6 ms·

“If a student wants to study at Princeton, he doesn’t really need to apply or pay tuition. He can simply show up and start taking classes. As a professor, I ass

by hooch 8y ago

“If a student wants to study at Princeton, he doesn’t really need to apply or pay tuition. He can simply show up and start taking classes. As a professor, I assure you that we make near-zero effort to stop unofficial education; indeed, the rare, earnestly curious student touches our hearts. At the end of four years at Princeton, though, the guerrilla student would lack one precious thing: a diploma. The fact that almost no one tries this route — saving hundreds of thousands of dollars along the way — is a strong sign that students understand the value of certification over actual learning“ Isn’t this how Steve Jobs treated college? And “Apple” was his “diploma”?

lifeisstillgood 8y ago
If people living in Princeton had, let's say, a high quality UBI for life, I think a TV ad campaign saying just this would pack their lecture halls At which point Princeton would enforce their membership rules but that's another atory
- iguy 8y ago
  I suspect this trick is already harder to pull off at a university in a big city, compared to one in a little college town.
watwut 8y ago
You don't get to do exams and that is massive difference. As a motivation and as a feedback too.
quickthrower2 8y ago
The just show up mentality exists, but those people are learning online or reading books. What’s the advantage of commuting to a live lecture?
- antt 8y ago
  Mainly the syllabus and being told what to ignore.
  - iguy 8y ago
    And a forced pace, to keep moving instead of disappearing down every passing rabbit-hole.
    - milesvp 8y ago
      This is a big one. I sat in on a number of 400 level CS courses after I graduated, and a big factor was just having a scheduled place to be, and homework assignment due dates that forced the correct pace for learning. The pace also made it easy to start the work early, but not obsess if I hit a roadblock, since there was a lot of opportunity to ask questions leading up to the due date. I don’t think I’d have gotten through the same course work without the classroom lectures. Double bonus was the social aspect, talking to other students and regularly walking with the prof after class.
      - josephjrobison 8y ago
        How do you sit in on classes? Do you actually just show up? Or do you have to audit the class and register, but for free?
        abecedarius 8y ago
        I have just shown up and asked the prof if they minded, at the end of the first class. The irritating thing nowadays is that sometimes materials are behind a wall on the university website.
      - sdaslo 8y ago
        How did you stay motivated to finish the homework or projects to the same degree as if you were being graded? I feel like the one factor that changes the equation is that grading inherently motivates even those who want to learn for learnings sake - it forces you to move faster and study harder with time and grade challenges. Do you feel like you learned the material to a level that you would have had it been graded for you??
        8y ago
negamax 8y ago
I got a coursera account and I believe that's good enough for a while for education. I will get a degree as a stamp when situation demands.
rjf72 8y ago
One key thing this paragraph misses is the characterization of this sort of person. Imagine we have a person that would independently, without extrinsic reward or 'push', show up to classes completely of their own accord. And we must further assume that they would engage in all assignments and somehow try to regularly test their understanding - the feedback exams offer is crucial to demonstrating understanding. And we assume they're doing well on Princeton quality and standard of work, all completely independently. How did this person do in high school? Given high school is orders of magnitude more trivial, we can assume they were likely at or near the top of their classes, and probably would have shown remarkable results in skill assessment exams. And with that sort of motivation he also probably would have been involved in immense extracurricular and other such events. This person would likely have been able to get into any university he ever wanted. Top universities do provide a certainly better than average education, but their main strength has nothing to do with their quality of education. It's the quality of their student body - which turns success stories into a self fulfilling prophecy. Imagine you start an 'basketball school' and only accept people that are at least 6'6", highly athletic, can dunk from x feet, run 100 meters in y seconds, etc. Go figure -- you're going to 'produce' a disproportionately huge number of NBA quality players simply because your admittance is already heavily biased to individuals who are already headed in that direction. The point of this is that none of this has anything to do with signaling, but it also has very little to do with the quality of education received. The value of an e.g. Princeton degree is that you're the sort of person that could get accepted into Princeton which would be comparable to the sort of person that could get admitted to 'Basketball U'. Regardless of what happens during those 4 years, you're already almost certainly going to be ahead of 99% of the rest of the population. The degree just works as 'proof of filtering'. E.g. even if our basketball university had a pretty bad education system, you'd still see NBA quality players emerging from it at a way way higher rate than the population of non-admitted individuals.
- SamReidHughes 8y ago
  Part of the advantage of a quality student body, to other students, is that classes can be more rigorous and move faster and farther.
- danenania 8y ago
graycat 8y ago
Yes, but he might stick around and take and pass the Ph.D. qualifying exams and then be well on his way to a Princeton degree: At least at one time, the Princeton math department Web site stated that, IIRC, "students are expected to prepare for the qualifying exams on their own and that no courses are offered to prepare students for the qualifying exams. Courses are introductions to research by experts in their fields." So, look at the qualifying exams, see what might study, and while attending classes attend the ones that can help with the exams. In addition, might have available some profs to answer questions. In addition, likely one way to impress Princeton or any university is to publish, and one way to start to do that is to attend research seminars and see what some of the open questions are, also notice what some of the profs and grad students are working on. So, this way get some guidance on what might attack as a research problem. I got a good pure/applied math Ph.D. Well over 50% of what I needed and used for courses, the qualifying exams, and my research was what I'd studied independently after my 4 year college degree and start of grad school. Then a grad course in optimization gave a good introduction to the Kuhn-Tucker condition, maybe say Karush-Kuhn-Tucker. After the course I saw a tricky question about the constraint qualifications, didn't see an answer in the library, so signed up for a 'reading course' to 'investigate' the question. Two weeks later I had a nice, clean solution, wrote it up, and was done with the course -- two weeks. Later I published. There I'd noticed that my work also answered a question stated but not solved in the famous Arrow, Hurwicz, Uzawa paper applying the KKTC to economics. I published in JOTA. So, a 'walk in' student at Princeton might have been able to have done much the same. With such research and passing the qualifying exams they would be on the way to a Princeton Ph.D.
- mcguire 8y ago
  Many (Some?) schools operate that way---the first step in a PhD is a qualifying exam. Some students may be able to pass it immediately after their undergraduate studies, while others (most?) require some remediate studying---undergrad classes, I guess. UT Austin, at the time I was there, used the other (and better, I think) method: breadth and depth graduate classes, typically more advanced versions of advanced undergrad classes. The breadth classes covered most of CS, while the depth classes were more introductions to specific areas of research. Edit: Oral quals are just hazing, in my opinion.
nickthemagicman 8y ago
Lol this is absolutely false. You would 100% get ejected from a Princeton class room.
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  Only if you're disrupting class. You wouldn't be able to attend labs though or pass exams.
hjk05 8y ago
As an employer I would not care much if a new hire only had the skills of uni but not the diploma. But I’m lazy and there is no way I’m going to do what’s essentially 5 years worth of examination to ensure the candidate lives up to some self professed level of education. Especially not in a 100+ pile of applications from others who where vetted as they went by the university. It’s not “certification” over actual learning. It’s the fact that the companies need easy certainty of that actual learning or you’re going to the bottom of the pile of applications. If you don’t have a certificate but have other proof of skill that’s just as good. Dropped out of uni to build a company that managed to launch a product but later went under? Great, who cares about the diploma, you have proof of you ability.
- viraptor 8y ago
  If someone's really motivated, there's also enough online courses which give certificates (MITx style) to collect almost the whole uni curriculum. Even with paying for that certificate, it's way cheaper than uni.
- ratling 8y ago
  Generally it doesn't matter as the hiring manager isn't going to see the application if the HR peon doesn't see the boxes they want checked.
mcguire 8y ago
As an aside, back in the good ol' days, students paid their instructors directly, out of pocket. You can damn well bet more than "near-zero" effort would be applied in that case. Anyway, society spends a lot of effort supporting students, from scholarships and tax exemptions to the social beliefs that allow the random person to spend several years doing nothing apparently productive without censure. But all that only applies to students actually enrolled---non-guerrilla students. Guerrilla studenting, as it was in the past, would only be the province of the idly wealthy. That, I think, is why no one tries that route.

by hooch 8y ago

lifeisstillgood 8y ago

If people living in Princeton had, let's say, a high quality UBI for life, I think a TV ad campaign saying just this would pack their lecture halls At which point Princeton would enforce their membership rules but that's another atory

iguy 8y ago
I suspect this trick is already harder to pull off at a university in a big city, compared to one in a little college town.

watwut 8y ago

You don't get to do exams and that is massive difference. As a motivation and as a feedback too.

quickthrower2 8y ago

The just show up mentality exists, but those people are learning online or reading books. What’s the advantage of commuting to a live lecture?

antt 8y ago
Mainly the syllabus and being told what to ignore.
- iguy 8y ago
  And a forced pace, to keep moving instead of disappearing down every passing rabbit-hole.
  - milesvp 8y ago
    This is a big one. I sat in on a number of 400 level CS courses after I graduated, and a big factor was just having a scheduled place to be, and homework assignment due dates that forced the correct pace for learning. The pace also made it easy to start the work early, but not obsess if I hit a roadblock, since there was a lot of opportunity to ask questions leading up to the due date. I don’t think I’d have gotten through the same course work without the classroom lectures. Double bonus was the social aspect, talking to other students and regularly walking with the prof after class.
    - josephjrobison 8y ago
      How do you sit in on classes? Do you actually just show up? Or do you have to audit the class and register, but for free?
      - abecedarius 8y ago
        I have just shown up and asked the prof if they minded, at the end of the first class. The irritating thing nowadays is that sometimes materials are behind a wall on the university website.
    - sdaslo 8y ago
      How did you stay motivated to finish the homework or projects to the same degree as if you were being graded? I feel like the one factor that changes the equation is that grading inherently motivates even those who want to learn for learnings sake - it forces you to move faster and study harder with time and grade challenges. Do you feel like you learned the material to a level that you would have had it been graded for you??
      - 8y ago

negamax 8y ago

I got a coursera account and I believe that's good enough for a while for education. I will get a degree as a stamp when situation demands.

rjf72 8y ago

One key thing this paragraph misses is the characterization of this sort of person. Imagine we have a person that would independently, without extrinsic reward or 'push', show up to classes completely of their own accord. And we must further assume that they would engage in all assignments and somehow try to regularly test their understanding - the feedback exams offer is crucial to demonstrating understanding. And we assume they're doing well on Princeton quality and standard of work, all completely independently. How did this person do in high school? Given high school is orders of magnitude more trivial, we can assume they were likely at or near the top of their classes, and probably would have shown remarkable results in skill assessment exams. And with that sort of motivation he also probably would have been involved in immense extracurricular and other such events. This person would likely have been able to get into any university he ever wanted. Top universities do provide a certainly better than average education, but their main strength has nothing to do with their quality of education. It's the quality of their student body - which turns success stories into a self fulfilling prophecy. Imagine you start an 'basketball school' and only accept people that are at least 6'6", highly athletic, can dunk from x feet, run 100 meters in y seconds, etc. Go figure -- you're going to 'produce' a disproportionately huge number of NBA quality players simply because your admittance is already heavily biased to individuals who are already headed in that direction. The point of this is that none of this has anything to do with signaling, but it also has very little to do with the quality of education received. The value of an e.g. Princeton degree is that you're the sort of person that could get accepted into Princeton which would be comparable to the sort of person that could get admitted to 'Basketball U'. Regardless of what happens during those 4 years, you're already almost certainly going to be ahead of 99% of the rest of the population. The degree just works as 'proof of filtering'. E.g. even if our basketball university had a pretty bad education system, you'd still see NBA quality players emerging from it at a way way higher rate than the population of non-admitted individuals.

SamReidHughes 8y ago
Part of the advantage of a quality student body, to other students, is that classes can be more rigorous and move faster and farther.
danenania 8y ago

graycat 8y ago

Yes, but he might stick around and take and pass the Ph.D. qualifying exams and then be well on his way to a Princeton degree: At least at one time, the Princeton math department Web site stated that, IIRC, "students are expected to prepare for the qualifying exams on their own and that no courses are offered to prepare students for the qualifying exams. Courses are introductions to research by experts in their fields." So, look at the qualifying exams, see what might study, and while attending classes attend the ones that can help with the exams. In addition, might have available some profs to answer questions. In addition, likely one way to impress Princeton or any university is to publish, and one way to start to do that is to attend research seminars and see what some of the open questions are, also notice what some of the profs and grad students are working on. So, this way get some guidance on what might attack as a research problem. I got a good pure/applied math Ph.D. Well over 50% of what I needed and used for courses, the qualifying exams, and my research was what I'd studied independently after my 4 year college degree and start of grad school. Then a grad course in optimization gave a good introduction to the Kuhn-Tucker condition, maybe say Karush-Kuhn-Tucker. After the course I saw a tricky question about the constraint qualifications, didn't see an answer in the library, so signed up for a 'reading course' to 'investigate' the question. Two weeks later I had a nice, clean solution, wrote it up, and was done with the course -- two weeks. Later I published. There I'd noticed that my work also answered a question stated but not solved in the famous Arrow, Hurwicz, Uzawa paper applying the KKTC to economics. I published in JOTA. So, a 'walk in' student at Princeton might have been able to have done much the same. With such research and passing the qualifying exams they would be on the way to a Princeton Ph.D.

mcguire 8y ago
Many (Some?) schools operate that way---the first step in a PhD is a qualifying exam. Some students may be able to pass it immediately after their undergraduate studies, while others (most?) require some remediate studying---undergrad classes, I guess. UT Austin, at the time I was there, used the other (and better, I think) method: breadth and depth graduate classes, typically more advanced versions of advanced undergrad classes. The breadth classes covered most of CS, while the depth classes were more introductions to specific areas of research. Edit: Oral quals are just hazing, in my opinion.

nickthemagicman 8y ago

Lol this is absolutely false. You would 100% get ejected from a Princeton class room.

AstralStorm 8y ago
Only if you're disrupting class. You wouldn't be able to attend labs though or pass exams.

hjk05 8y ago

As an employer I would not care much if a new hire only had the skills of uni but not the diploma. But I’m lazy and there is no way I’m going to do what’s essentially 5 years worth of examination to ensure the candidate lives up to some self professed level of education. Especially not in a 100+ pile of applications from others who where vetted as they went by the university. It’s not “certification” over actual learning. It’s the fact that the companies need easy certainty of that actual learning or you’re going to the bottom of the pile of applications. If you don’t have a certificate but have other proof of skill that’s just as good. Dropped out of uni to build a company that managed to launch a product but later went under? Great, who cares about the diploma, you have proof of you ability.

viraptor 8y ago
If someone's really motivated, there's also enough online courses which give certificates (MITx style) to collect almost the whole uni curriculum. Even with paying for that certificate, it's way cheaper than uni.
ratling 8y ago
Generally it doesn't matter as the hiring manager isn't going to see the application if the HR peon doesn't see the boxes they want checked.

mcguire 8y ago

As an aside, back in the good ol' days, students paid their instructors directly, out of pocket. You can damn well bet more than "near-zero" effort would be applied in that case. Anyway, society spends a lot of effort supporting students, from scholarships and tax exemptions to the social beliefs that allow the random person to spend several years doing nothing apparently productive without censure. But all that only applies to students actually enrolled---non-guerrilla students. Guerrilla studenting, as it was in the past, would only be the province of the idly wealthy. That, I think, is why no one tries that route.