4 ms·

Or tantamount to an institution trying to preserve the actual quality and value of the education by avoiding grade inflation and watering down of material. Many

by throwaway20485 6y ago

Or tantamount to an institution trying to preserve the actual quality and value of the education by avoiding grade inflation and watering down of material. Many homeless shelters have standards and will reject people who are a threat to the quality of their environment - there really are students who are the (learning) equivalent. This is a hard problem. But the mantra "scale education" ignores the quality side, and somebody who is shuffled through a "scaled" experience without personally investing and then given whatever credential at the end is still not actually competitive for a job and isn't being done any favors - they've just invested a lot of time in something without much personal value. What's worse, they've diluted the perception and thus value of the educational experience for anyone else who attended the same institution, even those who did take it seriously and learn. People still send rejections for bad reasons (ego, etc.), and the cherry-picked 85/87% example seems illustrative of that. But the answer to education isn't scale - it's quality and specialization. Not everyone really wants an academic experience, as anybody who has spent serious time at a school can attest to (throwaway because I'm in that group).

m0zg 6y ago
Going to have to disagree. High school education in the US (and I suspect in many other countries) is done by folks some of whom shouldn't be allowed within 300 yards of a high school. I'm seeing it play out with my own kid. Math and chemistry teachers sucks beyond belief this year (and they can't be fired for bad performance - unions), so we hired tutors who fill in over Skype. This happens every year, with different subjects. This is not something a lot of other people can afford to do. Do you reject all those folks for "quality" reasons? Or do you admit the reality that the expensive US high school system is not where it needs to be and try to salvage kids harmed by it by letting more people in and offering remedial classes? You can still maintain quality by doing exams later and getting rid of people who can't pull their weight. Where I have problem is when they won't even give people a chance, even though doing so is technically possible in year 2020, through university administered MOOCs and such.
- throwaway20485 6y ago
  There are absolutely terrible problems of inequality through nearly all levels and areas of society. Unequal opportunities, inherited economics, social class - these things harm lots of lives. But no, it is not realistic to expect higher education to magically fix all of this at the end of the pipeline by simply having a wider mouth. That's going to/already has significantly harmed the actual value (and signaling value) of a higher degree. It just doesn't fix the problem to more widely apply a treatment that only works when certain prerequisites are in place - competitive programs look for those prior experiences because they really do prepare you for deeper study. There of course should be (and are) undergraduate institutions that are not that competitive, whose charter is to educate those with relatively less opportunity earlier in life. The 85/87% numbers in the original parent comment however suggest that they are discussing either a competitive department or graduate program within a university - and their charter is and should be to advance the truth and quality of their field. In other words - yes, give folks a chance. But don't expect higher education to fix a bunch of upstream socioeconomic problems (try to get primary education fairer first), and "give folks a chance" means "broad access to general undergraduate education" (and then still some standards, i.e. being willing to fail folks or guide them to alternatives), not "open all the gates to everything and scale it up."
  - m0zg 6y ago
    > That's going to/already has significantly harmed the actual value (and signaling value) of a higher degree. This is a ridiculously elitist, and unsustainable view, IMO. We should err on the side of giving people opportunity to succeed, rather than discard them. These are _people_ remember. Just because they were screwed over by the teacher union, they do not cease to be people, and some fraction of them might go on and achieve great things if given an opportunity. There will always be "socioeconomic" problems. This is further exacerbated by underdevelopment of vocational education in the US. In USSR/Russia, unless you actually want to study, you didn't make it past grade 9. As a result for the last 2 years of school it was no longer "fashionable" to be a shithead - all the shitheads were gone. The dilution you're so worried about won't happen if it's structured like a MOOC. In fact the MOOC could (and probably should) be administered concurrently with the last couple of years of high school. In the USSR (and Russia as it was in the 90's I don't know about now), the failure of high schools to provide sufficient education for "hard" higher education was implicitly acknowledged, and there were multi-year, free mail-based education programs administered by top universities which would, if you put in the effort, give you a better shot of passing the entrance exam, even if you're in a village high school where the physics teacher can't tell a Joule from a hole in the ground. You'd receive printed materials and homework in the mail, and you'd be expected to study on your own (or perhaps with a bit of help from your high school math and physics teachers, ours were happy to help), and complete the homework. The explicit goal was to prepare you for the entrance exam, so it was kind of pointless to cheat or slack off. These programs did not have limits on enrollment, but they'd get pretty darn hard towards the end, so a lot of people would wash out. Given that US high school system as a rule sucks major balls for most people (in spite of being very expensive), I'm advocating that this understanding be formalized, and the first, optional, year is added to the higher education curriculum to focus on fixing that damage, followed by an in-person entrance exam. Feel like you can do the exam without extra preparation? Proceed straight to the exam. Feel like enrolling sooner? Take the courses in addition to your last year of high school.
cracker_jacks 6y ago
The quality issue will have to be addressed either way as an outcome of the current pandemic. Previously, there was no pressure to solve these accessibility issues because it was not necessary for the survival of the institution. In fact, the quote I mention shows that it better serves the institution to have exclusivity to improve branding. Now with the pandemic, an institution's survival depends on this accessibility. And the bonus is that solution to this issue can greatly increase the accessibility to many more.
- throwaway20485 6y ago
  The quality issue is always the issue :) regardless of time or medium. Certainly agreed that existing institutions (educational and otherwise) need to figure out how to effectively function remotely. Remote accessibility is a separate problem from scaling and reducing entry requirements - Harvard can (and likely will) have essentially the same students, just using Zoom rather than walking around campus. And the point of my argument is that the main goal of admissions requirements and selectivity is in fact pedagogical (supporting an effective learning environment). Yes, there are branding/ego aspects, but again this is not a simple discrete 0/1 problem. The space is continuous, and "scale" is simply not the answer. If your goal is making great knowledge readily available, then MIT OCW and many other existing MOOCs have really already solved that. They do it by simply putting it out there, but not formally evaluating/crediting participation. This is all great, and is I believe the right way to scale accessibility without diluting the focused experience of the institution itself.

m0zg 6y ago

Going to have to disagree. High school education in the US (and I suspect in many other countries) is done by folks some of whom shouldn't be allowed within 300 yards of a high school. I'm seeing it play out with my own kid. Math and chemistry teachers sucks beyond belief this year (and they can't be fired for bad performance - unions), so we hired tutors who fill in over Skype. This happens every year, with different subjects. This is not something a lot of other people can afford to do. Do you reject all those folks for "quality" reasons? Or do you admit the reality that the expensive US high school system is not where it needs to be and try to salvage kids harmed by it by letting more people in and offering remedial classes? You can still maintain quality by doing exams later and getting rid of people who can't pull their weight. Where I have problem is when they won't even give people a chance, even though doing so is technically possible in year 2020, through university administered MOOCs and such.

throwaway20485 6y ago
There are absolutely terrible problems of inequality through nearly all levels and areas of society. Unequal opportunities, inherited economics, social class - these things harm lots of lives. But no, it is not realistic to expect higher education to magically fix all of this at the end of the pipeline by simply having a wider mouth. That's going to/already has significantly harmed the actual value (and signaling value) of a higher degree. It just doesn't fix the problem to more widely apply a treatment that only works when certain prerequisites are in place - competitive programs look for those prior experiences because they really do prepare you for deeper study. There of course should be (and are) undergraduate institutions that are not that competitive, whose charter is to educate those with relatively less opportunity earlier in life. The 85/87% numbers in the original parent comment however suggest that they are discussing either a competitive department or graduate program within a university - and their charter is and should be to advance the truth and quality of their field. In other words - yes, give folks a chance. But don't expect higher education to fix a bunch of upstream socioeconomic problems (try to get primary education fairer first), and "give folks a chance" means "broad access to general undergraduate education" (and then still some standards, i.e. being willing to fail folks or guide them to alternatives), not "open all the gates to everything and scale it up."
- m0zg 6y ago
  > That's going to/already has significantly harmed the actual value (and signaling value) of a higher degree. This is a ridiculously elitist, and unsustainable view, IMO. We should err on the side of giving people opportunity to succeed, rather than discard them. These are _people_ remember. Just because they were screwed over by the teacher union, they do not cease to be people, and some fraction of them might go on and achieve great things if given an opportunity. There will always be "socioeconomic" problems. This is further exacerbated by underdevelopment of vocational education in the US. In USSR/Russia, unless you actually want to study, you didn't make it past grade 9. As a result for the last 2 years of school it was no longer "fashionable" to be a shithead - all the shitheads were gone. The dilution you're so worried about won't happen if it's structured like a MOOC. In fact the MOOC could (and probably should) be administered concurrently with the last couple of years of high school. In the USSR (and Russia as it was in the 90's I don't know about now), the failure of high schools to provide sufficient education for "hard" higher education was implicitly acknowledged, and there were multi-year, free mail-based education programs administered by top universities which would, if you put in the effort, give you a better shot of passing the entrance exam, even if you're in a village high school where the physics teacher can't tell a Joule from a hole in the ground. You'd receive printed materials and homework in the mail, and you'd be expected to study on your own (or perhaps with a bit of help from your high school math and physics teachers, ours were happy to help), and complete the homework. The explicit goal was to prepare you for the entrance exam, so it was kind of pointless to cheat or slack off. These programs did not have limits on enrollment, but they'd get pretty darn hard towards the end, so a lot of people would wash out. Given that US high school system as a rule sucks major balls for most people (in spite of being very expensive), I'm advocating that this understanding be formalized, and the first, optional, year is added to the higher education curriculum to focus on fixing that damage, followed by an in-person entrance exam. Feel like you can do the exam without extra preparation? Proceed straight to the exam. Feel like enrolling sooner? Take the courses in addition to your last year of high school.

cracker_jacks 6y ago

The quality issue will have to be addressed either way as an outcome of the current pandemic. Previously, there was no pressure to solve these accessibility issues because it was not necessary for the survival of the institution. In fact, the quote I mention shows that it better serves the institution to have exclusivity to improve branding. Now with the pandemic, an institution's survival depends on this accessibility. And the bonus is that solution to this issue can greatly increase the accessibility to many more.

throwaway20485 6y ago
The quality issue is always the issue :) regardless of time or medium. Certainly agreed that existing institutions (educational and otherwise) need to figure out how to effectively function remotely. Remote accessibility is a separate problem from scaling and reducing entry requirements - Harvard can (and likely will) have essentially the same students, just using Zoom rather than walking around campus. And the point of my argument is that the main goal of admissions requirements and selectivity is in fact pedagogical (supporting an effective learning environment). Yes, there are branding/ego aspects, but again this is not a simple discrete 0/1 problem. The space is continuous, and "scale" is simply not the answer. If your goal is making great knowledge readily available, then MIT OCW and many other existing MOOCs have really already solved that. They do it by simply putting it out there, but not formally evaluating/crediting participation. This is all great, and is I believe the right way to scale accessibility without diluting the focused experience of the institution itself.