Curunir 10y ago
    If you want to have a job in those fields, you likely need lab experience; you won't get it by reading textbooks.
  - VLM 10y ago
    The first specific problem with internships instead of school labs is schools like to be a one stop shop so how do you guarantee everyone accepted into a school will be accepted into at least one productive lab? Remember the only criteria for school entrance is a pulse and ability to get a guaranteed loan for a ridiculous amount of money. The odds that a physical school with X slots for chemists precisely overlaps professional demand for X chemistry interns is pretty low so either the private labs are going to be understaffed or there will be (profitable) students who can't get required internship places. The second problem with internships instead of school labs is the classic birth problem where we produce too many trained chemists for too few jobs. And flooding the labor market with free intern labor isn't going to help the fraction of grads who can get a job in the field. The result would be even more people with chemistry degrees doing anything other than chemistry as a profession after graduation. The third problem with internships instead of school is related to the second in that pre-med uses ochem as a weedout, or used to. So "most people" trying to learn ochem are trying to get into med school, no interest at all in learning ochem itself. That means the vast majority of chemistry interns are going to be pretty useless and unmotivated in the professional labs, so the few interns trying to become actual chemists are going to get ripped off by being ignored. Those are very chemistry specific problems but something similar might apply to many other subjects.
  - Fomite 10y ago
    "But you can't play with all that expensive equipment until you get to at least the graduate level." This will come as a surprise to the expensive equipment I used as an undergrad.
    - mysterypie 10y ago
      Did you design and run your own independent experiments as an undergrad? Or did you do assigned and supervised lab work following exact procedures from an exercise book in a group setting with a lab instructor watching over you, and you had to be done and out within 2-3 hours?
      - Fomite 10y ago
        I ran my own independent experiments, usually designed to help a graduate student with one of his projects, and was then left to my own devices. If it was done in 2-3 hours, it was because the cultures needed to incubate overnight anyway. I did group lab work with an instructor as well, but my university had a pretty vibrant undergraduate research program.
smonff 10y ago
Art school provide a wonderful playground of networking. This could be the price to pay. Problem: with networking, you cannot be sur that because you paid the fees it will help you with your "career" (if it can be called this way in the art world). Anybody pretending that it's possible to do art without being a "nose-browner" lies. Anybody pretending to be a "creator" often forget to cite his/her sources and influences. I am not very astonished that, in a domain like art, that stays a dedicated way for higher classes to demonstrate their superiority by owning costly art, prices can be so high for education. But I don't call it an art school, I call it a bank.
- Kalium 10y ago
  I believe the idiom you want may be "brown-noser".
  - smonff 10y ago
    Yes. Thanks for clarifying.
  - hueving 10y ago
    Once you gain enough influence you get a promotion from brown-noser to nose-browner. :)
mysterypie 10y ago
> Knowledge (from best universities as well) is free nowadays. I'm sure for 4y in solitude of your own house and internet knowledge you can advance your skills a lot. That's true, but one thing missing is personal discipline; that is, staying on track, avoiding procrastination, and actually doing the work instead of playing video games or watching TV. Most people need the discipline of having to show up in a physical classroom, having deadlines for assignments, having an obligation to do work. Not everyone, but most people need this. This brings up an idea of a meetup-style classroom: Suppose we had a physical weekly meeting of everyone in a city who's interested in learning genetics, or Java, or French, or oil painting. At the first meeting, we'd agree on what online books, videos, or courses we'd study, and each week we'd meet to discuss what we'd learned so far, tutor each other, maybe even make tests for each other. It would serve as that little push that most people need.
- weixiyen 10y ago
  > Most people need the discipline of having to show up in a physical classroom Went to UC Berkeley and literally did not show up to class except for finals. Nobody forces you to go to class when you hit a 4 year institution, esp public ones. For a lot of people, the value of going to college is going to college itself, not the actual education.
  - vlehto 10y ago
    Degree is standard enforced on humans. The value of a degree is the information it conveys. A degree is only as valuable as the least skilled person having it. Only compulsory classes and pass/fail grades matter.
  - mysterypie 10y ago
    > Went to UC Berkeley and literally did not show up to class except for finals. I assume you did well in your courses, hence you're the exception with the necessary self discipline. What you did won't work for most people. Even though no one takes attendance at Berkeley, the classrooms weren't empty, were they? So some kind of subtle pressure is being exerted for all those students to still show up. They're thinking about all the money they paid, parents will ask, "How was class?", friends will say, "I didn't see you in class today". Some students learn better by being hearing the lecture rather than (in addition to) reading the textbook. But having the lecture imposes an obligation and schedule as well. Here's a thought experiment: Suppose Berkeley eliminated all classroom lectures but had videos or transcripts of all the lectures, and still had all the same assignments and exams, do you think the pass/fail rate would stay the same? Not for you, but in general.

sabujp 10y ago

Depends on what you really want to do. If you want to be a life sciences researcher then you need all the expensive equipment that only institutions can afford.

RandomOpinion 10y ago
>If you want to be a life sciences researcher then you need all the expensive equipment that only institutions can afford Agreed. The same goes for most engineering fields too. Software development is one of the few high-tech fields where one can reasonably attempt to get an education through online courses, but it's becoming so commoditized that the bottom is going to drop out and drop out hard, eventually.
mysterypie 10y ago
But you can't play with all that expensive equipment until you get to at least the graduate level. Take chemistry for example. For your entire undergraduate degree you're doing strictly cookbook procedures in the lab. Other than a bit of technique, everything you learn in undergraduate labwork you could have learned from a book. Try going to the lab instructor and asking him or her if you can come back later at night to run some of your own experiments. You'll get a hearty laugh. The expensive equipment becomes an argument in favor of a traditional education only after you get to the post-grad level when you have real access to that equipment.
- Ar-Curunir 10y ago
  If you want to have a job in those fields, you likely need lab experience; you won't get it by reading textbooks.
- VLM 10y ago
  The first specific problem with internships instead of school labs is schools like to be a one stop shop so how do you guarantee everyone accepted into a school will be accepted into at least one productive lab? Remember the only criteria for school entrance is a pulse and ability to get a guaranteed loan for a ridiculous amount of money. The odds that a physical school with X slots for chemists precisely overlaps professional demand for X chemistry interns is pretty low so either the private labs are going to be understaffed or there will be (profitable) students who can't get required internship places. The second problem with internships instead of school labs is the classic birth problem where we produce too many trained chemists for too few jobs. And flooding the labor market with free intern labor isn't going to help the fraction of grads who can get a job in the field. The result would be even more people with chemistry degrees doing anything other than chemistry as a profession after graduation. The third problem with internships instead of school is related to the second in that pre-med uses ochem as a weedout, or used to. So "most people" trying to learn ochem are trying to get into med school, no interest at all in learning ochem itself. That means the vast majority of chemistry interns are going to be pretty useless and unmotivated in the professional labs, so the few interns trying to become actual chemists are going to get ripped off by being ignored. Those are very chemistry specific problems but something similar might apply to many other subjects.
- Fomite 10y ago
  "But you can't play with all that expensive equipment until you get to at least the graduate level." This will come as a surprise to the expensive equipment I used as an undergrad.
  - mysterypie 10y ago
    Did you design and run your own independent experiments as an undergrad? Or did you do assigned and supervised lab work following exact procedures from an exercise book in a group setting with a lab instructor watching over you, and you had to be done and out within 2-3 hours?
    - Fomite 10y ago
      I ran my own independent experiments, usually designed to help a graduate student with one of his projects, and was then left to my own devices. If it was done in 2-3 hours, it was because the cultures needed to incubate overnight anyway. I did group lab work with an instructor as well, but my university had a pretty vibrant undergraduate research program.

smonff 10y ago

Art school provide a wonderful playground of networking. This could be the price to pay. Problem: with networking, you cannot be sur that because you paid the fees it will help you with your "career" (if it can be called this way in the art world). Anybody pretending that it's possible to do art without being a "nose-browner" lies. Anybody pretending to be a "creator" often forget to cite his/her sources and influences. I am not very astonished that, in a domain like art, that stays a dedicated way for higher classes to demonstrate their superiority by owning costly art, prices can be so high for education. But I don't call it an art school, I call it a bank.

Kalium 10y ago
I believe the idiom you want may be "brown-noser".
- smonff 10y ago
  Yes. Thanks for clarifying.
- hueving 10y ago
  Once you gain enough influence you get a promotion from brown-noser to nose-browner. :)

mysterypie 10y ago

> Knowledge (from best universities as well) is free nowadays. I'm sure for 4y in solitude of your own house and internet knowledge you can advance your skills a lot. That's true, but one thing missing is personal discipline; that is, staying on track, avoiding procrastination, and actually doing the work instead of playing video games or watching TV. Most people need the discipline of having to show up in a physical classroom, having deadlines for assignments, having an obligation to do work. Not everyone, but most people need this. This brings up an idea of a meetup-style classroom: Suppose we had a physical weekly meeting of everyone in a city who's interested in learning genetics, or Java, or French, or oil painting. At the first meeting, we'd agree on what online books, videos, or courses we'd study, and each week we'd meet to discuss what we'd learned so far, tutor each other, maybe even make tests for each other. It would serve as that little push that most people need.

weixiyen 10y ago
> Most people need the discipline of having to show up in a physical classroom Went to UC Berkeley and literally did not show up to class except for finals. Nobody forces you to go to class when you hit a 4 year institution, esp public ones. For a lot of people, the value of going to college is going to college itself, not the actual education.
- vlehto 10y ago
  Degree is standard enforced on humans. The value of a degree is the information it conveys. A degree is only as valuable as the least skilled person having it. Only compulsory classes and pass/fail grades matter.
- mysterypie 10y ago
  > Went to UC Berkeley and literally did not show up to class except for finals. I assume you did well in your courses, hence you're the exception with the necessary self discipline. What you did won't work for most people. Even though no one takes attendance at Berkeley, the classrooms weren't empty, were they? So some kind of subtle pressure is being exerted for all those students to still show up. They're thinking about all the money they paid, parents will ask, "How was class?", friends will say, "I didn't see you in class today". Some students learn better by being hearing the lecture rather than (in addition to) reading the textbook. But having the lecture imposes an obligation and schedule as well. Here's a thought experiment: Suppose Berkeley eliminated all classroom lectures but had videos or transcripts of all the lectures, and still had all the same assignments and exams, do you think the pass/fail rate would stay the same? Not for you, but in general.