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>The pandemic is particularly challenging for a school like Harvard, as it makes the implicit thing obvious: a prestige school like Harvard is about the social

>The pandemic is particularly challenging for a school like Harvard, as it makes the implicit thing obvious: a prestige school like Harvard is about the social connections far more than the education. I wouldn't say "far" more. There are multiple valuable components to a top tier education: 1. Social connections with your peers, as you mention. 2. Social connections with your professors, their graduate students, and their network. 3. The education itself, which should be intellectually challenging (more or less depending on subject, with STEM subjects usually moreso, especially at top tier schools) 4. The pedigree, which is a factor of the previous three, and should prove to employers etc that, at minimum, you can handle a large and difficult work load with precision and attention to detail, regardless who your connections are. 5. Various support services tailored to the stresses of a demanding undergraduate education. Of those, an online education from a top tier school still gets you some of #2 & #5, and all of #3 and #4. A 20-30% tuition discount for losing #1 may be fair, but I think it's still worth it for students who get into a top tier school to finish their degree there, even online.

biztos 6y ago
> you can handle a large and difficult work load with precision and attention to detail This part may be true, but I doubt it's determinative: over a long career I've not found much difference between Ivy folks and State folks in engineering roles, and I can easily think of a few Ivy-Leaguers who ended up in very high office and whose fulfillment of your criteria was, at best, questionable.
- SkyMarshal 6y ago
  I didn't say State STEM grads couldn't perform equally, nor did I say "Ivy" anywhere. Only that a "top tier" (of which Ivy is a subset) STEM degree is reliable proof of ability, and implicitly that it is one of the most reliable proofs of ability.
  - biztos 6y ago
    I read your comment as saying a "top tier" STEM degree is a more reliable proof of ability than some other STEM degree, and I was using "Ivy" as shorthand for "top tier by American reputation" -- granted, inaccurately, but it's common to do so. And if you were saying that I still disagree. It's not that a math degree from Stanford isn't a good indicator of ability, but that it's not any better an indicator than one from Cal Poly or for that matter Arizona State.
    - SkyMarshal 6y ago
      > It's not that a math degree from Stanford isn't a good indicator of ability, but that it's not any better an indicator than one from Cal Poly or for that matter Arizona State. It would really require an in-depth curriculum and grading comparison to answer that question definitively. But one thing I do know from anecdotal experience is that top tier STEM programs carry a stronger expectation that their students not just master a body of knowledge for competent commercial application, but for continued theoretical research. The top tier programs are usually research universities oriented toward making breakthroughs in our understanding of particular fields and driving humanity’s knowledge forward. Students at normal universities tend to be there to get the grade, get a good GPA, and get a good job. Anecdotally again, I’ve heard professors at such universities complain about that. STEM curriculums at top tier research universities tend to be designed to weed out ones not capable of advancing the state-of-the-art, which is quite a high bar. I’m not sure that standard is applied elsewhere. Though again, would take a comprehensive curriculum and grading comparison to know for sure.
jcranmer 6y ago
> 2. Social connections with your professors, their graduate students, and their network. This isn't going to hold for most undergraduates, since you're not going to interact with professors enough unless you're participating in undergraduate research. And getting sufficient attention to get into those programs is probably going to be harder in an online-only environment.
- MiroF 6y ago
  Many students at Harvard interact quite a bit with professors.
- SkyMarshal 6y ago
  > This isn't going to hold for most undergraduates, since you're not going to interact with professors enough unless you're participating in undergraduate research. In my experience professors at top tier research universities encourage and enable this, as one of the most fulfilling parts of their job is finding and grooming future research collaborators. Students are also incentivized since getting jobs or especially into grad school requires strong references from their professors. The extent to which it happens depends primarily on the student’s initiative though. > And getting sufficient attention to get into those programs is probably going to be harder in an online-only environment. That’s certainly one of the main problems that needs to be solved by online education, but I believe it’s one of the things everyone will adapt to out of necessity. Professors don’t want to stop grooming promising students for research careers just b/c of an outbreak, so they are finding new ways of doing that online. And we know from some fields like software engineering that remote collaborations are possible, so we’re starting from that point already.
nud 6y ago
> 3. The education itself, which should be intellectually challenging (more or less depending on subject, with STEM subjects usually moreso, especially at top tier schools) Your implication that non-STEM fields are less intellectually challenging is pretty insulting. Have you enrolled in a non-STEM degree? Do you have evidence that writing a treatise on comparative literature or archeology is less intellectually challenging than pushing out some code or solving some derivatives? Please choose your words carefully when communicating.
- SkyMarshal 6y ago
  I'm comfortable making that claim, and yes I had a mixed education of roughly 1/3rd hard STEM (CS, math, stats), 1/3rd soft STEM (Econ, Law), and 1/3rd non-STEM (economic history, philosophy, required undergrad writing elective). Things like the Sokal Hoax are difficult to impossible in hard STEM fields. Non-STEM fields are more difficult to falsify and thus more difficult to apply similar levels of rigor. Smart and clever undergrads figure out their professors' biases and are constantly submitting lesser versions of the Sokal Hoax for their writing assignments (been there, done that). You can't do that in hard STEM fields, and its more difficult in some logically rigorous soft-STEM ones like law classes. Non-STEM fields tend to be held in the fuzzy-logic-based natural language you grew up with and know intimately, while STEM fields require learning an entirely new language (math, code) where fuzzy logic does not work and precise logic is required. It's more difficult for a variety of reasons.
  - archagon 6y ago
    If you have the aptitude for it, I'd argue that being constrained by clean, cold, infallible logic makes STEM subjects much easier, not harder, than the messy human whirlpool of the humanities and social sciences. Sure, it might be easier to get away with BS in those fields — but what if you actually want to learn something or make a tangible impact? No matter how you slice it, humans live in the world of "fuzzy-logic-based natural language," not bits and bytes. (Incidentally, this might reveal why some engineers struggle with things like UX, technology ethics, or algorithmic bias.) I also have a mixed education of 1/2 CS and 1/2 Music. I found some of my music classes way harder (and often way more enjoyable) than many of my CS classes, despite the fact that the latter dealt with well-scoped problems.
mvkel 6y ago
There’s also the second and third order effects of not attending in person: less loyalty from students means less alumni contribution,

biztos 6y ago

> you can handle a large and difficult work load with precision and attention to detail This part may be true, but I doubt it's determinative: over a long career I've not found much difference between Ivy folks and State folks in engineering roles, and I can easily think of a few Ivy-Leaguers who ended up in very high office and whose fulfillment of your criteria was, at best, questionable.

SkyMarshal 6y ago
I didn't say State STEM grads couldn't perform equally, nor did I say "Ivy" anywhere. Only that a "top tier" (of which Ivy is a subset) STEM degree is reliable proof of ability, and implicitly that it is one of the most reliable proofs of ability.
- biztos 6y ago
  I read your comment as saying a "top tier" STEM degree is a more reliable proof of ability than some other STEM degree, and I was using "Ivy" as shorthand for "top tier by American reputation" -- granted, inaccurately, but it's common to do so. And if you were saying that I still disagree. It's not that a math degree from Stanford isn't a good indicator of ability, but that it's not any better an indicator than one from Cal Poly or for that matter Arizona State.
  - SkyMarshal 6y ago
    > It's not that a math degree from Stanford isn't a good indicator of ability, but that it's not any better an indicator than one from Cal Poly or for that matter Arizona State. It would really require an in-depth curriculum and grading comparison to answer that question definitively. But one thing I do know from anecdotal experience is that top tier STEM programs carry a stronger expectation that their students not just master a body of knowledge for competent commercial application, but for continued theoretical research. The top tier programs are usually research universities oriented toward making breakthroughs in our understanding of particular fields and driving humanity’s knowledge forward. Students at normal universities tend to be there to get the grade, get a good GPA, and get a good job. Anecdotally again, I’ve heard professors at such universities complain about that. STEM curriculums at top tier research universities tend to be designed to weed out ones not capable of advancing the state-of-the-art, which is quite a high bar. I’m not sure that standard is applied elsewhere. Though again, would take a comprehensive curriculum and grading comparison to know for sure.

jcranmer 6y ago

> 2. Social connections with your professors, their graduate students, and their network. This isn't going to hold for most undergraduates, since you're not going to interact with professors enough unless you're participating in undergraduate research. And getting sufficient attention to get into those programs is probably going to be harder in an online-only environment.

MiroF 6y ago
Many students at Harvard interact quite a bit with professors.
SkyMarshal 6y ago
> This isn't going to hold for most undergraduates, since you're not going to interact with professors enough unless you're participating in undergraduate research. In my experience professors at top tier research universities encourage and enable this, as one of the most fulfilling parts of their job is finding and grooming future research collaborators. Students are also incentivized since getting jobs or especially into grad school requires strong references from their professors. The extent to which it happens depends primarily on the student’s initiative though. > And getting sufficient attention to get into those programs is probably going to be harder in an online-only environment. That’s certainly one of the main problems that needs to be solved by online education, but I believe it’s one of the things everyone will adapt to out of necessity. Professors don’t want to stop grooming promising students for research careers just b/c of an outbreak, so they are finding new ways of doing that online. And we know from some fields like software engineering that remote collaborations are possible, so we’re starting from that point already.

nud 6y ago

> 3. The education itself, which should be intellectually challenging (more or less depending on subject, with STEM subjects usually moreso, especially at top tier schools) Your implication that non-STEM fields are less intellectually challenging is pretty insulting. Have you enrolled in a non-STEM degree? Do you have evidence that writing a treatise on comparative literature or archeology is less intellectually challenging than pushing out some code or solving some derivatives? Please choose your words carefully when communicating.

SkyMarshal 6y ago
I'm comfortable making that claim, and yes I had a mixed education of roughly 1/3rd hard STEM (CS, math, stats), 1/3rd soft STEM (Econ, Law), and 1/3rd non-STEM (economic history, philosophy, required undergrad writing elective). Things like the Sokal Hoax are difficult to impossible in hard STEM fields. Non-STEM fields are more difficult to falsify and thus more difficult to apply similar levels of rigor. Smart and clever undergrads figure out their professors' biases and are constantly submitting lesser versions of the Sokal Hoax for their writing assignments (been there, done that). You can't do that in hard STEM fields, and its more difficult in some logically rigorous soft-STEM ones like law classes. Non-STEM fields tend to be held in the fuzzy-logic-based natural language you grew up with and know intimately, while STEM fields require learning an entirely new language (math, code) where fuzzy logic does not work and precise logic is required. It's more difficult for a variety of reasons.
- archagon 6y ago
  If you have the aptitude for it, I'd argue that being constrained by clean, cold, infallible logic makes STEM subjects much easier, not harder, than the messy human whirlpool of the humanities and social sciences. Sure, it might be easier to get away with BS in those fields — but what if you actually want to learn something or make a tangible impact? No matter how you slice it, humans live in the world of "fuzzy-logic-based natural language," not bits and bytes. (Incidentally, this might reveal why some engineers struggle with things like UX, technology ethics, or algorithmic bias.) I also have a mixed education of 1/2 CS and 1/2 Music. I found some of my music classes way harder (and often way more enjoyable) than many of my CS classes, despite the fact that the latter dealt with well-scoped problems.

mvkel 6y ago

There’s also the second and third order effects of not attending in person: less loyalty from students means less alumni contribution,