18 ms·

The University Is a Ticking Time Bomb

72 points by jseliger 7y ago

rossdavidh 7y ago
All true, but it slides by the main issue: what are all these Ph.D.'s going to do? In the post-WW2 era, when the percentage of high school graduates was going up, each professor could have several Ph.D. students go on to find jobs as professors. With no Baby Boom, and the percentage of high school graduates having flattened (which was always guaranteed to happen eventually), many fields don't have enough other options for people who get their Ph.D. In some fields, sure, there are corporate R&D centers or other places to put that to use, but in many fields, a job in academia is the only plausible place that Ph.D. students have in mind as their eventual destination, and there's just no way most of them can get a spot there. The universities shouldn't be relying on 2/3 or 3/4 adjunct professors, but they're doing it because they can, which is because the system as designed produces way more candidates for professorships than there are positions available.
- yostrovs 7y ago
  Do we really need to teach French to undergraduates that won't ever use it nor remember anything from these courses? My university also had a swimming requirement. Seems like more than half of the courses were not terribly useful or mind opening. Certainly since something valuable isn't being produced, the pay for producing that will be low.
  - trianglem 7y ago
    Yes, I believe a well rounded education is important for a good populace.
  - jimbob45 7y ago
    We don't need to dance around the fact that swimming and French courses are just moneymakers for universities. Sure, they may hold some value to the careers of some people, but it's hard to believe that the motivation for foisting them upon each student was wholly altruistic.
    - hindsightbias 7y ago
      With numbers like these, we should be foisting PE and nutrition on young adults: https://stateofchildhoodobesity.org/adult-obesity/ https://stateofchildhoodobesity.org/adult-obesity/
    - tzs 7y ago
      How is a swimming course a moneymaker?
  - throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
    FWIW, I feel like being able to fall in water without dying is a useful skill Though college sounds like an odd place
  - veilrap 7y ago
    Honestly, I think both foreign language training, and physical fitness ARE useful for keeping one's mind plasticity up and in turn having valuable downstream effects. The goal for university courses shouldn't be strictly specific skill training, but also requirements that force people outside their comfort zones, encouraging them to think it new ways and adapt their problem solving faculties to new domains.
    - coredog64 7y ago
      Foreign languages are harder to pick up the older you get. Starting one in college seems like a waste, and requiring it raises the bar unnecessarily. Physical fitness isn’t going to come from a swimming class. If you’re an adult, you’ll take care of your body because it’s the right thing.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - mumblemumble 7y ago
        > Foreign languages are harder to pick up the older you get. I don't buy that. I know plenty of people who've picked up languages all up and down the age range. What I do think is true is that people are more likely to pick up their first additional language at a younger age. And I think that that's probably just an result of selection bias: If you actually need to for some reason (e.g., one language spoken at home and another in public), then those conditions will apply more-or-less from birth, so you'll learn it at a young age. And if you enjoy language learning, then you'll probably figure that out at a fairly young age, and so you'll have learned your second language at a fairly young age. The people who're looking to learn their second language in their 30s or 40s, on the other hand, are likely to be less motivated in the first place, and therefore more likely to give up, or to be unwilling to put enough work into it to make consistent progress. There's also a sort of. . . I don't know if it's immortal time bias, but it's similar: You don't see as many people who learn a language at an older age exhibiting near-native levels of proficiency simply because the timeline doesn't work out that way. You just aren't going to be speaking like someone who's been using the language 16 hours a day for 20 years if you've only been using it 1 hour a day for 5 years. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is probably selling something with a subscription pricing scheme. I can also say, as a recreational language learner who is rapidly approaching middle age, that the real impediment to learning languages as you get older is not that you don't have a 6 year old's or teenager's brain anymore. It's that you have one or more 6 year olds or teenagers, and spending time with them is probably more fulfilling (or at least more important) than spending time with a pile of flashcards. Such is life. As far as the value of requiring them in university. . . Offer, yes, require, no. Not because 18 is too late to start learning a language, but because nobody who's only taking classes in a 2nd language because a few credits in such a class is required for graduation is going to get any real value out of the experience.
  - Pete-Codes 7y ago
    I did Spanish at university and it's a skill I've got for life now.
    - lonelappde 7y ago
      Only in uni? I and many others did Spanish for 6 years from junior high into college, and remember barely any of it. Foreign language perhaps more than other topics, schooling is nearly useless compared to immersion.
      - trianglem 7y ago
        I really feel like schools should concentrate on conversational language skills before delving into any sort of grammar rules. A lot of the grammar rules end up sorting themselves out by “not sounding correct” when you speak the language.
  - arethuza 7y ago
    So why choose to go to a university that does have more general classes if that's not what you want? Certainly the course (and indeed the university) I went to had no classes outside maths/CS/electrical-engineering and I sometimes think it would have been nice to have a bit more rounded education at that level.
  - neuland 7y ago
    I agree with your point; there’s a lot of stuff taught in school that has limited or no usefulness to the average person. But swimming is not one of those. Everyone needs to know how to swim. Granted, college is a bit late to do it. There’s a good chance in your lifetime that you may involuntarily end up in the water. Say your car crashes into a lake. You fall off a bridge or dock. Your ferry or duck boat sinks. Etc. Learning to swim doesn’t take a ton of time and may very well save your life. Also you’re missing out on a bunch of possible fun / rewarding water activities.
  - ng12 7y ago
    If I could re-do my college degree I would have taken as few computer science courses as possible. Most of the important stuff I picked up along the way anyways. It's the random classes like Japanese Lit and Organizational Behavior that have really had an impact over a decade later.
    - DamnYuppie 7y ago
      For me some of the most life impacting and eye opening courses were very random. My Islamic studies class was a view into another world and ignited my desire to travel. A child development course really drove home who we as adults are shaped by things that happened when we were very young and what impact and when parents have on their children.
  - yardie 7y ago
    > Do we really need to teach French to undergraduates that won't ever use it... As most US universities and colleges currently teach? Certainly not. If we were to teach it as most language schools and most european universities teach it. Then, yes. It would be another skill. I took courses in Mandarin. While my spoken language is certainly rusty at this point it gave me an insight into East Asian history and culture that I would not have today.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  > what are all these Ph.D.'s going to do? Get a job like anyone else would? Why must academia or industrial research be the only plausible options? After doing a PhD you can be a high school teacher, a soldier, an actor, start a company, go into politics, do whatever you want. Nothing’s stopping you! Most jobs just want capable educated people, and many vary diverse educational backgrounds.
  - rb808 7y ago
    > After doing a PhD you can be a high school teacher, a soldier, an actor, start a company, go into politics, do whatever you want. Most PhDs dont want to do that stuff which is why they got a PhD in the first place.
    - blairbeckwith 7y ago
      That's tough. Not everyone who wants to be an actor gets to be an actor either. People have to settle for not fulfilling their dreams every day.
      - papito 7y ago
        Not to take this off track, but imagine how much more prone to taking risks we would be if we had guaranteed health insurance. No one wants to risk financial ruin and death in poverty. The "winners" usually come from old money and then just play with VC billions, never risking a dime, or at least not much.
        blairbeckwith 7y ago
        I'm very fortunate to live in Canada, and can't imagine how much harder it would be to take risks in the states. When I left my stable job to pursue my own small business, my health wasn't even one of the factors I considered. I have never asked for details about health insurance prior tom accepting a job.
        7y ago
- asdf21 7y ago
  I feel like with the growing popularity of Online Courses these ratios will get even more skewed... What happens when the majority of courses at a University are pre-recorded sessions from years ago, with only minor updates from year to year?
  - lazyguy2 7y ago
    If your goal is education there is no need to go to a university anymore. There really isn't even any need to attend K-12 schools. It may be better to go to formal physical schools, but it's no longer necessary. Not by a long shot. It's just going to take another few decades for society to adjust to the fact that university degrees are no longer really that valuable and figure out new ways to evaluate individual competency.
    - ImaCake 7y ago
      >If your goal is education there is no need to go to a university anymore. I think people underestimate how difficult it is to self study well enough to get an education like you can get from a (good) university program. Studying is hard! Maybe it is not so hard to learn a little bit. But to learn something with rigour and focus takes a lot of effort, especially if you have other problems to deal with as well. Aside from the value signalling of a degree, paid courses provide a strong motivation to do the uncomfortable and often unrewarding activity of studying. Source: my own experiences with self-study and a recently started Masters in Biostatistics by distance education, all while working casually or full time.
      - lonelappde 7y ago
        The value of a school (or alternative study arrangement) is in its reputation for educating students well, in the eyes of the students and employers. When reputable schools burn reputation faster than new schools build reputation, it's a broad social problem.
    - throwawaymath 7y ago
      For most people, a university is the most time-efficient method of gaining education in any given technical topic. It's not guaranteed to be the most cost-efficient, but I don't see a defensible argument that the resources of a university don't make it possible to learn faster than self-study, for the modal student. Discipline isn't the only obstacle for autodidacts. If nothing else, at a university you have professors, adjuncts and TAs with office hours who can help you learn something in a fraction of the time it would take to learn by studying a textbook or watching lectures online alone. For example, vanishingly few people manage to teach themselves an undergraduate math curriculum without going through university.
- bonoboTP 7y ago
  Why should we assume that all people who can get a PhD are fit to become profs? Arguably it's good that there's a larger pool of candidates from which the best can go further in academia (in fields where industry is not so attractive or existent). Setting aside whether the right criteria are used for career advancements or not, any meritocratic hierarchy is based on having more candidates on a lower lever compete to get into a smaller but higher level.
- jseliger 7y ago
  The universities shouldn't be relying on 2/3 or 3/4 adjunct professors, but they're doing it because they can Exactly: https://jakeseliger.com/2016/02/25/universities-treat-adjuncts-like-they-do-because-they-can https://jakeseliger.com/2016/02/25/universities-treat-adjunc... Many humanities and social science academics also show extreme anti-market bias, and it shows up in the essay.
  - dmix 7y ago
    It’s also going to show up in their decision making which filters down to students. Such as widening the already massive disconnect from the economic reality of students (entering or choosing to continue university) and their ability to get jobs to pay for the heavily gov and academia incentivized cheap debt.
- dekhn 7y ago
  This problem happened recently; during the clinton administration the NIH budget was doubled and the number of bio PhDs increased dramatically... while the number of faculty positions did not. Many of those people ended up working as data scientists (because getting a quantitative bio PhD often give you the skills in the area). I certainly went through all this (wanted to be faculty) and ended up doing SWE and science work at a large internet company. In retrospect, though, I think I should have skipped the PhD and gone straight to tech.
- briffle 7y ago
  > The universities shouldn't be relying on 2/3 or 3/4 adjunct professors, but they're doing it because they can, which is because the system as designed produces way more candidates for professorships than there are positions available. And also because the accreditation process lets them. There are a handful of accreditation bodies in the US, and they certify schools. They look at education level of their instructors, but if they changed to also look at the employment classification because they decided it was better for the students to learn that way, you would see a huge change within a few years.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Adjunct means part time non-research. It doesn't mean bad teacher. Sure, many adjuncts are bad teachers, maybe more than full faculty are, but that should be measured by credentials and feedback metrics, not employment structure. I paid thousands of dollars for several out of touch tenured faculty who were not fluent in the language they taught in, and had some great adjunct professors.
- pjc50 7y ago
  To me the main issue is the wider one: what is the purpose of the university? Well, it's the keeping and reproduction of knowledge, which must be kept alive in the heads of a number of host bodies. But what is this knowledge for? Do we as a society actually want to know things? Because that's looking very much in question recently. There is also the historical (especially 1960s, but really this dates back to the Reformation) role of the university as a political hotbed. It is this which has come into conflict with the wider world, and it is this which has caused heavy commercial pressure to destroy the intellectual independence of the university and turn it into just a training facility.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    We've boomed, in The West, on the back of relatively cheap power, and abundance of resources both of which appeared initially to have little downside compared to the up. Society wants to rest there, not to face the future problems that power/resource usage has created. We'll need to face those problems. And as we progress that need will become ever more stark and ever less ignorable even for the rich. Knowledge will become fashionable again as its results - fixing the power deficit, the population explosion, the unwanted climatic changes - become demanded and crucially if they payoff. Then we'll all grow fat and comfortable again only to realise we forgot the lessons of the past.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      > Knowledge will become fashionable again as its results - fixing the power deficit, the population explosion, the unwanted climatic changes - become demanded and crucially if they payoff. The other alternative involves killing a lot of people, either actively or through neglect, which is far more popular than you might expect. This is the lesson of the global warming discussion, among others. Nobody wants to hear about problems, especially not when the solution involves changing their lifestyle. It's far easier to just deny. Truth in that environment is a threat.
  - AndrewKemendo 7y ago
    In fact I think we entered a new counter-enlightenment. That is, over the last decade the zeitgeist has increasingly shown religious-like behavior and increased support for authoritarianism, rather than the Kant/Descartes style philosophy of thought.
- ssalazar 7y ago
  Academia could do a much better job clarifying expectations for prospective PhD students, for instance what percentage of a department's graduates go to research universities, to teaching colleges, to industry, etc. But there might be fewer applicants when people do the math and realize theres maybe 1 desirable academic job opening for every 10 students. To the point stressed to death in another thread, sure you could go get another job that has nothing to do with your PhD, but many people see graduate education as a career step, not a lifestyle choice.
adamnemecek 7y ago
A big part of the problem is "infinite growth" assumption.
lazyguy2 7y ago
Long term the current university system is dead. I expect that some universities will exist for another hundred years, but not in it's current form. Previous decades you had to go to a university to get access to resources that simply didn't exist in the rest of the world. Large libraries, labs, lectures, etc etc. Nowadays the internet can provide vastly superior resources then any Library for the most part. Sure there are lots of stuff not yet on there, but that issue that isn't going to exist forever. Quality courses exist for free. Lots of others are available for hundreds were at colleges they cost thousands. Access to experts is something you can pay for. Don't need to spend hundreds of dollars on books. Can concentrate on what is important to you and you can go at your own pace. People who want to network and peers can still have access to one another through meetups and online messaging. etc etc. K-12 education is terrible for most people. You can get far superior education for your children by simply enrolling them in Khan institute and hiring tutors for subjects you are not great on. People think you need to government to solve the cost of education, meanwhile individuals and companies have reduced the cost of education to nearly zero in most cases. Just won't get those special degree certificates that everybody covets. But that won't last forever either.
- api 7y ago
  Degrees, especially from prestigious schools, have become a kind of writ of noble title that can be purchased. Systems like that can be very sticky. Everyone who has one has a vested interest in preserving their value (like taxi medallions) and HR people can easily use them as a shortcut to hiring decisions that they'll never look dumb for making. The latter is the "nobody ever got fired for..." effect. The only thing that will break this is if demand for labor exceeds supply, forcing employers to hire outside traditional parameters.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - lazyguy2 7y ago
    > The only thing that will break this is if demand for labor exceeds supply, forcing employers to hire outside traditional parameters. I don't think that is the "only thing". Many employers look for degrees because they are seen as valuable. But they are not necessarily valuable in the most obvious way. A lot of time people are not really interested in what you went to school for at all. The are only interested if you have a degree or not. This signals to employers that they are interviewing somebody that is willing to make major personal commitments and defer reward for years for POTENTIAL gain. There is no guarantees that spending 10's of thousands of dollars will result in a good job. People who pay for degrees are hoping this is true. A employer can take advantage of these people easily. If I needed somebody to just be a cog in a corporate machine and I know that they are wiling to work their ass off and make huge personal commitments on the PROMISE of future pay... then that is awesome. I know they will work their ass off and make huge sacrifices for years and I really don't have to pay them that much at all to do it. And I know that their debt will keep them scared and living paycheck to paycheck so they are not going to want to risk unemployment because of how devastating this is financially. This is why when I am looking for jobs and employers make hard demands on educational certificates that they are probably assholes. It's fine to want degrees, but they are not willing to take professional experience as a alternative then that is a huge red flag. Yeah it's sticky, but you can't expect the current situation to last forever.
dr_dshiv 7y ago
I'd be a big fan of giving anyone with a PhD a small social stipend and means-tested health insurance. It's much cheaper than other universal basic income proposals.
- fennecfoxen 7y ago
  What makes this a good idea?
  - tnel77 7y ago
    I’m curious if the “dr” in their username is a hint. It could that this is only a good idea to those who have a doctorate and would directly benefit from it.
    - dr_dshiv 7y ago
      It is totally possible that this only appeals to those with a PhD. And, perhaps there'd be an influx of students who just want to get a PhD so they can get 20k per year to survive. But somehow I doubt it.
  - arkh 7y ago
    Let me guess: they have a PhD and would like to live hassle free.
    - dr_dshiv 7y ago
      For me, it's fine. I'm tenured and have a business. Most phds have and would continue to have meaningful employment.
  - imgabe 7y ago
    I don't know that I would advocate this necessarily, but I can see the logic. If you have a PhD you've at least demonstrated that you have a passion for a particular field and you've been trained to conduct research in that field. Many PhDs would just want to do research in their field and would continue doing so as long as they can feed and house themselves. Societally, maybe many of these wouldn't produce anything "useful", but some percentage might develop some breakthrough in their field that would more than make up for paying for all the rest. Would it be better to have some PhD educated math prodigy working an unrelated job paying a median salary because there's nothing available in academia or if we just let that person work on their research all day, might they develop something that would be more useful? You could make the same argument for providing a universal basic income for everyone, but in the general population you're going to have a higher percentage of people who will just watch Netflix all day or whatever you consider to be a useless activity.
isthispermanent 7y ago
If universities aren't spending all this insanely high tuition on the actual educators, where exactly is it all going?
- adamnemecek 7y ago
  Administrators.
- ronnier 7y ago
  Administrators. Just like with most charities. I just looked at open jobs at Harvard. Here are some: Donor relations. Portfolio managers. Property operations. Director of student activities. Dean of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging. Chief Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Officer
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Judging from local construction, cushier dorms and other residential facilities. It seems to be a bit of an arms race amongst the higher-end private institutions now.
- walleeee 7y ago
  As the article states: advertising, admissions, administration, non-academic student programming, athletics, etc. Much of this seems like cosmetic fluff, probably intended to attract students (also, wealthy parents). Go to almost any competitive university in the U.S. and look at the groundskeeping, the promotional materials put out by the administration, the proportion of campus infrastructure dedicated to whichever sport is most popular. The modern American university is as much a brand as any other large consumer-facing corporation.
  - tnecniv 7y ago
    > groundskeeping This is something that doesn't get mentioned much, but sucks up more of the budget then you'd think. I've attended multiple schools and I swear that a day didn't pass on my walk to class / my lab that I didn't see scaffolding somewhere to redo some part of some building / sculpture / landscaping feature.
JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
I get that people love the field, but if you're earning $25k a year and barely able to support yourself, maybe you should consider other opportunities in life than an adjunct professor. It's a shame that most of the higher education workforce is treated as disposable, and people shouldn't accept such employment terms and move onto areas where employees are better treated. Academia has a lot of bright, talented people that could easily transfer their skills to other industries.
- 8bitsrule 7y ago
  Good advice in many cases - although academia has never been much of an 'industry'. In Vojtko's case, she was an 80+ years old French teacher. How many 'other opportunities' would you suppose were open to her? Obviously her loyalty and long service were being taken for granted.
melling 7y ago
World population is going to 9 billion by 2050. There are plenty of people in the world who need an education.
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
  The delta of people that can afford an education looks like it will be negative, though. So unless some government (or group of wealthy individuals) sets up a philanthropic fund to educate the world, the outlook is bleak.
  - melling 7y ago
    Education used to be cheap. For some reason, it has outpaced inflation for the past 40 years and created the current problem. We could simply try to return the product we had in the 1960’s.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
      Historically, dating back to the origins of Oxford, one year's worth of tuition cost 50% of median wage, but one year's worth of books cost 2 years worth of wages, and one year of board cost 5 times median wage [1]. Anyone can take MIT and Harvard classes for free online. A quality education is basically free. Community colleges cost less than 1/2 of minimum wage per year. Just because people are spending more on education doesn't mean education is more expensive. [1] http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html
Pete-Codes 7y ago
I was seriously considering doing a PHD in Politics but I always knew there was a strong possibility of not getting a job and being pretty much unemployable/moving back in with my parents. So I said no to that! The problem is that colleges still regard themselves as educators and not job trainers, which most young people think of them as. I distinctly remember my politics lecturers telling us they weren't here to get us jobs but to teach us about politics. Which is maybe less problematic if college is free but obviously everyone wants a job after four years of study. The likes of bootcamps like Holberton School are the way forward. There is no skin in the game for universities. If a graduate doesn't get a job it doesn't affect them one iota. (ok, it doesn't look great for their job report but they can fudge that. ) Coding bootcamps for instance which only make money when their grads get a job are the way forward. They have their incentives aligned with the students. See this for an example: someone who was a broke artist did a coding bootcamp and is now a developer. But they would never have taken on the debt of a college degree because they weren't sure if they could get a job. The bootcamp gets them a job and if they are unsuccessful they don't pay anything. Bingo! https://www.nocsdegree.com/this-holberton-school-graduate-went-from-being-a-dancer-to-a-developer/ https://www.nocsdegree.com/this-holberton-school-graduate-we...
- drinfinity 7y ago
  He is not a developer. He fudges with scripts. Good luck bootcamping someone to engineer. Civil or otherwise.
- ericmay 7y ago
  > The problem is that colleges still regard themselves as educators and not job trainers I think the issue here is that employers have outsourced hiring validation steps to the university, and the university never has, nor should be a platform for training people for specific jobs. Why would you need to go to a 4-year university to become a business analyst when you learn those skills in the job? To me it makes sense that a university and its staff sees its mission as education and not job training, because that’s what it is. We need to find a way to change this and stop wasting resources and time. College for most people is a really expensive way to spend 4 years not doing a lot. It’s mostly signaling.
WhompingWindows 7y ago
In the age of free and quick information via search, the value of PhDs with extreme amounts of knowledge in niche academic fields has been nullified. If 99.999% of people will never need your dissertation, and your domain-specific knowledge facts are gained for free via 2 minutes of google-fu, why on Earth would you spend 7 years of your most productive years of life getting a PhD? PhD's may make sense in STEM fields, where you can parlay them into lucrative coding/analysis/strategic thinking jobs. But the vast majority of PhDs are text-based, humanities-adjacent...they are people "following their passion" and it's a colossal mistake. I'd 100 times over rather be a pianist or painter than an expert in medieval lore or obscure literature, at least my family and friends can appreciate a great painting or a wonderful piano piece. That's the kind of passion we should be following, not chasing obscure tomes in an ivory tower.
- Tyr42 7y ago
  Hey, that's still 70,000 people, which is a pretty good number for a dissertation.
- tgv 7y ago
  Your family and friends can listen to a recording on youtube. So much faster than studying the piano.
- carapace 7y ago
  There are ~7,000,000,000 humans but only ~100,000,000 are performing actually necessary work (farming, mining, teaching, mathematics, maintenance.) That leaves ~6,900,000,000 people with nothing crucial to do. Given that premise, I think it fine, just fine, if they want to e.g. study "medieval lore or obscure literature".
RickJWagner 7y ago
I have very mixed opinions about American college at this time. I find the system antiquated and full of butt-kissery, especially post-grad. Book sales are plainly a racket. I'm not sure how real the political hyperbole is, but it's concerning too. I'm all in favor of college campuses being a place of political passion and ideology, but it seems like it's completely one-sided, and that's bad if it's true. I hope MOOCs take firm footing and start to bring reform. I think it's overdue.
8bitsrule 7y ago
80+-year-old woman teaching eight courses as an adjunct for $25,000/year? No health insurance, no benefits? Wiki says: 9000+ students, $300M + in the endowment fund. Insights into the number of administrators and their pay are not so easy to find. NCAA Division I – A-10, NEC Clearly this school lost sight of its mission. Absolutely it's not alone.
jshaqaw 7y ago
In many cases the roles of teaching and research should be split. More tenured faculty - particularly in the humanities and social sciences - should focus 95%+ of their time and resources on teaching. There is so much overproduction of scholarly work that even specialists in niche fields barely read each others' papers.
sys_64738 7y ago
The 3-4 years you do a PhD are also years out of the workforce for making a good salary. If you do a PhD then you really want to consider its impact to your working life.
dang 7y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19677442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19677442 If a story has already had significant attention, reposts are dupes before a year has gone by. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

72 points by jseliger 7y ago

All true, but it slides by the main issue: what are all these Ph.D.'s going to do? In the post-WW2 era, when the percentage of high school graduates was going up, each professor could have several Ph.D. students go on to find jobs as professors. With no Baby Boom, and the percentage of high school graduates having flattened (which was always guaranteed to happen eventually), many fields don't have enough other options for people who get their Ph.D. In some fields, sure, there are corporate R&D centers or other places to put that to use, but in many fields, a job in academia is the only plausible place that Ph.D. students have in mind as their eventual destination, and there's just no way most of them can get a spot there. The universities shouldn't be relying on 2/3 or 3/4 adjunct professors, but they're doing it because they can, which is because the system as designed produces way more candidates for professorships than there are positions available.

yostrovs 7y ago
Do we really need to teach French to undergraduates that won't ever use it nor remember anything from these courses? My university also had a swimming requirement. Seems like more than half of the courses were not terribly useful or mind opening. Certainly since something valuable isn't being produced, the pay for producing that will be low.
- trianglem 7y ago
  Yes, I believe a well rounded education is important for a good populace.
- jimbob45 7y ago
  We don't need to dance around the fact that swimming and French courses are just moneymakers for universities. Sure, they may hold some value to the careers of some people, but it's hard to believe that the motivation for foisting them upon each student was wholly altruistic.
  - hindsightbias 7y ago
    With numbers like these, we should be foisting PE and nutrition on young adults: https://stateofchildhoodobesity.org/adult-obesity/ https://stateofchildhoodobesity.org/adult-obesity/
  - tzs 7y ago
    How is a swimming course a moneymaker?
- throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
  FWIW, I feel like being able to fall in water without dying is a useful skill Though college sounds like an odd place
- veilrap 7y ago
  Honestly, I think both foreign language training, and physical fitness ARE useful for keeping one's mind plasticity up and in turn having valuable downstream effects. The goal for university courses shouldn't be strictly specific skill training, but also requirements that force people outside their comfort zones, encouraging them to think it new ways and adapt their problem solving faculties to new domains.
  - coredog64 7y ago
    Foreign languages are harder to pick up the older you get. Starting one in college seems like a waste, and requiring it raises the bar unnecessarily. Physical fitness isn’t going to come from a swimming class. If you’re an adult, you’ll take care of your body because it’s the right thing.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - mumblemumble 7y ago
      > Foreign languages are harder to pick up the older you get. I don't buy that. I know plenty of people who've picked up languages all up and down the age range. What I do think is true is that people are more likely to pick up their first additional language at a younger age. And I think that that's probably just an result of selection bias: If you actually need to for some reason (e.g., one language spoken at home and another in public), then those conditions will apply more-or-less from birth, so you'll learn it at a young age. And if you enjoy language learning, then you'll probably figure that out at a fairly young age, and so you'll have learned your second language at a fairly young age. The people who're looking to learn their second language in their 30s or 40s, on the other hand, are likely to be less motivated in the first place, and therefore more likely to give up, or to be unwilling to put enough work into it to make consistent progress. There's also a sort of. . . I don't know if it's immortal time bias, but it's similar: You don't see as many people who learn a language at an older age exhibiting near-native levels of proficiency simply because the timeline doesn't work out that way. You just aren't going to be speaking like someone who's been using the language 16 hours a day for 20 years if you've only been using it 1 hour a day for 5 years. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is probably selling something with a subscription pricing scheme. I can also say, as a recreational language learner who is rapidly approaching middle age, that the real impediment to learning languages as you get older is not that you don't have a 6 year old's or teenager's brain anymore. It's that you have one or more 6 year olds or teenagers, and spending time with them is probably more fulfilling (or at least more important) than spending time with a pile of flashcards. Such is life. As far as the value of requiring them in university. . . Offer, yes, require, no. Not because 18 is too late to start learning a language, but because nobody who's only taking classes in a 2nd language because a few credits in such a class is required for graduation is going to get any real value out of the experience.
- Pete-Codes 7y ago
  I did Spanish at university and it's a skill I've got for life now.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Only in uni? I and many others did Spanish for 6 years from junior high into college, and remember barely any of it. Foreign language perhaps more than other topics, schooling is nearly useless compared to immersion.
    - trianglem 7y ago
      I really feel like schools should concentrate on conversational language skills before delving into any sort of grammar rules. A lot of the grammar rules end up sorting themselves out by “not sounding correct” when you speak the language.
- arethuza 7y ago
  So why choose to go to a university that does have more general classes if that's not what you want? Certainly the course (and indeed the university) I went to had no classes outside maths/CS/electrical-engineering and I sometimes think it would have been nice to have a bit more rounded education at that level.
- neuland 7y ago
  I agree with your point; there’s a lot of stuff taught in school that has limited or no usefulness to the average person. But swimming is not one of those. Everyone needs to know how to swim. Granted, college is a bit late to do it. There’s a good chance in your lifetime that you may involuntarily end up in the water. Say your car crashes into a lake. You fall off a bridge or dock. Your ferry or duck boat sinks. Etc. Learning to swim doesn’t take a ton of time and may very well save your life. Also you’re missing out on a bunch of possible fun / rewarding water activities.
- ng12 7y ago
  If I could re-do my college degree I would have taken as few computer science courses as possible. Most of the important stuff I picked up along the way anyways. It's the random classes like Japanese Lit and Organizational Behavior that have really had an impact over a decade later.
  - DamnYuppie 7y ago
    For me some of the most life impacting and eye opening courses were very random. My Islamic studies class was a view into another world and ignited my desire to travel. A child development course really drove home who we as adults are shaped by things that happened when we were very young and what impact and when parents have on their children.
- yardie 7y ago
  > Do we really need to teach French to undergraduates that won't ever use it... As most US universities and colleges currently teach? Certainly not. If we were to teach it as most language schools and most european universities teach it. Then, yes. It would be another skill. I took courses in Mandarin. While my spoken language is certainly rusty at this point it gave me an insight into East Asian history and culture that I would not have today.
chrisseaton 7y ago
> what are all these Ph.D.'s going to do? Get a job like anyone else would? Why must academia or industrial research be the only plausible options? After doing a PhD you can be a high school teacher, a soldier, an actor, start a company, go into politics, do whatever you want. Nothing’s stopping you! Most jobs just want capable educated people, and many vary diverse educational backgrounds.
- rb808 7y ago
  > After doing a PhD you can be a high school teacher, a soldier, an actor, start a company, go into politics, do whatever you want. Most PhDs dont want to do that stuff which is why they got a PhD in the first place.
  - blairbeckwith 7y ago
    That's tough. Not everyone who wants to be an actor gets to be an actor either. People have to settle for not fulfilling their dreams every day.
    - papito 7y ago
      Not to take this off track, but imagine how much more prone to taking risks we would be if we had guaranteed health insurance. No one wants to risk financial ruin and death in poverty. The "winners" usually come from old money and then just play with VC billions, never risking a dime, or at least not much.
      - blairbeckwith 7y ago
        I'm very fortunate to live in Canada, and can't imagine how much harder it would be to take risks in the states. When I left my stable job to pursue my own small business, my health wasn't even one of the factors I considered. I have never asked for details about health insurance prior tom accepting a job.
        7y ago
asdf21 7y ago
I feel like with the growing popularity of Online Courses these ratios will get even more skewed... What happens when the majority of courses at a University are pre-recorded sessions from years ago, with only minor updates from year to year?
- lazyguy2 7y ago
  If your goal is education there is no need to go to a university anymore. There really isn't even any need to attend K-12 schools. It may be better to go to formal physical schools, but it's no longer necessary. Not by a long shot. It's just going to take another few decades for society to adjust to the fact that university degrees are no longer really that valuable and figure out new ways to evaluate individual competency.
  - ImaCake 7y ago
    >If your goal is education there is no need to go to a university anymore. I think people underestimate how difficult it is to self study well enough to get an education like you can get from a (good) university program. Studying is hard! Maybe it is not so hard to learn a little bit. But to learn something with rigour and focus takes a lot of effort, especially if you have other problems to deal with as well. Aside from the value signalling of a degree, paid courses provide a strong motivation to do the uncomfortable and often unrewarding activity of studying. Source: my own experiences with self-study and a recently started Masters in Biostatistics by distance education, all while working casually or full time.
    - lonelappde 7y ago
      The value of a school (or alternative study arrangement) is in its reputation for educating students well, in the eyes of the students and employers. When reputable schools burn reputation faster than new schools build reputation, it's a broad social problem.
  - throwawaymath 7y ago
    For most people, a university is the most time-efficient method of gaining education in any given technical topic. It's not guaranteed to be the most cost-efficient, but I don't see a defensible argument that the resources of a university don't make it possible to learn faster than self-study, for the modal student. Discipline isn't the only obstacle for autodidacts. If nothing else, at a university you have professors, adjuncts and TAs with office hours who can help you learn something in a fraction of the time it would take to learn by studying a textbook or watching lectures online alone. For example, vanishingly few people manage to teach themselves an undergraduate math curriculum without going through university.
bonoboTP 7y ago
Why should we assume that all people who can get a PhD are fit to become profs? Arguably it's good that there's a larger pool of candidates from which the best can go further in academia (in fields where industry is not so attractive or existent). Setting aside whether the right criteria are used for career advancements or not, any meritocratic hierarchy is based on having more candidates on a lower lever compete to get into a smaller but higher level.
jseliger 7y ago
The universities shouldn't be relying on 2/3 or 3/4 adjunct professors, but they're doing it because they can Exactly: https://jakeseliger.com/2016/02/25/universities-treat-adjuncts-like-they-do-because-they-can https://jakeseliger.com/2016/02/25/universities-treat-adjunc... Many humanities and social science academics also show extreme anti-market bias, and it shows up in the essay.
- dmix 7y ago
  It’s also going to show up in their decision making which filters down to students. Such as widening the already massive disconnect from the economic reality of students (entering or choosing to continue university) and their ability to get jobs to pay for the heavily gov and academia incentivized cheap debt.
dekhn 7y ago
This problem happened recently; during the clinton administration the NIH budget was doubled and the number of bio PhDs increased dramatically... while the number of faculty positions did not. Many of those people ended up working as data scientists (because getting a quantitative bio PhD often give you the skills in the area). I certainly went through all this (wanted to be faculty) and ended up doing SWE and science work at a large internet company. In retrospect, though, I think I should have skipped the PhD and gone straight to tech.
briffle 7y ago
> The universities shouldn't be relying on 2/3 or 3/4 adjunct professors, but they're doing it because they can, which is because the system as designed produces way more candidates for professorships than there are positions available. And also because the accreditation process lets them. There are a handful of accreditation bodies in the US, and they certify schools. They look at education level of their instructors, but if they changed to also look at the employment classification because they decided it was better for the students to learn that way, you would see a huge change within a few years.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Adjunct means part time non-research. It doesn't mean bad teacher. Sure, many adjuncts are bad teachers, maybe more than full faculty are, but that should be measured by credentials and feedback metrics, not employment structure. I paid thousands of dollars for several out of touch tenured faculty who were not fluent in the language they taught in, and had some great adjunct professors.
pjc50 7y ago
To me the main issue is the wider one: what is the purpose of the university? Well, it's the keeping and reproduction of knowledge, which must be kept alive in the heads of a number of host bodies. But what is this knowledge for? Do we as a society actually want to know things? Because that's looking very much in question recently. There is also the historical (especially 1960s, but really this dates back to the Reformation) role of the university as a political hotbed. It is this which has come into conflict with the wider world, and it is this which has caused heavy commercial pressure to destroy the intellectual independence of the university and turn it into just a training facility.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  We've boomed, in The West, on the back of relatively cheap power, and abundance of resources both of which appeared initially to have little downside compared to the up. Society wants to rest there, not to face the future problems that power/resource usage has created. We'll need to face those problems. And as we progress that need will become ever more stark and ever less ignorable even for the rich. Knowledge will become fashionable again as its results - fixing the power deficit, the population explosion, the unwanted climatic changes - become demanded and crucially if they payoff. Then we'll all grow fat and comfortable again only to realise we forgot the lessons of the past.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    > Knowledge will become fashionable again as its results - fixing the power deficit, the population explosion, the unwanted climatic changes - become demanded and crucially if they payoff. The other alternative involves killing a lot of people, either actively or through neglect, which is far more popular than you might expect. This is the lesson of the global warming discussion, among others. Nobody wants to hear about problems, especially not when the solution involves changing their lifestyle. It's far easier to just deny. Truth in that environment is a threat.
- AndrewKemendo 7y ago
  In fact I think we entered a new counter-enlightenment. That is, over the last decade the zeitgeist has increasingly shown religious-like behavior and increased support for authoritarianism, rather than the Kant/Descartes style philosophy of thought.
ssalazar 7y ago
Academia could do a much better job clarifying expectations for prospective PhD students, for instance what percentage of a department's graduates go to research universities, to teaching colleges, to industry, etc. But there might be fewer applicants when people do the math and realize theres maybe 1 desirable academic job opening for every 10 students. To the point stressed to death in another thread, sure you could go get another job that has nothing to do with your PhD, but many people see graduate education as a career step, not a lifestyle choice.

adamnemecek 7y ago

A big part of the problem is "infinite growth" assumption.

lazyguy2 7y ago

Long term the current university system is dead. I expect that some universities will exist for another hundred years, but not in it's current form. Previous decades you had to go to a university to get access to resources that simply didn't exist in the rest of the world. Large libraries, labs, lectures, etc etc. Nowadays the internet can provide vastly superior resources then any Library for the most part. Sure there are lots of stuff not yet on there, but that issue that isn't going to exist forever. Quality courses exist for free. Lots of others are available for hundreds were at colleges they cost thousands. Access to experts is something you can pay for. Don't need to spend hundreds of dollars on books. Can concentrate on what is important to you and you can go at your own pace. People who want to network and peers can still have access to one another through meetups and online messaging. etc etc. K-12 education is terrible for most people. You can get far superior education for your children by simply enrolling them in Khan institute and hiring tutors for subjects you are not great on. People think you need to government to solve the cost of education, meanwhile individuals and companies have reduced the cost of education to nearly zero in most cases. Just won't get those special degree certificates that everybody covets. But that won't last forever either.

api 7y ago
Degrees, especially from prestigious schools, have become a kind of writ of noble title that can be purchased. Systems like that can be very sticky. Everyone who has one has a vested interest in preserving their value (like taxi medallions) and HR people can easily use them as a shortcut to hiring decisions that they'll never look dumb for making. The latter is the "nobody ever got fired for..." effect. The only thing that will break this is if demand for labor exceeds supply, forcing employers to hire outside traditional parameters.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- lazyguy2 7y ago
  > The only thing that will break this is if demand for labor exceeds supply, forcing employers to hire outside traditional parameters. I don't think that is the "only thing". Many employers look for degrees because they are seen as valuable. But they are not necessarily valuable in the most obvious way. A lot of time people are not really interested in what you went to school for at all. The are only interested if you have a degree or not. This signals to employers that they are interviewing somebody that is willing to make major personal commitments and defer reward for years for POTENTIAL gain. There is no guarantees that spending 10's of thousands of dollars will result in a good job. People who pay for degrees are hoping this is true. A employer can take advantage of these people easily. If I needed somebody to just be a cog in a corporate machine and I know that they are wiling to work their ass off and make huge personal commitments on the PROMISE of future pay... then that is awesome. I know they will work their ass off and make huge sacrifices for years and I really don't have to pay them that much at all to do it. And I know that their debt will keep them scared and living paycheck to paycheck so they are not going to want to risk unemployment because of how devastating this is financially. This is why when I am looking for jobs and employers make hard demands on educational certificates that they are probably assholes. It's fine to want degrees, but they are not willing to take professional experience as a alternative then that is a huge red flag. Yeah it's sticky, but you can't expect the current situation to last forever.

dr_dshiv 7y ago

I'd be a big fan of giving anyone with a PhD a small social stipend and means-tested health insurance. It's much cheaper than other universal basic income proposals.

fennecfoxen 7y ago
What makes this a good idea?
- tnel77 7y ago
  I’m curious if the “dr” in their username is a hint. It could that this is only a good idea to those who have a doctorate and would directly benefit from it.
  - dr_dshiv 7y ago
    It is totally possible that this only appeals to those with a PhD. And, perhaps there'd be an influx of students who just want to get a PhD so they can get 20k per year to survive. But somehow I doubt it.
- arkh 7y ago
  Let me guess: they have a PhD and would like to live hassle free.
  - dr_dshiv 7y ago
    For me, it's fine. I'm tenured and have a business. Most phds have and would continue to have meaningful employment.
- imgabe 7y ago
  I don't know that I would advocate this necessarily, but I can see the logic. If you have a PhD you've at least demonstrated that you have a passion for a particular field and you've been trained to conduct research in that field. Many PhDs would just want to do research in their field and would continue doing so as long as they can feed and house themselves. Societally, maybe many of these wouldn't produce anything "useful", but some percentage might develop some breakthrough in their field that would more than make up for paying for all the rest. Would it be better to have some PhD educated math prodigy working an unrelated job paying a median salary because there's nothing available in academia or if we just let that person work on their research all day, might they develop something that would be more useful? You could make the same argument for providing a universal basic income for everyone, but in the general population you're going to have a higher percentage of people who will just watch Netflix all day or whatever you consider to be a useless activity.

isthispermanent 7y ago

If universities aren't spending all this insanely high tuition on the actual educators, where exactly is it all going?

adamnemecek 7y ago
Administrators.
ronnier 7y ago
Administrators. Just like with most charities. I just looked at open jobs at Harvard. Here are some: Donor relations. Portfolio managers. Property operations. Director of student activities. Dean of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging. Chief Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Officer
ceejayoz 7y ago
Judging from local construction, cushier dorms and other residential facilities. It seems to be a bit of an arms race amongst the higher-end private institutions now.
walleeee 7y ago
As the article states: advertising, admissions, administration, non-academic student programming, athletics, etc. Much of this seems like cosmetic fluff, probably intended to attract students (also, wealthy parents). Go to almost any competitive university in the U.S. and look at the groundskeeping, the promotional materials put out by the administration, the proportion of campus infrastructure dedicated to whichever sport is most popular. The modern American university is as much a brand as any other large consumer-facing corporation.
- tnecniv 7y ago
  > groundskeeping This is something that doesn't get mentioned much, but sucks up more of the budget then you'd think. I've attended multiple schools and I swear that a day didn't pass on my walk to class / my lab that I didn't see scaffolding somewhere to redo some part of some building / sculpture / landscaping feature.

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago

I get that people love the field, but if you're earning $25k a year and barely able to support yourself, maybe you should consider other opportunities in life than an adjunct professor. It's a shame that most of the higher education workforce is treated as disposable, and people shouldn't accept such employment terms and move onto areas where employees are better treated. Academia has a lot of bright, talented people that could easily transfer their skills to other industries.

8bitsrule 7y ago
Good advice in many cases - although academia has never been much of an 'industry'. In Vojtko's case, she was an 80+ years old French teacher. How many 'other opportunities' would you suppose were open to her? Obviously her loyalty and long service were being taken for granted.

melling 7y ago

World population is going to 9 billion by 2050. There are plenty of people in the world who need an education.

onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
The delta of people that can afford an education looks like it will be negative, though. So unless some government (or group of wealthy individuals) sets up a philanthropic fund to educate the world, the outlook is bleak.
- melling 7y ago
  Education used to be cheap. For some reason, it has outpaced inflation for the past 40 years and created the current problem. We could simply try to return the product we had in the 1960’s.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
    Historically, dating back to the origins of Oxford, one year's worth of tuition cost 50% of median wage, but one year's worth of books cost 2 years worth of wages, and one year of board cost 5 times median wage [1]. Anyone can take MIT and Harvard classes for free online. A quality education is basically free. Community colleges cost less than 1/2 of minimum wage per year. Just because people are spending more on education doesn't mean education is more expensive. [1] http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html

Pete-Codes 7y ago

I was seriously considering doing a PHD in Politics but I always knew there was a strong possibility of not getting a job and being pretty much unemployable/moving back in with my parents. So I said no to that! The problem is that colleges still regard themselves as educators and not job trainers, which most young people think of them as. I distinctly remember my politics lecturers telling us they weren't here to get us jobs but to teach us about politics. Which is maybe less problematic if college is free but obviously everyone wants a job after four years of study. The likes of bootcamps like Holberton School are the way forward. There is no skin in the game for universities. If a graduate doesn't get a job it doesn't affect them one iota. (ok, it doesn't look great for their job report but they can fudge that. ) Coding bootcamps for instance which only make money when their grads get a job are the way forward. They have their incentives aligned with the students. See this for an example: someone who was a broke artist did a coding bootcamp and is now a developer. But they would never have taken on the debt of a college degree because they weren't sure if they could get a job. The bootcamp gets them a job and if they are unsuccessful they don't pay anything. Bingo! https://www.nocsdegree.com/this-holberton-school-graduate-went-from-being-a-dancer-to-a-developer/ https://www.nocsdegree.com/this-holberton-school-graduate-we...

drinfinity 7y ago
He is not a developer. He fudges with scripts. Good luck bootcamping someone to engineer. Civil or otherwise.
ericmay 7y ago
> The problem is that colleges still regard themselves as educators and not job trainers I think the issue here is that employers have outsourced hiring validation steps to the university, and the university never has, nor should be a platform for training people for specific jobs. Why would you need to go to a 4-year university to become a business analyst when you learn those skills in the job? To me it makes sense that a university and its staff sees its mission as education and not job training, because that’s what it is. We need to find a way to change this and stop wasting resources and time. College for most people is a really expensive way to spend 4 years not doing a lot. It’s mostly signaling.

WhompingWindows 7y ago

In the age of free and quick information via search, the value of PhDs with extreme amounts of knowledge in niche academic fields has been nullified. If 99.999% of people will never need your dissertation, and your domain-specific knowledge facts are gained for free via 2 minutes of google-fu, why on Earth would you spend 7 years of your most productive years of life getting a PhD? PhD's may make sense in STEM fields, where you can parlay them into lucrative coding/analysis/strategic thinking jobs. But the vast majority of PhDs are text-based, humanities-adjacent...they are people "following their passion" and it's a colossal mistake. I'd 100 times over rather be a pianist or painter than an expert in medieval lore or obscure literature, at least my family and friends can appreciate a great painting or a wonderful piano piece. That's the kind of passion we should be following, not chasing obscure tomes in an ivory tower.

Tyr42 7y ago
Hey, that's still 70,000 people, which is a pretty good number for a dissertation.
tgv 7y ago
Your family and friends can listen to a recording on youtube. So much faster than studying the piano.
carapace 7y ago
There are ~7,000,000,000 humans but only ~100,000,000 are performing actually necessary work (farming, mining, teaching, mathematics, maintenance.) That leaves ~6,900,000,000 people with nothing crucial to do. Given that premise, I think it fine, just fine, if they want to e.g. study "medieval lore or obscure literature".

RickJWagner 7y ago

I have very mixed opinions about American college at this time. I find the system antiquated and full of butt-kissery, especially post-grad. Book sales are plainly a racket. I'm not sure how real the political hyperbole is, but it's concerning too. I'm all in favor of college campuses being a place of political passion and ideology, but it seems like it's completely one-sided, and that's bad if it's true. I hope MOOCs take firm footing and start to bring reform. I think it's overdue.

8bitsrule 7y ago

80+-year-old woman teaching eight courses as an adjunct for $25,000/year? No health insurance, no benefits? Wiki says: 9000+ students, $300M + in the endowment fund. Insights into the number of administrators and their pay are not so easy to find. NCAA Division I – A-10, NEC Clearly this school lost sight of its mission. Absolutely it's not alone.

jshaqaw 7y ago

In many cases the roles of teaching and research should be split. More tenured faculty - particularly in the humanities and social sciences - should focus 95%+ of their time and resources on teaching. There is so much overproduction of scholarly work that even specialists in niche fields barely read each others' papers.

sys_64738 7y ago

The 3-4 years you do a PhD are also years out of the workforce for making a good salary. If you do a PhD then you really want to consider its impact to your working life.

dang 7y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19677442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19677442 If a story has already had significant attention, reposts are dupes before a year has gone by. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html