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Yes and no. The lecture part can certainly be disrupted, but the most successful learning experiences I had in university were during face-to-face problem solv

Yes and no. The lecture part can certainly be disrupted, but the most successful learning experiences I had in university were during face-to-face problem solving sessions with other classmates, small group discussion, and participating in a community of learners of a shared subject. There's also the challenges of learning that occurs through labs and other manipulation of the physical world that is hard to replicate online. I think you could see significant disruption in the lower-division, large-lecture classes, but upper-division classes, hands-on labs and small-group discussions and seminars will continue to benefit from physical proximity.

martalist 9y ago
> the most successful learning experiences I had in university were during face-to-face problem solving sessions with other classmates, small group discussion, and participating in a community of learners of a shared subject. Paying tens of thousands of dollars per year to associate with others doing the same seems odd.
ericd 9y ago
Maybe you could set up a cheap hybrid - get students together in one place to work together on MOOCs, and have some strict admission standards to ensure that the students are high quality. This would be a draw to high quality students, and help replace some of the signaling value of elite schools.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- austenallred 9y ago
  Yeah, nothing that was listed would be difficult to replicate at high scale and high quality
mljoe 9y ago
I agree with you 100%, but MOOCs aren't necessarily the only option for educational innovation. The idea of Minerva (students still live together, but the university moves around the world) sounds interesting to me, even though it is not at all less expensive. These sort of things were never technically possible until well after the university system became entrenched. Another option is internships or entrepreneurship, what the Thiel Fellowship encourages. Chris Olah is a employee of special note at Google Brain. He never finished college, and he had the smart idea to basically reinvent scientific publishing.
nevdka 9y ago
Physical proximity doesn't need to be as expensive as it is, so there's still room for disruption. Think about how University education should compare to high school education, in terms of costs. High school costs about $12k per student-year [0], which includes about 1200 hours of staff time [1]. My entire 4-year undergraduate course had less than 2000 hours of staff time, which was about half large lectures and half labs and tutorials. The lectures were always larger classes than high school, and the tutes and labs were about the same size, and mostly taught by later-year students who were paid less than high school teachers. Facilities-wise, classrooms are classrooms, toilets are toilets, and offices are offices. I can't see any reason why university buildings should be more expensive than high school buildings, for a given number of students. Besides, high school capital outlay is less than 10% of total [0]. Universities can also have classes later in the day and at night, and so get more use out of the buildings. Then there's equipment, particularly in the labs. The university had significantly more lab equipment than high school. However, there were also significantly more students using it. This wouldn't increase the cost of computer science, maths, business, etc, but might add to the costs of physics, chemistry, engineering. I'd need to see a real cost-breakdown to believe it would be much more expensive. It should be possible to provide a similar level of education as current universities for less than $5k per year. That's disruption. [0] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66 [1] https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass0708_035_s1s.asp https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass0708_035_s1s.asp

martalist 9y ago

> the most successful learning experiences I had in university were during face-to-face problem solving sessions with other classmates, small group discussion, and participating in a community of learners of a shared subject. Paying tens of thousands of dollars per year to associate with others doing the same seems odd.

ericd 9y ago

Maybe you could set up a cheap hybrid - get students together in one place to work together on MOOCs, and have some strict admission standards to ensure that the students are high quality. This would be a draw to high quality students, and help replace some of the signaling value of elite schools.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
austenallred 9y ago
Yeah, nothing that was listed would be difficult to replicate at high scale and high quality

mljoe 9y ago

I agree with you 100%, but MOOCs aren't necessarily the only option for educational innovation. The idea of Minerva (students still live together, but the university moves around the world) sounds interesting to me, even though it is not at all less expensive. These sort of things were never technically possible until well after the university system became entrenched. Another option is internships or entrepreneurship, what the Thiel Fellowship encourages. Chris Olah is a employee of special note at Google Brain. He never finished college, and he had the smart idea to basically reinvent scientific publishing.

nevdka 9y ago

Physical proximity doesn't need to be as expensive as it is, so there's still room for disruption. Think about how University education should compare to high school education, in terms of costs. High school costs about $12k per student-year [0], which includes about 1200 hours of staff time [1]. My entire 4-year undergraduate course had less than 2000 hours of staff time, which was about half large lectures and half labs and tutorials. The lectures were always larger classes than high school, and the tutes and labs were about the same size, and mostly taught by later-year students who were paid less than high school teachers. Facilities-wise, classrooms are classrooms, toilets are toilets, and offices are offices. I can't see any reason why university buildings should be more expensive than high school buildings, for a given number of students. Besides, high school capital outlay is less than 10% of total [0]. Universities can also have classes later in the day and at night, and so get more use out of the buildings. Then there's equipment, particularly in the labs. The university had significantly more lab equipment than high school. However, there were also significantly more students using it. This wouldn't increase the cost of computer science, maths, business, etc, but might add to the costs of physics, chemistry, engineering. I'd need to see a real cost-breakdown to believe it would be much more expensive. It should be possible to provide a similar level of education as current universities for less than $5k per year. That's disruption. [0] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66 [1] https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass0708_035_s1s.asp https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass0708_035_s1s.asp