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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

by 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.
- throwaway20485 6y ago
  I think we're actually overall aimed at similar things then, I'm just emphasizing the need for the integrity of university admissions processes as it's pretty easy to dismiss that as elitist gatekeeping as the initial excerpt in this thread somewhat did (and admittedly sometimes it is - but that is not its raison d'etre). Primary education will never be "fixed" - but it is the right place to try to make most of the progress needed on these underlying issues. If what you're talking about is more (robust/tested) MOOCs as a way to qualify for higher education, more structure/accountability for self-directed learning/availability of material, and a wider funnel in terms of more vocational education/opportunities - I'm absolutely on board, and would see those as suitable improvements to primary education. I'm just giving you a heads up that, in the US at least, most actual initiatives that try to "spread opportunity" don't do any of those things (too much work/investment needed), but really do just push for lower bars in higher education (wider funnel in terms of "let more people in to the thing we're doing anyway") and result in dilution of material. And yes, that does harm the value of the degree, as demonstrated also by jobs now looking for graduate degrees when in past undergraduate would have sufficed. This is absolutely an area where the US could stand to learn from the standards and practices of its global peers. Sadly that is unlikely in the current environment.

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.

throwaway20485 6y ago
I think we're actually overall aimed at similar things then, I'm just emphasizing the need for the integrity of university admissions processes as it's pretty easy to dismiss that as elitist gatekeeping as the initial excerpt in this thread somewhat did (and admittedly sometimes it is - but that is not its raison d'etre). Primary education will never be "fixed" - but it is the right place to try to make most of the progress needed on these underlying issues. If what you're talking about is more (robust/tested) MOOCs as a way to qualify for higher education, more structure/accountability for self-directed learning/availability of material, and a wider funnel in terms of more vocational education/opportunities - I'm absolutely on board, and would see those as suitable improvements to primary education. I'm just giving you a heads up that, in the US at least, most actual initiatives that try to "spread opportunity" don't do any of those things (too much work/investment needed), but really do just push for lower bars in higher education (wider funnel in terms of "let more people in to the thing we're doing anyway") and result in dilution of material. And yes, that does harm the value of the degree, as demonstrated also by jobs now looking for graduate degrees when in past undergraduate would have sufficed. This is absolutely an area where the US could stand to learn from the standards and practices of its global peers. Sadly that is unlikely in the current environment.