5 ms·

Students: You are probably not Mark Zuckerberg, so pay $200,000 to put up with old-fashioned syllabi and badly-designed courses employing poor methods of evalua

Students: You are probably not Mark Zuckerberg, so pay $200,000 to put up with old-fashioned syllabi and badly-designed courses employing poor methods of evaluation and professors who do their best to make feel as mediocre as possible!

TomOfTTB 16y ago
And that's really the question as far as I'm concerned. I think the author would be unquestionably right 10 years ago. But as Universities have become more self aggrandizing in what they teach the value of that education has gone down to the point where people are now questioning whether an education is worth it at all. I mean 10 years from now will a college education be devalued to the point of not being worth what you paid for it? I don't know the answer to that but if I were giving the advice I'd tell students to try the startup community while attending an accredited online institution. You could spend a few hours a week doing that and have a degree in 6 years while still chasing your startup dreams.
fleitz 16y ago
Those that can do, those that can't, teach, and those that can't teach get tenure. If this guy was an econ professor at least he would know he was just talking his book. You don't need a symposium on entrepreneurship you need to sell stuff at a higher price than you bought it to paying customers. Thats it, it's a sentence not a 2 year degree program.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- tensor 16y ago
  Those that can do, those that can't, teach, and those that can't teach get tenure. This is an extremely ignorant and insulting statement. Further, you have just asserted that the worlds best minds, and many of histories great figures, are all incapable fools. I hope you realize how this statement makes you look.
  - fleitz 16y ago
    I would posit that "worlds best minds, and many of histories great figures" are revered for what they did and not what they taught, nor their positions of tenure. Did Einstein have tenure or a teaching position when he discovered relativity? Point out to me those revered figures of history known primarily for their teaching or tenure positions. The worthlessness of the university system is exemplified by people like the Admissions Dean of MIT who was able to perform magnificently at her job sans the appropriate degree. The degree obviously being so unimportant to MIT to even bother checking that she had it for some 30 odd years. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/us/27mit.html http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/us/27mit.html The statement is insulting only to those who hold their degree / teaching position as part of their identity which is supposed to be some kind of proxy for them knowing / being able to do something. I greatly respect the capable, the intelligent, and the driven, what I don't think is that having a teaching position / tenure is a great proxy for knowing that.
    - tensor 16y ago
      You do realize that you cannot get tenure without publishing many, many, relevant pieces of work, right? You also realize that to teach something you need to really understand it, correct? On the other hand, you can certainly apply knowledge without understanding it. Your statement is insulting to anyone who values knowledge, teaching it, and pursuing it. Perhaps you are not a native english speaker, but your statement is very easy to read as implying that only those who cannot do [what? research? engineering?] teach, and only those who are lousy teachers get tenure. It is an indefensible position and your obvious hostility towards modern academia is unjustified. For one academics don't necessarily want to teach. But as a society we deemed that we will in essence force them to. Why? We need good teachers and goodness knows industry won't waste money on it, let alone have any sort of quality control. So we force these people who have devoted their lives to research to also teach. As for tenure, it is often attacked as something protecting poor researchers. I think this notion is very much overblown. In modern times you cannot even get tenure before you are 35 or 40. If you look at those with tenure, the majority continue to do good work for the remainder of their careers. That aside, the main purpose of tenure is actually to protect the pursuit of knowledge. It exists to prevent management from dictating what people may research. It is to allow researchers to pursue risky or unpopular approaches. Academics do what they do because they primarily enjoy research. Insinuating that they are incapable of doing this simply because they also teach and are granted the protection of tenure is very insulting.
dr_ 16y ago
Amen. Whereas graduate studies in certain disciplines can help advance your career, the basic undergraduate curriculum has become increasingly useless. Work experience is what counts for more than anything. Ideally you would attend a reasonably priced institution with good teachers and be given enough time to explore independent projects - business ideas or artistic pursuits depending on what your interests in life are. For tech, something like Y Combinator, sponsored by the University perhaps, should be a part of every campus scene and students should be given the time to launch projects on the side. Many will fail, but the lessons learned will still be invaluable in life. This is how we will remain an economic powerhouse and create the next generation of leaders.
- arethuza 16y ago
  "basic undergraduate curriculum has become increasingly useless" Why do you think that has happened? From my perspective (I graduated over 20 years ago) things like CS degrees seem to have been tried to become far more directly useful by becoming rather more like vocational training than pure academic subjects. [NB I'm largely interested because I have a son who is starting to think about what he might do at University].
  - araneae 16y ago
    Well I think the problem is the way the job market has changed, not the way that the curricula have changed; they've remained remarkably static. It used to be that if you had a college degree in something you could get an entry level position in... something. Nowadays you have to have had some sort of vocational training in that field. If you have a degree in history there aren't many fields that applies to. And the problem in C.S. isn't that C.S. programs aren't teaching advanced algorithms well, it's that all the job listings want you to know RoR. Computer science != programming, as my C.S. Ph.d. friends like to frequently point out. You could (theoretically) get a graduate degree in C.S. without ever opening your text editor, if you're into proofs and the like.
    - arethuza 16y ago
      "You could (theoretically) get a graduate degree in C.S. without ever opening your text editor, if you're into proofs and the like." Other than to edit your LaTeX document files, or course! :-)
arethuza 16y ago
It does rather depends where you are - there is a fair amount of outrage in the UK because Oxford and Cambridge have said that they may increase their fees to £9000 a year. [Edit: £9000 is the fee for EU citizens, probably a good bit more for anyone else]
- jazzyb 16y ago
  > It does rather depends where you are Indeed. If you make decent high school grades in the states, then it's possible to attend a state university on scholarship and owe less (perhaps much less) than $20K in school loans after graduation.
  - arethuza 16y ago
    If you are Scottish and attending a University here in Scotland then you pay zero fees. [NB I actually don't think this is very fair]
araneae 16y ago
The thing is, you are mediocre.
- icandoitbetter 16y ago
  So what? Why live your life with that perspective? There's absolutely nothing good coming out of having the belief that you are mediocre, notwithstanding whether you actually are or not.
  - araneae 16y ago
    The consequences are that if you don't understand this and drop out of school to become a programming rockstar, you might be in rough shape... which I believe was the point of the article.

TomOfTTB 16y ago

And that's really the question as far as I'm concerned. I think the author would be unquestionably right 10 years ago. But as Universities have become more self aggrandizing in what they teach the value of that education has gone down to the point where people are now questioning whether an education is worth it at all. I mean 10 years from now will a college education be devalued to the point of not being worth what you paid for it? I don't know the answer to that but if I were giving the advice I'd tell students to try the startup community while attending an accredited online institution. You could spend a few hours a week doing that and have a degree in 6 years while still chasing your startup dreams.

fleitz 16y ago

Those that can do, those that can't, teach, and those that can't teach get tenure. If this guy was an econ professor at least he would know he was just talking his book. You don't need a symposium on entrepreneurship you need to sell stuff at a higher price than you bought it to paying customers. Thats it, it's a sentence not a 2 year degree program.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
tensor 16y ago
Those that can do, those that can't, teach, and those that can't teach get tenure. This is an extremely ignorant and insulting statement. Further, you have just asserted that the worlds best minds, and many of histories great figures, are all incapable fools. I hope you realize how this statement makes you look.
- fleitz 16y ago
  I would posit that "worlds best minds, and many of histories great figures" are revered for what they did and not what they taught, nor their positions of tenure. Did Einstein have tenure or a teaching position when he discovered relativity? Point out to me those revered figures of history known primarily for their teaching or tenure positions. The worthlessness of the university system is exemplified by people like the Admissions Dean of MIT who was able to perform magnificently at her job sans the appropriate degree. The degree obviously being so unimportant to MIT to even bother checking that she had it for some 30 odd years. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/us/27mit.html http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/us/27mit.html The statement is insulting only to those who hold their degree / teaching position as part of their identity which is supposed to be some kind of proxy for them knowing / being able to do something. I greatly respect the capable, the intelligent, and the driven, what I don't think is that having a teaching position / tenure is a great proxy for knowing that.
  - tensor 16y ago
    You do realize that you cannot get tenure without publishing many, many, relevant pieces of work, right? You also realize that to teach something you need to really understand it, correct? On the other hand, you can certainly apply knowledge without understanding it. Your statement is insulting to anyone who values knowledge, teaching it, and pursuing it. Perhaps you are not a native english speaker, but your statement is very easy to read as implying that only those who cannot do [what? research? engineering?] teach, and only those who are lousy teachers get tenure. It is an indefensible position and your obvious hostility towards modern academia is unjustified. For one academics don't necessarily want to teach. But as a society we deemed that we will in essence force them to. Why? We need good teachers and goodness knows industry won't waste money on it, let alone have any sort of quality control. So we force these people who have devoted their lives to research to also teach. As for tenure, it is often attacked as something protecting poor researchers. I think this notion is very much overblown. In modern times you cannot even get tenure before you are 35 or 40. If you look at those with tenure, the majority continue to do good work for the remainder of their careers. That aside, the main purpose of tenure is actually to protect the pursuit of knowledge. It exists to prevent management from dictating what people may research. It is to allow researchers to pursue risky or unpopular approaches. Academics do what they do because they primarily enjoy research. Insinuating that they are incapable of doing this simply because they also teach and are granted the protection of tenure is very insulting.

dr_ 16y ago

Amen. Whereas graduate studies in certain disciplines can help advance your career, the basic undergraduate curriculum has become increasingly useless. Work experience is what counts for more than anything. Ideally you would attend a reasonably priced institution with good teachers and be given enough time to explore independent projects - business ideas or artistic pursuits depending on what your interests in life are. For tech, something like Y Combinator, sponsored by the University perhaps, should be a part of every campus scene and students should be given the time to launch projects on the side. Many will fail, but the lessons learned will still be invaluable in life. This is how we will remain an economic powerhouse and create the next generation of leaders.

arethuza 16y ago
"basic undergraduate curriculum has become increasingly useless" Why do you think that has happened? From my perspective (I graduated over 20 years ago) things like CS degrees seem to have been tried to become far more directly useful by becoming rather more like vocational training than pure academic subjects. [NB I'm largely interested because I have a son who is starting to think about what he might do at University].
- araneae 16y ago
  Well I think the problem is the way the job market has changed, not the way that the curricula have changed; they've remained remarkably static. It used to be that if you had a college degree in something you could get an entry level position in... something. Nowadays you have to have had some sort of vocational training in that field. If you have a degree in history there aren't many fields that applies to. And the problem in C.S. isn't that C.S. programs aren't teaching advanced algorithms well, it's that all the job listings want you to know RoR. Computer science != programming, as my C.S. Ph.d. friends like to frequently point out. You could (theoretically) get a graduate degree in C.S. without ever opening your text editor, if you're into proofs and the like.
  - arethuza 16y ago
    "You could (theoretically) get a graduate degree in C.S. without ever opening your text editor, if you're into proofs and the like." Other than to edit your LaTeX document files, or course! :-)

arethuza 16y ago

It does rather depends where you are - there is a fair amount of outrage in the UK because Oxford and Cambridge have said that they may increase their fees to £9000 a year. [Edit: £9000 is the fee for EU citizens, probably a good bit more for anyone else]

jazzyb 16y ago
> It does rather depends where you are Indeed. If you make decent high school grades in the states, then it's possible to attend a state university on scholarship and owe less (perhaps much less) than $20K in school loans after graduation.
- arethuza 16y ago
  If you are Scottish and attending a University here in Scotland then you pay zero fees. [NB I actually don't think this is very fair]

araneae 16y ago

The thing is, you are mediocre.

icandoitbetter 16y ago
So what? Why live your life with that perspective? There's absolutely nothing good coming out of having the belief that you are mediocre, notwithstanding whether you actually are or not.
- araneae 16y ago
  The consequences are that if you don't understand this and drop out of school to become a programming rockstar, you might be in rough shape... which I believe was the point of the article.