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Ya'll use University wrong. The classes, etc. ... whatever! During my time at Uni, I: * designed a demonstrator car frame to show off a bunch of new manufact

Ya'll use University wrong. The classes, etc. ... whatever! During my time at Uni, I: * designed a demonstrator car frame to show off a bunch of new manufacturing techniques, which was actually built in the end * was part of a team who tested a new type of fiber optical vibration sensor on a sounding rocket * worked with a PhD student on developing a sensor to measure water flow through a tank to validate his simulations * wrote code that is now orbiting earth on board of a CubeSat we built with a team of ~100 students We had groups who built race cars, a group who won ~all of the Hyperloop challenges, a group which builds rockets (seriously they have a lab in the basement of the cantina - the only rocket powered cantina in the world), a group that designs, builds and flies their own soaring planes (no-one died ... yet) - and that's just the ones I considered cool. All of this groups get access to top notch workshop and lab equipment and some of these groups are so present at their respective chairs that they end up driving a serious amount of the research happening there. University is a place where teachers and students who are interested in a field meet to learn and research together. Modern Uni has often forgotten that, but if the students treat it as such it works in this way. We have to tell students how they can get positive experiences out of the current system - by trying to do so, they will change the system from within. I honestly regret wasting my first couple of semesters before I learned about all of this stuff.

FriendlyNormie 6y ago
So you did a bunch of work for other people for free? You consider this an accomplishment?
_curious_ 6y ago
How could the essence of this comment been captured and communicated without running the risk of coming off as braggadocios?
- tams 6y ago
  It's fine as it is.
  - _curious_ 6y ago
    Didn't say it was, only a question, and AFAIK bragging is allowed here...but why is it the top comment? How does that work?
    - OGWhales 6y ago
      I’ve noticed newer comments (sometimes as new as 1 minute) can sometimes appear at the top and that may be in an effort to get people to participate with newer comments instead of people only seeing the stuff that was commented first. Not sure if that applies or even how the system works, just a thought
- AznHisoka 6y ago
  I didn’t view it as bragging. OP was just throwing out examples on how to best utilize an university.
  - CaptArmchair 6y ago
    I don't view it as bragging either. But it's still interesting to see a list of concrete things has achieved, yet only come to the rather vague conclusion that "University where you come together to learn and research". I think higher education is an opportunity shape a person during a crucial stage of their development as a young adult. It's a time when you get the opportunity to get exposed to many of different ideas, views and beliefs; to learn how to have a healthy debate and formulate a well-founded argument; it's a time to reflect on what you have learned thus far and what you will do with it in the near and far future. It's a time of start off discovering the world away from your parents and your guardians. To me, that's what higher education is about. It's that phase between adolescence and becoming an independent adult in your own right. I don't think that's something you can ever acquire by passively consuming content via the Internet. Some of the good and critical things do take time to learn and aren't really quantifiable.
  - MisterBastahrd 6y ago
    How many degree-granting universities do you think have access to this kind of funding and network? I'm guessing less than 5% in the US alone.
- turbinerneiter 6y ago
  It's meant to be a bit braggy insofar as to show off as how cool that time was. I am a very normal guy with no exceptional talents and intelligence. Also I am quite lazy. It was the opportunities I had and the people I met who enabled me to have this experiences. It's meant to be motivating to other youngsters to go try. That's why I sound a bit cheerleads as well ;)
Scarblac 6y ago
Which university was that?
- conjecTech 6y ago
  It's likely the Technical University of Munich based on the hyperloop piece. Though I had to do a double take because it sounded incredibly similar to some of my experiences at Georgia Tech. If you want to know the kinds of universities that do these kinds of things and do them well, its useful to look up some of the student design competitions and see who regularly attends. From recollection, MIT, CMU, Olin, Dolhousie University, Vanderbilt, IIT, RPI, Embry-Riddle, Harvey Mudd are a subset of the places where you can have this kind of experience.
  - tomonl 6y ago
    Sounds similar to Delft University of Technology too.
    - turbinerneiter 6y ago
      I know many of our teams compete and cooperate with Delft, seems like a cool place!
  - occamschainsaw 6y ago
    Go Jackets! Yes, technical schools (schools focussed on stem) offer a lot of such opportunities. The other side of the coin is if you don't have that inclination out of high school, you might miss out on such opportunities and vice versa.
  - turbinerneiter 6y ago
    TUM it is.
throwlogon 6y ago
For students who arrive at a university without already knowing these opportunities exist, it's not always apparent that they do exist and may be available to them.
- pjmorris 6y ago
  True. But it's even more difficult to participate if you don't go. Even my fractionally-aware stumble through the resources available at the universities I went to opened up doors that I didn't even know existed.
- markus92 6y ago
  They show these kind of things in freshman's week don't they?
- hobofan 6y ago
  Most of those sound like things that would usually be mentioned during Freshman orientation, so even if students don't know about all of them, they should be aware that those kinds of opportunities exist.
- turbinerneiter 6y ago
  The clubs are definitely advertising and trying to find new people. What people don't know is how good this stuff is, that they can actually get it done in parallel to the classes and how rewarding and educational it is. This is definitely something where kids with parents who went to uni have a benefit, since they will know more about how to navigate the system and about things like this. I didn't have this benefit, my parents never went to uni, but we had a lot of books and dad taught me to poke at everything :)
- neutronicus 6y ago
  If you pursue a non-software-engineering major, you will at the very least be forced to use expensive equipment in a required lab class.
- asdff 6y ago
  In recent years it has gotten a lot more obvious how massive the network effect is for undergrads. Anyone in stem knows to get research experience, and to bombard every professor's email in the department for a position, no matter what career they might end up with. In fact, at my uni there is fear that going online will result in students deferring for a year, since undergraduate surveys are overwhelmingly in favor of in person class, to the point of not paying tuition for online offerings and extending their degree plan as a result.
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
Your specific experience is great, and I'm glad for you. The point here, however, is what University is for all people, not just for individual cases like yours where things align nicely, and where maybe your own character and personality (and some of your professors and class mates) helped you get a meaningful experience out of it. My personal opinion is that the article is mostly right about what doesn't make sense for Universities in 2020. Many things are wrong, including providing access to it for ALL valuable students irrespective of income or wealth.
- pak9rabid 6y ago
  Or, more accurately, Universities don't make much sense for most applicants in 2020. For those that are willing to put in the time and effort building & researching things, it still sounds like a great experience. However, for those that are are simply seeking a piece of paper while doing the absolute minimum to graduate, yes, it's probably not for them.
- funcDropShadow 6y ago
  > The point here, however, is what University is for all people Traditionally, that was not true and still is not true in places like Germany. A university is the place where you can get the highest education of a field, or ideally where you study a field on your own. Both requires a lot of prerequisites that not everybody fulfills. I am talking about knowledge, ability to learn although something is not flashy, and the will to endure. And it should be like that, otherwise you loose the ability to train the brightest people of a society. For everybody else, there are applied universities, dual study programs, and well established and respected vocational training programs, here in Germany. Replacing universities with a netflix-esque experience may seem attractive to students, but is doomed to fail to train students. The question how much teachers should adapt to the wishes to their students is as old as learning itself. In the end the students have to trust, that a teacher knows which material to cover to teach students the desired skills, facts, and abilities. For an example of that, search your trusted video-streaming platform for the film Karate Kid. ;-)
  - battery423 6y ago
skosuri 6y ago
I agree whole heartedly with this comment. Until last year, my family and I lived in the undergrad dorms at UCLA (as a professor in residence). In the end the major thing I’d advise students to do is get involved. It might be research, but there are a million other things as well, and opportunities to explore these types of activities become a lot more rare after you leave college. I wonder if over the long term there might be a way to replace that experience too, because I agree with the OP that it’s the most valuable part.
maram 6y ago
> University is a place where teachers and students who are interested in a field meet to learn and research together. Modern Uni has often forgotten that. Universities are like venture capital investments...it’s that one single class that will matter the most. 1/10 classes will have the biggest impact on your life... It were the night courses at the Art Institute of Chicago for Walt Disney. It was the calligraphy class for Steve Jobs.
- Yhippa 6y ago
  This is an interesting way of thinking about this. There were definitely a few classes I took that really made an impression on me and changed the way I thought about things. There were also a lot of classes that were highly forgettable.
  - selimthegrim 6y ago
    Maybe time to bring the Little Blue Books back? https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mass-for-shutins-the-gin-and-tacos-podcast/e/71985859 https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mass-for-shutins-the-gin-an...
searine 6y ago
This is also a common stumble in an Art School setting. Art school is about giving you the time and materials to create art, not how to learn art from scratch. The same is true for STEM. University is an opportunity to do rather than just learn out of a book.
pjc50 6y ago
Yes, and it's this kind of thing that the commercial model of the university and the competitive model work against. When students see it as "I give you money and you give me the piece of paper which lets me into the elite", none of this happens.
OGWhales 6y ago
I think the issue is so many jobs require a college degree for no other purpose than further general education skills. I am of the opinion that public schooling needs to be extended to include these skills and then we still need higher education where the exact experiences you described are the main point. Far too many people go through college for no other reason than to get some degree, doesn’t even matter what degree. And it’s no surprise, as it’s much harder to find a decent job without any old college degree.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  There's an extremely old joke (like 100+ years old; I can't find the source atm) that goes something like: "US universities are the best high schools in the world". And it's true. It's not safe to assume that someone with only a high school education will be able to write well, do basic mathematics, etc. The high school grads who go on to teach themselves how to program are an extreme outlier. The entire US education system needs an overhaul. You can't really fix our university system without making corresponding reforms in K-12. A lot of it grounds out in trying to be overly egalitarian, realizing that doesn't work, and then hacking the system by introducing an honors/AP track. As a result, things are no longer egalitarian (the split between honors/AP and not-honors/AP happens freshman year or before). However, instead of having a gymnasium-like true high school liberal arts curriculum, we instead just moved some fairly boring college 101 courses into the last year or two high school. Which really isn't the right thing to do. We should now make the split explicit. And then, instead of teaching mediocre university 101 courses to the honors ("gymnasium"-like) students, simply study the high school material but at a much deeper level in the "honors" track. Then, the university system should split in a corresponding way, with non-honors students going to applied universities designed for them and honors students going to universities designed for them. NB: this split already de facto exists; there's a whole class of universities you can't get into without doing the honors/ap track in high school.
  - Melting_Harps 6y ago
    > The entire US education system needs an overhaul. You can't really fix our university system without making corresponding reforms in K-12. Sure you can, have an opt-out model for students like they have in Germanic countries by the time you're in your mid-teens and apprenticeships in a various crafts and professions to help them into working Life. It works really well, and prepares them for a life in a ROBUST manufacturing Industry, especially now as the West is finally trying to decouple form the CCP's horrible Human Right's violating dependence and corruption. I'd say outside of STEM there really isn't a need for most to go to a University campus, there really isn't. I often philosphized with grad students despite declining my honorary position in the department as I couldn't afford to deviate from my studies and debate moral ethics for fun, despite being promised a 'fast track' career in Law. I could enjoy music, without the theory or the knowledge behind it, and began to bedroom DJ, eventually I even got to meet and know what would later become really famous EDM composers from the UK by going to clubs and just talking to them on the forums and eventually going on the decks myself in a club. Many of them super eager to share their knowledge, some were classically trained, and did Master Class series for free on Youtube! I could go on, but I think most non-STEM degrees, and even the ones that don't require physical labs like Math or CS, can be moved to an Online model saving the resources for those that do require Laboratories and guided lectures and office hours for experimental designs and Scientific Journal publications. I'm sorry to say but if you go to University to study Classics, Theology or Music Theory (or any of the Arts really) you really are doing yourself a great disservice if Knowledge is your real aim as so many more opportunities exists outside of academia. And you aren't stifled by a curriculum that forces you to limit your breadth or understanding of a subject in order to fit a paradigm of what pretty amounts to a churn system trying to maximize its profit model to the detriment of what an Education should be.
Chathamization 6y ago
> University is a place where teachers and students who are interested in a field meet to learn and research together. It would be nice to have places like this open to the general public and not gated off like universities are. There are a lot of people who become interested in these things after university, people who didn't attend university that are interested in them, who were interested and involved in these things while they were in university but then drifted away from them, etc. It seems like we'd be better off trying to encourage the public at large to continually improve (and also connect more with their community and improve civil society) than acting like all of this should only exist in a 4 year window that many people aren't even a part of.
- turbinerneiter 6y ago
  Our University has a Makerspace that is frequent by a lot of people outside of University. The trainers for the machines and such are also not from University, but have gone through vocational training are experienced metal workers, wood workers, textile workers and so on. These interactions are definitely awesome for the students, to learn about their perspective, and the other people also gain insights in uni work, i.e. supporting students with prototypes for their thesis projects and so on. I definitely think University should be open for all people and there is a lot of cool things you could do if you attracted morn people from different backgrounds. When I ever move back to the countryside where I grew up, I definitely plan to start a Makerspace that combines an open workshop, a youth center (with tutoring), some low level research work. Actually, this conversation has me excited to go do that :)
  - ivan_ah 6y ago
    When you work on your project, please consider including a "library" component with selected materials and resources on various topics. I know you can get all the info on the internet, but sometimes a smaller, local selection of books/resources can go a long way to solve the information overload problem. If you get in touch with me by email, I can send you some links (math book recommendations and Kolibri Learning Platform which is like the best thing ever - works totally offline on localhost).
itronitron 6y ago
I'm guessing that for each of your bullet points listed you needed some initial set of technical skills, and that you had those skills before even arriving at University (otherwise the first semesters would not have been wasted.) I am curious whether there were any classes that you feel were more educational than these work experiences.
- turbinerneiter 6y ago
  I went to a technical high school, so I definitely came prepared, and I also learned a lot of useful skills during all my semesters in classes. I didn't mean that the classes were a waste of time, but I wish I had started doing extracurricular stuff earlier. It is true that the clubs usually do not have a lot of use for the 1. Semester people, as they don't have a lot of skills yet, but the bigger clubs have their own "course" system and will definitely invest in helping you develop. I actually think all my classes were useful and I am happy I had them. It just that they were not what was fun, motivating and special about my time at uni. My space engineering class was taught by an actual astronaut, so that was a definite highlight.
  - alexchantavy 6y ago
    Dang, sounds cool. Which university is this? Edit: saw below you said Technical University of Munich
Siira 6y ago
This experience is highly atypical. You can’t get this just by “treating” it differently. The current bullshit situation is a stable Nash equilibrium. Of course, if you should have certain advantages, you could sacrifice those and change your payoffs.
bsenftner 6y ago
You did it right, with deep engagement. I dropped out of high school to secretly enroll in college. I felt high school was a waste of time, plus my home state is overly Christian and I'm not. I did not care about a degree, I wanted an Education. As soon as I could, I went to Boston and just started taking classes anywhere I wanted with any class of interest. I started with Harvard Summer School and continued with Boston University and MIT for a period of 5 years. I got to participate in the early 3D graphics research community, was a part of DeVanney & Mandelbrot's team that wrote Beauty of Fractals, participated in the AI research of the time, wrote my own 3D animation language, and finally graduated B.U. one semester shy of 4 more undergraduate degrees. I just did what interested me until I was forced to graduate.
tech-historian 6y ago
TBH, college for me was about finding myself as a person. Being away from home for 4 years, I grew so much as a human being in numerous and incalculable ways. Being grouped with thousands of others I've never met before -- you learn "human" skills in a way that can't be taught online. Online education is great and all, but the crowd that argues that it is the end-all-be-all of learning is missing a key element of the experience.
- cultofmetatron 6y ago
  for the amount of money you probably spent, there are a dozen better ways of "finding yourself." I think about how much I spent over those 4 years. I could have travelled around the world during that time and come out of it with a much richer experience.
  - tech-historian 6y ago
    Education does cost too much, definitely. But in my case it led directly to a stable career path in ways that traveling the world could not. It set me up for life.
specialp 6y ago
I had the same experience regretting my early semesters before I discovered research. It is what most of the professors are most interested in anyway. Lectures where one is sitting in a hundred+ student hall listening should 100% be replaced by online. But more resources should be given to the higher value add like research and networking.
battery423 6y ago
You know, not everyone can study fulltime and take part in all other 'events'. Would be great if that would be the case though.
- turbinerneiter 6y ago
  Jup, Curriculum definitely has to be changed towards allowing more people to do that kind of stuff, also financial aid. I did work 8h per week through roughly all my time at uni. My grades sucked, tough. And some people had to work more to get enough money. I actually had enough help from my parents to need to work, but I liked the extra cash and experience. Helps that uni in Germany is basically free.
ghostbrainalpha 6y ago
You did use University correctly. But your example could just as easily been prison. Some people use prison to get off drugs, get an education, learn a job skill, develop a moral code and purpose. Something that can cost so much, and require such a huge time commitment shouldn't have such a high failure rate of people who fail to "figure out how to use it".
- turbinerneiter 6y ago
  Cool idea, prison is also cheaper and easier to get into.
  - dawg- 6y ago
    I'm not so sure, the high end prisons can get pretty competitive. A lifetime of violent behavior is certainly a lot of work
hinkley 6y ago
I went to a state school that still had one of the best CS programs around. Some decent teachers, a few great ones (and some noteworthy awful ones), and tons of under-subscribed hardware, and self-starters bouncing ideas off of each other. Most of the time you could find an unused computer to work on your own thing. Frequently you could find several contiguous ones for you and some friends. Some of the most capable people in my class were pulling B-C grades because they spent so much time working on their own projects instead of cramming for tests. I had hardware problems for four classes, but only one of those was a CS class, and by then I'd written enough code that I'd just shell into a machine to get a rough draft to compile, then spend a couple hours in front of the box debugging. Get an internship or programming job on campus, kids. Programming assignments are a lot easier once you've written real code.
newswasboring 6y ago
Actually, I would argue even your approach does not really represent the real utility of a university. My list includes 1. failed to start a startup about hardware tutorials in local languages 2. failed at productionizing a propeller display, they are pretty popular popular now. 3. failed at productionizing a gas sensors with high resolution The list of failures go on and on actually. But the real utility I had was the nice cozy university bubble where failure of projects isn't really ... accounted for.
Melting_Harps 6y ago
> University is a place where teachers and students who are interested in a field meet to learn and research together. Modern Uni has often forgotten that, but if the students treat it as such it works in this way. We have to tell students how they can get positive experiences out of the current system - by trying to do so, they will change the system from within. I agree with you that most do not take advantage of the opportunities that exist on some University campuses; personally speaking I had to do my Flow Cytometry training at the Scrip's Research Institute (where several Nobel Laureates were on staff) because my campus only had one FACScan on campus and it was often reserved months ahead of schedule. That the only time I ever sought anything from what my University offered and it failed to deliver. (I won't even talk about how hard it was to get into the lower/upper division classes for my Major, either.) And while this ended up being a good opportunity for me in the long run as it was both free for me as a local student it also helped me network for job interviews in the Industry, the truth this was happening at the same time I was working 40+ hours in catering as prep cook/chef. I couldn't afford to eat outside of work due to tuition/books obscenely high rent and had to stop attending on daily basis and set up a study group where we recorded lecture on voice recorders because gas shot up to $5+/gallon and many of us were struggling to keep up with expenses as we all worked. Hell, I showed up to my Microbiology final after an 11 hour service at a lunch and dinner banquet for AMD only hours before the exam and I had to tell my professor I needed to have a few drinks during the exam just to stay awake and he reluctantly accepted as he understood what I had to do for work. I think you HIGHLY underestimate how broken this situation really is because of your idealized experience, and you assume it is a choice to have to have our attention so grossly divided solely because of the economic distress it demands of some students. And this is mainly because University can charge what they do and has never come back to reasonable costs and they ultimately act as the gate keepers into most Industries and force you to contort your Life/Work to suit its demands unless you can afford to stay in University indefinitely. I hated University, mainly because 75% of it was a total waste of my Time, 15% was useful albeit dated (experimental designs based on 19 century reactions that have been refined and outsourced by Industry for a reason), and the other 10% was actually really worth it under really passionate professor(s) who actually gave a damn about the subject they taught. That's a horrible ratio for anything with such a high cost, in fact I saw exactly 1 single slide (that they even glossed over) in my entire undergrad for what I'd eventually do in my profession as a Lab Scientist in Diagnostics. This model has to be disrupted. Also, I didn't need a school to teach me how to wrench on cars. I began when I was 11 and even had a stint in professional motorsports as a privateer driver and worked on my own chassis while I was in University where ASE shop foremans and Race Team chief mechanics were recruiting mechanics from the pits during the bubble era; Motorsports was actually my desired profession and University was my plan B before the crises dried up any sponsorship opportunities in the financial crises. I still ended up in the Auto Industry working for VW/BMW/Nissan after I left the Sciences because of my experience back then. Had the Industry not been so wasteful and broken I might have stayed but I chose to go into Fintech and Culinary instead. My point being, is that University, and its severe costs, do not reflect the ever-changing Job Market (assuming it ever did) they act as vanguard for and for the costs and time demands it cannot be justified. Much less when you have such blatant corruption [1] staring at you in the face. Had I not been so multi-faceted in my skill-set I would have been like most of my Millennial cohort with tons of unpayable student debt and ever diminishing prospects in Life instead of the immensely rich career(s) that has spanned 4 different Industries that I can move between depending on the project(s). I'm a total outlier, and to be honest even though my opportunity at SpaceX in post COVID World didn't materialize and I have to go back to Supply Chain/Logistics in the end I still cannot believe most of it actually happened given what a f'd situation I had having gone to University and then being thrown into the abysmal Job Market in 2009. I really feel for those currently graduating in this Market, I really do. They're simply cannon fodder and will soon be forgotten in the news cycle just like we were back then. They'll know just how expendable they were seen as by this system really soon as they won't be able to pay their debts, which had already exceeded a Trillion+ Bubble in the US prior to COVID. 1: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-college-admissions-fraud-corruption-list-20190312-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-college-admissions...
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
Good for you. You were lucky enough to be in a program that had a firehose of resources (mostly money, but probably also high quality professors). There's only so many flagship programs at any given university. The overwhelming majority of people who get a BA or BS in a given field will not be that lucky. How many students to the top schools in a field graduate? How many do the rest graduate?
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  You could make this argument about anything in life. Everyone has good and bad breaks. The mistake is thinking that we can somehow create the same experience for everyone. The entire American experiment is based on individualism. We have to have some responsibility in our lives.

FriendlyNormie 6y ago

So you did a bunch of work for other people for free? You consider this an accomplishment?

_curious_ 6y ago

How could the essence of this comment been captured and communicated without running the risk of coming off as braggadocios?

tams 6y ago
It's fine as it is.
- _curious_ 6y ago
  Didn't say it was, only a question, and AFAIK bragging is allowed here...but why is it the top comment? How does that work?
  - OGWhales 6y ago
    I’ve noticed newer comments (sometimes as new as 1 minute) can sometimes appear at the top and that may be in an effort to get people to participate with newer comments instead of people only seeing the stuff that was commented first. Not sure if that applies or even how the system works, just a thought
AznHisoka 6y ago
I didn’t view it as bragging. OP was just throwing out examples on how to best utilize an university.
- CaptArmchair 6y ago
  I don't view it as bragging either. But it's still interesting to see a list of concrete things has achieved, yet only come to the rather vague conclusion that "University where you come together to learn and research". I think higher education is an opportunity shape a person during a crucial stage of their development as a young adult. It's a time when you get the opportunity to get exposed to many of different ideas, views and beliefs; to learn how to have a healthy debate and formulate a well-founded argument; it's a time to reflect on what you have learned thus far and what you will do with it in the near and far future. It's a time of start off discovering the world away from your parents and your guardians. To me, that's what higher education is about. It's that phase between adolescence and becoming an independent adult in your own right. I don't think that's something you can ever acquire by passively consuming content via the Internet. Some of the good and critical things do take time to learn and aren't really quantifiable.
- MisterBastahrd 6y ago
  How many degree-granting universities do you think have access to this kind of funding and network? I'm guessing less than 5% in the US alone.
turbinerneiter 6y ago
It's meant to be a bit braggy insofar as to show off as how cool that time was. I am a very normal guy with no exceptional talents and intelligence. Also I am quite lazy. It was the opportunities I had and the people I met who enabled me to have this experiences. It's meant to be motivating to other youngsters to go try. That's why I sound a bit cheerleads as well ;)

Scarblac 6y ago

Which university was that?

conjecTech 6y ago
It's likely the Technical University of Munich based on the hyperloop piece. Though I had to do a double take because it sounded incredibly similar to some of my experiences at Georgia Tech. If you want to know the kinds of universities that do these kinds of things and do them well, its useful to look up some of the student design competitions and see who regularly attends. From recollection, MIT, CMU, Olin, Dolhousie University, Vanderbilt, IIT, RPI, Embry-Riddle, Harvey Mudd are a subset of the places where you can have this kind of experience.
- tomonl 6y ago
  Sounds similar to Delft University of Technology too.
  - turbinerneiter 6y ago
    I know many of our teams compete and cooperate with Delft, seems like a cool place!
- occamschainsaw 6y ago
  Go Jackets! Yes, technical schools (schools focussed on stem) offer a lot of such opportunities. The other side of the coin is if you don't have that inclination out of high school, you might miss out on such opportunities and vice versa.
- turbinerneiter 6y ago
  TUM it is.

throwlogon 6y ago

For students who arrive at a university without already knowing these opportunities exist, it's not always apparent that they do exist and may be available to them.

pjmorris 6y ago
True. But it's even more difficult to participate if you don't go. Even my fractionally-aware stumble through the resources available at the universities I went to opened up doors that I didn't even know existed.
markus92 6y ago
They show these kind of things in freshman's week don't they?
hobofan 6y ago
Most of those sound like things that would usually be mentioned during Freshman orientation, so even if students don't know about all of them, they should be aware that those kinds of opportunities exist.
turbinerneiter 6y ago
The clubs are definitely advertising and trying to find new people. What people don't know is how good this stuff is, that they can actually get it done in parallel to the classes and how rewarding and educational it is. This is definitely something where kids with parents who went to uni have a benefit, since they will know more about how to navigate the system and about things like this. I didn't have this benefit, my parents never went to uni, but we had a lot of books and dad taught me to poke at everything :)
neutronicus 6y ago
If you pursue a non-software-engineering major, you will at the very least be forced to use expensive equipment in a required lab class.
asdff 6y ago
In recent years it has gotten a lot more obvious how massive the network effect is for undergrads. Anyone in stem knows to get research experience, and to bombard every professor's email in the department for a position, no matter what career they might end up with. In fact, at my uni there is fear that going online will result in students deferring for a year, since undergraduate surveys are overwhelmingly in favor of in person class, to the point of not paying tuition for online offerings and extending their degree plan as a result.

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

Your specific experience is great, and I'm glad for you. The point here, however, is what University is for all people, not just for individual cases like yours where things align nicely, and where maybe your own character and personality (and some of your professors and class mates) helped you get a meaningful experience out of it. My personal opinion is that the article is mostly right about what doesn't make sense for Universities in 2020. Many things are wrong, including providing access to it for ALL valuable students irrespective of income or wealth.

pak9rabid 6y ago
Or, more accurately, Universities don't make much sense for most applicants in 2020. For those that are willing to put in the time and effort building & researching things, it still sounds like a great experience. However, for those that are are simply seeking a piece of paper while doing the absolute minimum to graduate, yes, it's probably not for them.
funcDropShadow 6y ago
> The point here, however, is what University is for all people Traditionally, that was not true and still is not true in places like Germany. A university is the place where you can get the highest education of a field, or ideally where you study a field on your own. Both requires a lot of prerequisites that not everybody fulfills. I am talking about knowledge, ability to learn although something is not flashy, and the will to endure. And it should be like that, otherwise you loose the ability to train the brightest people of a society. For everybody else, there are applied universities, dual study programs, and well established and respected vocational training programs, here in Germany. Replacing universities with a netflix-esque experience may seem attractive to students, but is doomed to fail to train students. The question how much teachers should adapt to the wishes to their students is as old as learning itself. In the end the students have to trust, that a teacher knows which material to cover to teach students the desired skills, facts, and abilities. For an example of that, search your trusted video-streaming platform for the film Karate Kid. ;-)
- battery423 6y ago

skosuri 6y ago

I agree whole heartedly with this comment. Until last year, my family and I lived in the undergrad dorms at UCLA (as a professor in residence). In the end the major thing I’d advise students to do is get involved. It might be research, but there are a million other things as well, and opportunities to explore these types of activities become a lot more rare after you leave college. I wonder if over the long term there might be a way to replace that experience too, because I agree with the OP that it’s the most valuable part.

maram 6y ago

> University is a place where teachers and students who are interested in a field meet to learn and research together. Modern Uni has often forgotten that. Universities are like venture capital investments...it’s that one single class that will matter the most. 1/10 classes will have the biggest impact on your life... It were the night courses at the Art Institute of Chicago for Walt Disney. It was the calligraphy class for Steve Jobs.

Yhippa 6y ago
This is an interesting way of thinking about this. There were definitely a few classes I took that really made an impression on me and changed the way I thought about things. There were also a lot of classes that were highly forgettable.
- selimthegrim 6y ago
  Maybe time to bring the Little Blue Books back? https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mass-for-shutins-the-gin-and-tacos-podcast/e/71985859 https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mass-for-shutins-the-gin-an...

searine 6y ago

This is also a common stumble in an Art School setting. Art school is about giving you the time and materials to create art, not how to learn art from scratch. The same is true for STEM. University is an opportunity to do rather than just learn out of a book.

pjc50 6y ago

Yes, and it's this kind of thing that the commercial model of the university and the competitive model work against. When students see it as "I give you money and you give me the piece of paper which lets me into the elite", none of this happens.

OGWhales 6y ago

I think the issue is so many jobs require a college degree for no other purpose than further general education skills. I am of the opinion that public schooling needs to be extended to include these skills and then we still need higher education where the exact experiences you described are the main point. Far too many people go through college for no other reason than to get some degree, doesn’t even matter what degree. And it’s no surprise, as it’s much harder to find a decent job without any old college degree.

throwawaygh 6y ago
There's an extremely old joke (like 100+ years old; I can't find the source atm) that goes something like: "US universities are the best high schools in the world". And it's true. It's not safe to assume that someone with only a high school education will be able to write well, do basic mathematics, etc. The high school grads who go on to teach themselves how to program are an extreme outlier. The entire US education system needs an overhaul. You can't really fix our university system without making corresponding reforms in K-12. A lot of it grounds out in trying to be overly egalitarian, realizing that doesn't work, and then hacking the system by introducing an honors/AP track. As a result, things are no longer egalitarian (the split between honors/AP and not-honors/AP happens freshman year or before). However, instead of having a gymnasium-like true high school liberal arts curriculum, we instead just moved some fairly boring college 101 courses into the last year or two high school. Which really isn't the right thing to do. We should now make the split explicit. And then, instead of teaching mediocre university 101 courses to the honors ("gymnasium"-like) students, simply study the high school material but at a much deeper level in the "honors" track. Then, the university system should split in a corresponding way, with non-honors students going to applied universities designed for them and honors students going to universities designed for them. NB: this split already de facto exists; there's a whole class of universities you can't get into without doing the honors/ap track in high school.
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > The entire US education system needs an overhaul. You can't really fix our university system without making corresponding reforms in K-12. Sure you can, have an opt-out model for students like they have in Germanic countries by the time you're in your mid-teens and apprenticeships in a various crafts and professions to help them into working Life. It works really well, and prepares them for a life in a ROBUST manufacturing Industry, especially now as the West is finally trying to decouple form the CCP's horrible Human Right's violating dependence and corruption. I'd say outside of STEM there really isn't a need for most to go to a University campus, there really isn't. I often philosphized with grad students despite declining my honorary position in the department as I couldn't afford to deviate from my studies and debate moral ethics for fun, despite being promised a 'fast track' career in Law. I could enjoy music, without the theory or the knowledge behind it, and began to bedroom DJ, eventually I even got to meet and know what would later become really famous EDM composers from the UK by going to clubs and just talking to them on the forums and eventually going on the decks myself in a club. Many of them super eager to share their knowledge, some were classically trained, and did Master Class series for free on Youtube! I could go on, but I think most non-STEM degrees, and even the ones that don't require physical labs like Math or CS, can be moved to an Online model saving the resources for those that do require Laboratories and guided lectures and office hours for experimental designs and Scientific Journal publications. I'm sorry to say but if you go to University to study Classics, Theology or Music Theory (or any of the Arts really) you really are doing yourself a great disservice if Knowledge is your real aim as so many more opportunities exists outside of academia. And you aren't stifled by a curriculum that forces you to limit your breadth or understanding of a subject in order to fit a paradigm of what pretty amounts to a churn system trying to maximize its profit model to the detriment of what an Education should be.

Chathamization 6y ago

> University is a place where teachers and students who are interested in a field meet to learn and research together. It would be nice to have places like this open to the general public and not gated off like universities are. There are a lot of people who become interested in these things after university, people who didn't attend university that are interested in them, who were interested and involved in these things while they were in university but then drifted away from them, etc. It seems like we'd be better off trying to encourage the public at large to continually improve (and also connect more with their community and improve civil society) than acting like all of this should only exist in a 4 year window that many people aren't even a part of.

turbinerneiter 6y ago
Our University has a Makerspace that is frequent by a lot of people outside of University. The trainers for the machines and such are also not from University, but have gone through vocational training are experienced metal workers, wood workers, textile workers and so on. These interactions are definitely awesome for the students, to learn about their perspective, and the other people also gain insights in uni work, i.e. supporting students with prototypes for their thesis projects and so on. I definitely think University should be open for all people and there is a lot of cool things you could do if you attracted morn people from different backgrounds. When I ever move back to the countryside where I grew up, I definitely plan to start a Makerspace that combines an open workshop, a youth center (with tutoring), some low level research work. Actually, this conversation has me excited to go do that :)
- ivan_ah 6y ago
  When you work on your project, please consider including a "library" component with selected materials and resources on various topics. I know you can get all the info on the internet, but sometimes a smaller, local selection of books/resources can go a long way to solve the information overload problem. If you get in touch with me by email, I can send you some links (math book recommendations and Kolibri Learning Platform which is like the best thing ever - works totally offline on localhost).

itronitron 6y ago

I'm guessing that for each of your bullet points listed you needed some initial set of technical skills, and that you had those skills before even arriving at University (otherwise the first semesters would not have been wasted.) I am curious whether there were any classes that you feel were more educational than these work experiences.

turbinerneiter 6y ago
I went to a technical high school, so I definitely came prepared, and I also learned a lot of useful skills during all my semesters in classes. I didn't mean that the classes were a waste of time, but I wish I had started doing extracurricular stuff earlier. It is true that the clubs usually do not have a lot of use for the 1. Semester people, as they don't have a lot of skills yet, but the bigger clubs have their own "course" system and will definitely invest in helping you develop. I actually think all my classes were useful and I am happy I had them. It just that they were not what was fun, motivating and special about my time at uni. My space engineering class was taught by an actual astronaut, so that was a definite highlight.
- alexchantavy 6y ago
  Dang, sounds cool. Which university is this? Edit: saw below you said Technical University of Munich

Siira 6y ago

This experience is highly atypical. You can’t get this just by “treating” it differently. The current bullshit situation is a stable Nash equilibrium. Of course, if you should have certain advantages, you could sacrifice those and change your payoffs.

bsenftner 6y ago

You did it right, with deep engagement. I dropped out of high school to secretly enroll in college. I felt high school was a waste of time, plus my home state is overly Christian and I'm not. I did not care about a degree, I wanted an Education. As soon as I could, I went to Boston and just started taking classes anywhere I wanted with any class of interest. I started with Harvard Summer School and continued with Boston University and MIT for a period of 5 years. I got to participate in the early 3D graphics research community, was a part of DeVanney & Mandelbrot's team that wrote Beauty of Fractals, participated in the AI research of the time, wrote my own 3D animation language, and finally graduated B.U. one semester shy of 4 more undergraduate degrees. I just did what interested me until I was forced to graduate.

tech-historian 6y ago

TBH, college for me was about finding myself as a person. Being away from home for 4 years, I grew so much as a human being in numerous and incalculable ways. Being grouped with thousands of others I've never met before -- you learn "human" skills in a way that can't be taught online. Online education is great and all, but the crowd that argues that it is the end-all-be-all of learning is missing a key element of the experience.

cultofmetatron 6y ago
for the amount of money you probably spent, there are a dozen better ways of "finding yourself." I think about how much I spent over those 4 years. I could have travelled around the world during that time and come out of it with a much richer experience.
- tech-historian 6y ago
  Education does cost too much, definitely. But in my case it led directly to a stable career path in ways that traveling the world could not. It set me up for life.

specialp 6y ago

I had the same experience regretting my early semesters before I discovered research. It is what most of the professors are most interested in anyway. Lectures where one is sitting in a hundred+ student hall listening should 100% be replaced by online. But more resources should be given to the higher value add like research and networking.

battery423 6y ago

You know, not everyone can study fulltime and take part in all other 'events'. Would be great if that would be the case though.

turbinerneiter 6y ago
Jup, Curriculum definitely has to be changed towards allowing more people to do that kind of stuff, also financial aid. I did work 8h per week through roughly all my time at uni. My grades sucked, tough. And some people had to work more to get enough money. I actually had enough help from my parents to need to work, but I liked the extra cash and experience. Helps that uni in Germany is basically free.

ghostbrainalpha 6y ago

You did use University correctly. But your example could just as easily been prison. Some people use prison to get off drugs, get an education, learn a job skill, develop a moral code and purpose. Something that can cost so much, and require such a huge time commitment shouldn't have such a high failure rate of people who fail to "figure out how to use it".

turbinerneiter 6y ago
Cool idea, prison is also cheaper and easier to get into.
- dawg- 6y ago
  I'm not so sure, the high end prisons can get pretty competitive. A lifetime of violent behavior is certainly a lot of work

hinkley 6y ago

I went to a state school that still had one of the best CS programs around. Some decent teachers, a few great ones (and some noteworthy awful ones), and tons of under-subscribed hardware, and self-starters bouncing ideas off of each other. Most of the time you could find an unused computer to work on your own thing. Frequently you could find several contiguous ones for you and some friends. Some of the most capable people in my class were pulling B-C grades because they spent so much time working on their own projects instead of cramming for tests. I had hardware problems for four classes, but only one of those was a CS class, and by then I'd written enough code that I'd just shell into a machine to get a rough draft to compile, then spend a couple hours in front of the box debugging. Get an internship or programming job on campus, kids. Programming assignments are a lot easier once you've written real code.

newswasboring 6y ago

Actually, I would argue even your approach does not really represent the real utility of a university. My list includes 1. failed to start a startup about hardware tutorials in local languages 2. failed at productionizing a propeller display, they are pretty popular popular now. 3. failed at productionizing a gas sensors with high resolution The list of failures go on and on actually. But the real utility I had was the nice cozy university bubble where failure of projects isn't really ... accounted for.

Melting_Harps 6y ago

> University is a place where teachers and students who are interested in a field meet to learn and research together. Modern Uni has often forgotten that, but if the students treat it as such it works in this way. We have to tell students how they can get positive experiences out of the current system - by trying to do so, they will change the system from within. I agree with you that most do not take advantage of the opportunities that exist on some University campuses; personally speaking I had to do my Flow Cytometry training at the Scrip's Research Institute (where several Nobel Laureates were on staff) because my campus only had one FACScan on campus and it was often reserved months ahead of schedule. That the only time I ever sought anything from what my University offered and it failed to deliver. (I won't even talk about how hard it was to get into the lower/upper division classes for my Major, either.) And while this ended up being a good opportunity for me in the long run as it was both free for me as a local student it also helped me network for job interviews in the Industry, the truth this was happening at the same time I was working 40+ hours in catering as prep cook/chef. I couldn't afford to eat outside of work due to tuition/books obscenely high rent and had to stop attending on daily basis and set up a study group where we recorded lecture on voice recorders because gas shot up to $5+/gallon and many of us were struggling to keep up with expenses as we all worked. Hell, I showed up to my Microbiology final after an 11 hour service at a lunch and dinner banquet for AMD only hours before the exam and I had to tell my professor I needed to have a few drinks during the exam just to stay awake and he reluctantly accepted as he understood what I had to do for work. I think you HIGHLY underestimate how broken this situation really is because of your idealized experience, and you assume it is a choice to have to have our attention so grossly divided solely because of the economic distress it demands of some students. And this is mainly because University can charge what they do and has never come back to reasonable costs and they ultimately act as the gate keepers into most Industries and force you to contort your Life/Work to suit its demands unless you can afford to stay in University indefinitely. I hated University, mainly because 75% of it was a total waste of my Time, 15% was useful albeit dated (experimental designs based on 19 century reactions that have been refined and outsourced by Industry for a reason), and the other 10% was actually really worth it under really passionate professor(s) who actually gave a damn about the subject they taught. That's a horrible ratio for anything with such a high cost, in fact I saw exactly 1 single slide (that they even glossed over) in my entire undergrad for what I'd eventually do in my profession as a Lab Scientist in Diagnostics. This model has to be disrupted. Also, I didn't need a school to teach me how to wrench on cars. I began when I was 11 and even had a stint in professional motorsports as a privateer driver and worked on my own chassis while I was in University where ASE shop foremans and Race Team chief mechanics were recruiting mechanics from the pits during the bubble era; Motorsports was actually my desired profession and University was my plan B before the crises dried up any sponsorship opportunities in the financial crises. I still ended up in the Auto Industry working for VW/BMW/Nissan after I left the Sciences because of my experience back then. Had the Industry not been so wasteful and broken I might have stayed but I chose to go into Fintech and Culinary instead. My point being, is that University, and its severe costs, do not reflect the ever-changing Job Market (assuming it ever did) they act as vanguard for and for the costs and time demands it cannot be justified. Much less when you have such blatant corruption [1] staring at you in the face. Had I not been so multi-faceted in my skill-set I would have been like most of my Millennial cohort with tons of unpayable student debt and ever diminishing prospects in Life instead of the immensely rich career(s) that has spanned 4 different Industries that I can move between depending on the project(s). I'm a total outlier, and to be honest even though my opportunity at SpaceX in post COVID World didn't materialize and I have to go back to Supply Chain/Logistics in the end I still cannot believe most of it actually happened given what a f'd situation I had having gone to University and then being thrown into the abysmal Job Market in 2009. I really feel for those currently graduating in this Market, I really do. They're simply cannon fodder and will soon be forgotten in the news cycle just like we were back then. They'll know just how expendable they were seen as by this system really soon as they won't be able to pay their debts, which had already exceeded a Trillion+ Bubble in the US prior to COVID. 1: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-college-admissions-fraud-corruption-list-20190312-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-college-admissions...

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

Good for you. You were lucky enough to be in a program that had a firehose of resources (mostly money, but probably also high quality professors). There's only so many flagship programs at any given university. The overwhelming majority of people who get a BA or BS in a given field will not be that lucky. How many students to the top schools in a field graduate? How many do the rest graduate?

ntsplnkv2 6y ago
You could make this argument about anything in life. Everyone has good and bad breaks. The mistake is thinking that we can somehow create the same experience for everyone. The entire American experiment is based on individualism. We have to have some responsibility in our lives.