4 ms·

There are absolutely terrible problems of inequality through nearly all levels and areas of society. Unequal opportunities, inherited economics, social class -

by 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.
- throwaway20485 6y ago
  Sadly, I can say from experience that the unsustainable view is that we should err on the side of admitting people regardless of demonstrable skills or relevant background. They are of course still people - but people who may need something other than higher education, and again it is not on higher education to fix all the ills and injustices of society (it can of course help - but it can't solve upstream issues). Re: the rest - read my upthread comments, suffice it to say I am supportive of broad opportunity and personally am a fan of MOOCs. But there's a difference between making material available and providing a supportive curated learning experience (which is what people expect when admitted into a university, and is essentially necessary for a research environment), and for the latter holding students accountable to standards really does matter. It sounds like you have some interesting ideas that could be applied towards improving primary education (intermingling with MOOCs, etc.). That's great - as I said in my first response to you, advocate for those (I also agree that vocational education could help - that's part of what I was hinting at with "specialization" and "alternatives"). I particularly like your description about how it really did gate on the actual difficulty - that's pretty infrequent in these initiatives from what I've seen. That plus a robust test at the end could lead to a trustworthy credential used to apply to future opportunities. Research institutions and competitive/graduate programs need to maintain quality in order to advance their field, and need to be selective to do so. The best fix for inequality is to fix it at the source, but to maintain an insistence of the actual value and integrity of the material. It hurts both individuals and the system to dilute and give people participation badges for passing through, and that is the approach I have more commonly seen when people push for "broad accessibility."
  - m0zg 6y ago
    The key thing to understand is, primary education problems are not going to ever be fully fixed, irrespective of how much you spend. It just boils down to unequal distribution of talent. There will be a few truly excellent high schools (through a combination of chance and attracting better teachers just because they are already excellent) and a ton of crap ones that de-facto ruin people's lives today. So there should be more practical opportunities for those who want them to not fall through the cracks. All I'm arguing in favor of is that these opportunities are formalized as a gateway into higher education, rather than left for the kids themselves to figure out. I've been through such a program in early 90's, it works. Crucially, I'm not arguing in favor of lowering the bar. If anything, making the mouth of the funnel much wider could _raise_ the bar instead as more talented kids will make their way through it. I'm arguing in favor of providing more structure and more targeted training to people who would currently fail to overcome the bar essentially due to random chance of having a shit math teacher in high school. They _could_ in theory do self-directed learning, but without structure and a goal this gets old rather quickly and people give 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.

throwaway20485 6y ago
Sadly, I can say from experience that the unsustainable view is that we should err on the side of admitting people regardless of demonstrable skills or relevant background. They are of course still people - but people who may need something other than higher education, and again it is not on higher education to fix all the ills and injustices of society (it can of course help - but it can't solve upstream issues). Re: the rest - read my upthread comments, suffice it to say I am supportive of broad opportunity and personally am a fan of MOOCs. But there's a difference between making material available and providing a supportive curated learning experience (which is what people expect when admitted into a university, and is essentially necessary for a research environment), and for the latter holding students accountable to standards really does matter. It sounds like you have some interesting ideas that could be applied towards improving primary education (intermingling with MOOCs, etc.). That's great - as I said in my first response to you, advocate for those (I also agree that vocational education could help - that's part of what I was hinting at with "specialization" and "alternatives"). I particularly like your description about how it really did gate on the actual difficulty - that's pretty infrequent in these initiatives from what I've seen. That plus a robust test at the end could lead to a trustworthy credential used to apply to future opportunities. Research institutions and competitive/graduate programs need to maintain quality in order to advance their field, and need to be selective to do so. The best fix for inequality is to fix it at the source, but to maintain an insistence of the actual value and integrity of the material. It hurts both individuals and the system to dilute and give people participation badges for passing through, and that is the approach I have more commonly seen when people push for "broad accessibility."
- m0zg 6y ago
  The key thing to understand is, primary education problems are not going to ever be fully fixed, irrespective of how much you spend. It just boils down to unequal distribution of talent. There will be a few truly excellent high schools (through a combination of chance and attracting better teachers just because they are already excellent) and a ton of crap ones that de-facto ruin people's lives today. So there should be more practical opportunities for those who want them to not fall through the cracks. All I'm arguing in favor of is that these opportunities are formalized as a gateway into higher education, rather than left for the kids themselves to figure out. I've been through such a program in early 90's, it works. Crucially, I'm not arguing in favor of lowering the bar. If anything, making the mouth of the funnel much wider could _raise_ the bar instead as more talented kids will make their way through it. I'm arguing in favor of providing more structure and more targeted training to people who would currently fail to overcome the bar essentially due to random chance of having a shit math teacher in high school. They _could_ in theory do self-directed learning, but without structure and a goal this gets old rather quickly and people give up.