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I have been thinking about this lately. It started a while back when someone was asking me about which data science programs they were considering was best. I

I have been thinking about this lately. It started a while back when someone was asking me about which data science programs they were considering was best. I suggested NYU because of LeCun. Then recently I was discussing how having Google on your resume is a bit like having an ivy league university on your resume. That got me thinking, a huge part of the reason why some people fight/pay to get into the best universities is so they can get into the best companies. Isn't the university just a middle man at this point? Then my next thoughts are mostly along the lines in what is discussed in this article.

pattusk 6y ago
Isn't that exactly what universities (at least top universities) are and always have been? If you wanted to be a top cleric in the middle ages, you'd study in a university with the best manuscripts, the best scholars and the best clergy connections. Whether you want to get into tech, academia or government you will try to get into the best universities because they have the best alumni network, the best resources and the best name recognition. Now of course this only applies to extremely ambitious people (I don't think being ambitious is necessarily a good thing). Plenty of people are fine working at a regional bank. Plenty of people are fine living a simple, stable life in a local government administration. Those jobs can even be attractive to ambitious people, if you're a first generation immigrant from a dirt-poor background, a stable local government job with decent pay and benefits is certainly something worth striving for. For such people a local community college will provide just the same level of knowledge and skills they'd get at a big name university. I can't quite put my fingers on what's wrong with the article, but it rings to me as the perspective of someone who's only familiar with fancy colleges and has little knowledge (or care) for what actually goes on and who actually goes to smaller institutions.
- pharke 6y ago
  There are two different pursuits tangled up in this. One is seeking money and prestige and the other is seeking knowledge. They are confused because in order to earn money you often need at least a modicum of specialised knowledge and prestige requires at least some proximity to or appearance of it. Conversely, pursuing knowledge requires you to acquire money to fund your endeavors and needs enough prestige to attract others to your cause. They are bound closely together but they are not the same thing.
watwut 6y ago
> Isn't the university just a middle man at this point? It is party credentialing, partly middle man, but I personally learned a lot and I think going to university gave me a lot. Then again, I live in a place where I did not had to go into lifelong debt for it. We dont know how to do good online education yet. The biggest problem seem to be that people get demotivated and drop up in much higher rates then when they go to same course in person. But even if we would, I dont think online education will solve problem of student debt. That did not happened because it would be impossible to provide affordable education or impossible to hire people from cheaper universities. The same pressures and systems that made in person education expensive, the same system that greatly favors students from few universities for prestigious positions will make online learning have the same problems.
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  > Then again, I live in a place where I did not had to go into lifelong debt for it. The average Bachelor’s graduate in the US has $38K in debt the day they graduate. If you go in state to a state school you will on average pay even less. If you don’t get an expensive graduate degree in a field with no jobs you’re not going to be swimming in debt.
  - watwut 6y ago
    Afaik, biggest issue have people who did not gained degree. When they drop out, either because it is too hard or because they have personal problems or because they just don't feel like studying, they end up with debt and no degree. The actual issue of "picked obviously bad degree with no jobs" is rather small. Most students go for practically sounding degree.
keiferski 6y ago
If the only purpose of becoming educated is to get a high-paying job, then sure. If the purpose of education is to learn something about the world, become an informed citizen, and contribute to (or at the very least, become aware of) human intellectual, scientific and artistic achievements, then no, a tech company isn’t much of a substitute. Unfortunately these two things have been conflated, lowering the value of both. Personally I would like to see the university split into two: one half technical education based on economic needs, the other half focused on educating people. St. John’s in Annapolis / Santa Fe seems like a good model for the latter. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John's_College_(Annapolis/Santa_Fe) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John's_College_(Annapoli...
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  Education for its own sake has always been a minority passion. Remember, universities started as trade schools for the clergy and then added trade schools for lawyers and physicians centuries before anything else. Conflating real education with job training and certification of intelligence and conscientiousness does not lower the value of education but it does make training and certification easier to sell by adding some of the lustre and prestige of scholarship to trade. This is to education’s benefit. Without it there would be many fewer people studying fields with no jobs or very few like the Studies, Psychology or Physics. There will always be those whose parents can afford to spend a lot of money on a finishing school. Everyone else will need to get a job and there’s not going to be much support for subsidizing that from those whose children aren’t going to attend.
  - keiferski 6y ago
    Flaws in this line of reasoning: 1. Providing a well-rounded education is somehow impossibly expensive, whether with modern communication technologies like the Internet or paper books. Surely the solution is to make this education cheaper, not to simply get rid of it? 2. Ignoring the fact that a democracy doesn't work if citizens aren't educated. Quoting The Great Books of the Western World: This answer...assumes that we can leave all intellectual activity, and all political responsibility, to somebody else and live our lives as vegetable beneficiaries of the moral and intellectual virtue of other men. The trouble with this assumption is that, whereas it was once possible, and even compulsory, for the bulk of mankind, such indulgence now, on the part of anybody, endangers the whole community. It is now necessary for everybody to try to live, as Ortega says, "at the height of his times." The democratic enterprise is imperiled if any one of us says, "I do not have to try to think for myself, or make the most of myself, or become a citizen of "the world republic of learning."

pattusk 6y ago

Isn't that exactly what universities (at least top universities) are and always have been? If you wanted to be a top cleric in the middle ages, you'd study in a university with the best manuscripts, the best scholars and the best clergy connections. Whether you want to get into tech, academia or government you will try to get into the best universities because they have the best alumni network, the best resources and the best name recognition. Now of course this only applies to extremely ambitious people (I don't think being ambitious is necessarily a good thing). Plenty of people are fine working at a regional bank. Plenty of people are fine living a simple, stable life in a local government administration. Those jobs can even be attractive to ambitious people, if you're a first generation immigrant from a dirt-poor background, a stable local government job with decent pay and benefits is certainly something worth striving for. For such people a local community college will provide just the same level of knowledge and skills they'd get at a big name university. I can't quite put my fingers on what's wrong with the article, but it rings to me as the perspective of someone who's only familiar with fancy colleges and has little knowledge (or care) for what actually goes on and who actually goes to smaller institutions.

pharke 6y ago
There are two different pursuits tangled up in this. One is seeking money and prestige and the other is seeking knowledge. They are confused because in order to earn money you often need at least a modicum of specialised knowledge and prestige requires at least some proximity to or appearance of it. Conversely, pursuing knowledge requires you to acquire money to fund your endeavors and needs enough prestige to attract others to your cause. They are bound closely together but they are not the same thing.

watwut 6y ago

> Isn't the university just a middle man at this point? It is party credentialing, partly middle man, but I personally learned a lot and I think going to university gave me a lot. Then again, I live in a place where I did not had to go into lifelong debt for it. We dont know how to do good online education yet. The biggest problem seem to be that people get demotivated and drop up in much higher rates then when they go to same course in person. But even if we would, I dont think online education will solve problem of student debt. That did not happened because it would be impossible to provide affordable education or impossible to hire people from cheaper universities. The same pressures and systems that made in person education expensive, the same system that greatly favors students from few universities for prestigious positions will make online learning have the same problems.

barry-cotter 6y ago
> Then again, I live in a place where I did not had to go into lifelong debt for it. The average Bachelor’s graduate in the US has $38K in debt the day they graduate. If you go in state to a state school you will on average pay even less. If you don’t get an expensive graduate degree in a field with no jobs you’re not going to be swimming in debt.
- watwut 6y ago
  Afaik, biggest issue have people who did not gained degree. When they drop out, either because it is too hard or because they have personal problems or because they just don't feel like studying, they end up with debt and no degree. The actual issue of "picked obviously bad degree with no jobs" is rather small. Most students go for practically sounding degree.

keiferski 6y ago

If the only purpose of becoming educated is to get a high-paying job, then sure. If the purpose of education is to learn something about the world, become an informed citizen, and contribute to (or at the very least, become aware of) human intellectual, scientific and artistic achievements, then no, a tech company isn’t much of a substitute. Unfortunately these two things have been conflated, lowering the value of both. Personally I would like to see the university split into two: one half technical education based on economic needs, the other half focused on educating people. St. John’s in Annapolis / Santa Fe seems like a good model for the latter. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John's_College_(Annapolis/Santa_Fe) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John's_College_(Annapoli...

barry-cotter 6y ago
Education for its own sake has always been a minority passion. Remember, universities started as trade schools for the clergy and then added trade schools for lawyers and physicians centuries before anything else. Conflating real education with job training and certification of intelligence and conscientiousness does not lower the value of education but it does make training and certification easier to sell by adding some of the lustre and prestige of scholarship to trade. This is to education’s benefit. Without it there would be many fewer people studying fields with no jobs or very few like the Studies, Psychology or Physics. There will always be those whose parents can afford to spend a lot of money on a finishing school. Everyone else will need to get a job and there’s not going to be much support for subsidizing that from those whose children aren’t going to attend.
- keiferski 6y ago
  Flaws in this line of reasoning: 1. Providing a well-rounded education is somehow impossibly expensive, whether with modern communication technologies like the Internet or paper books. Surely the solution is to make this education cheaper, not to simply get rid of it? 2. Ignoring the fact that a democracy doesn't work if citizens aren't educated. Quoting The Great Books of the Western World: This answer...assumes that we can leave all intellectual activity, and all political responsibility, to somebody else and live our lives as vegetable beneficiaries of the moral and intellectual virtue of other men. The trouble with this assumption is that, whereas it was once possible, and even compulsory, for the bulk of mankind, such indulgence now, on the part of anybody, endangers the whole community. It is now necessary for everybody to try to live, as Ortega says, "at the height of his times." The democratic enterprise is imperiled if any one of us says, "I do not have to try to think for myself, or make the most of myself, or become a citizen of "the world republic of learning."