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What if higher education did its job and actually delivered skilled people instead of offering "the best campus experience"? Edit: to make myself clear, I abso
by rscho 8y ago
What if higher education did its job and actually delivered skilled people instead of offering "the best campus experience"?
Edit: to make myself clear, I absolutely think universities should focus more on thinking than doing. That is not a valid excuse for focusing on campus experience and the like.
- maxerickson 8y agoAcademia has never seen itself that way. It's pretty stupid that a 4 year degree is turning into a checkmark credential. It's a lot of time and effort to invest into something you aren't particularly interested in but need to get some job where the time and effort put towards the degree don't mean a lot.
- bhl 8y agoWhat if we stopped relying on higher education with its high tuition fees to produce skilled workers, and instead focus on community colleges and K-12 education?
- rscho 8y agoI also agree with that. We could also ask parents to actually educate children, but it seems that's too much to ask.
- fjsolwmv 8y agoWhat if Universities were as low cost as community colleges, as they are in most of the economically developed world? High tuition colleges only exist prey on low-talent people trying to buy fake credentials. Anybody talented enough to learn from a college what they can't learn at a lower priced college, can get a scholarship to that college.
- agent00f 8y agoAll education is inherently time/resource consuming and thereby expensive. What many are proposing here is expending that into trade schools/edu, which I suppose makes sense for what most coding consists of. But what's most revealing is this insistence on the public shouldering that burden instead of employers who reap the benefits investing into the training.
- TomMarius 8y agoWhat if we made open source (including content) online university?
- Kaveren 8y agoHow is this your takeaway from the article? Anyone moderately intelligent is capable of learning most topics traditionally taught in higher education on their own, even if they use the same learning resources that colleges typically do for the topic. The argument of the article is very clearly that prospective employees should be judged based on skills, not degrees. It doesn't matter if higher education improves. This still holds.
- fjsolwmv 8y agoWhy do schools exist in the first place, if almost everyone can just learn on their own?
- Kaveren 8y agoTo answer your point when talking about colleges, people like being spoonfed because they are lazy. This is why video tutorials for, say, programming are so popular, and why you see people ask about how to learn programming from scratch for the millionth time, when answers are a search engine entry away. The primary benefit of college is a degree. Networking is a secondary benefit, where the more elite the college the better opportunity is. There is absolutely no difference in the quality of self-education in, say, computer science or mathematics vs. going to a top-tier college for it, given a motivated, moderately intelligent student.
- analognoise 8y agoRight, those people are lazy, which is why almost all of the people who complete MOOCs have previous degrees, and much ink has been spilled about "boot camps" that have better success re-tooling someone with a 4 year degree than someone off the street. "I already had a bachelor's degree in Biology, it turns out I could learn to code!" - Huge shocker...
- Kaveren 8y agoMy entire point is consistently that the point of college is a degree. It's completely sensible for the vast majority of people to go to college for the great economic benefits it provides in terms of job opportunities. This does not mean it offers any real learning benefit over self-education for a variety of fields. Just take computer science, an easy one because of the abundant resources available through the Internet. There is absolutely zero gain, once again, for the moderately intelligent, motivated student, in terms of learning from going to a college vs. a motivated, well-thought self-study. Study plans are available online. Course syllabuses are available online. Textbooks are available online. Problem solutions are available online.
- agent00f 8y agoHigher ed in form of universities aren't meant to be trade schools. Their purpose is to produce thinkers instead of technicians, which unfortunately industry isn't well equipped to utilize. Also, parroting political talking points about snowflake kids and such doesn't provide any value, even if draws support from a certain type of crowd.
- nafey 8y agoPerhaps more cynically the job of universities is not to train students but to rank them. If you are the top of the class at some ivy league school there is a likelihood of you being good a good paper shuffler at mid level management position
- rscho 8y agoAbsolutely, I agree. Thing is, practicals should make students, well... practice a lot. So if a university produces great thinkers and average workers, I'd say that it achieved what it was set for. If a university produces great thinkers and dismal workers, then that university does not exist.
- Aeolun 8y agoI don’t think university is very well equipped to produce either thinkers or technicians. Right up until you get to your postdoc is seems like you’re mostly playing ‘guess the right answer’ with your professors. It’s great for another dose of slightly more specialized basic knowledge, but it’s not going to prepare you for anything after that unless you stay in academia.
- agent00f 8y agoThe point of assignments and such is to guide students through the thought processes useful to understanding material in depth. It's arguably true that some students can get by via guessing or whatever, but the disservice is mainly to themselves. Might as well pay someone to do the work for you.