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A couple of years ago, I was looking into MOOCs for tech education, Udacity's nano degree in particular. I remember stumbling across a video on Youtube where so

A couple of years ago, I was looking into MOOCs for tech education, Udacity's nano degree in particular. I remember stumbling across a video on Youtube where some Udacity folks were discussing the merits of online education with college professors and admins. What stood out to me was how vehemently the college folks were against online education. They were visibly livid - there was no way substituting a live class room environment with online education could be as effective, they shouted. They were obviously threatened - they did not want the world they were so comfortable with to change. Now they are singing a different tune once they don't have a choice - not only are colleges embracing online classes, they are trying to justify full cost for it too. College students heading into the fall semester should take a gap year. I know I would.

dudul 6y ago
It reminds me of all this companies that were forcing employees to relocate because good work can only be done when everyone is seating in the open space for 9 hours every day. Suddenly, once this is not possible anymore, no biggy, just work from home! It's fine!
- ck425 6y ago
  I don't know where you work but no one where I work considers the current situation fine. It's workable but it's definitely no where near 100%.
  - User23 6y ago
    I like it because it disadvantages the politically competent types while advantaging the technically competent types. Guess which category I fall into.
    - nondave 6y ago
      There can be disadvantages for technically competent folks too. I'm really missing going over technical ideas on a whiteboard with colleagues.
      - mcny 6y ago
        And you can't do that remotely because we don't have a decent network connection?
      - mixedCase 6y ago
        There are a variety of online whiteboards. Miro is one the company I work at uses. There's a valid argument in the annoyance of audio latency for this making it not as efficient as physical presence but it's still a very workable solution and gets most of the way there.
    - war1025 6y ago
      We are definitely at a disadvantage in terms of having robust technical discussions before implementing new features at my work. Something that previously would be discussed by the whole team is now either just implemented solo or discussed between one or two other people before moving forward. One of the big issues we've had, which I think we're getting better at, is not realizing how much others on the team are in the dark when you had a discussion but no one else was in on it. This led to a lot of friction and frustration in March / April for us.
      - Raidion 6y ago
        This problem is identical to the one you get when you're in the office. If you have a conversation with someone that impacts the group, you need to either a) have that conversation in a public channel (like a team slack channel) and/or b) need to provide a set of notes from the 'meeting' to your team. If you're used to being able to just tap people on the shoulder and get a group of people looking at something, you can still do that, just get everyone on a call. Working remote, those "collaboration" sessions start to look more like "interruptions", for better or worse. If your team doesn't have more robust communications strategies than being in earshot of each other, it's going to show.
      - WrongThinkerNo5 6y ago
        I think what you are expressing a difficult time with is more of an effect from the uncertainty and operating under a state of what was supposed to be a short term emergency measure to "flatten the curve". Unfortunately I think that it is also a symptom of poor adaptation to the supposed pandemic, just as much as it is uncertainty for how long this will go on that keeps people and organizations from rebuilding and reorganizing to permanently/temporarily adapt to the current situation. Humans do not do well under perpetual states of uncertainty, no marginally advanced life form really does. Every life form wants and needs predictability, certainty, and habits/patterns. Patterns are the core of life, as they are to the technology sector. Most people were told we need to "flatten the curve" for two or so weeks and therefore we need to take emergency and short term measures. That was now going on 5 months ago, and without any kind of definitive event horizon for when everyone can "go back to the office". We hear anything from "we will reassess in two weeks" … every two weeks … to "not until a vaccine is discovered" … which could literally be never, and everything in between. Just alone that ambiguity and uncertainty is causing stress and anxiety because people cannot even plan for their children's education schedule. People are still often operating as if it's a short term emergency, while it is becoming ever more apparent that it may be a permanent shift in reality, especially as companies realize or are pressured to cut costs with remote work that cuts out overhead costs that can be translated into profits or at least revenues to offset the massive costs/losses. Again, I find that the uncertainty and lack of commitment is a far more damaging situation that may also even lead to severe shake-ups as companies that did commit to remote work and reconsidered and reworked their whole structure to accommodate that, start gaining market share. What a smart business would do is to commit to some long term schedule as some tech companies already have, e.g, no changes to remote work before the new year, so that people have some certainty, and they would also start investing and rethinking their processes to support remote work to accommodate the things you illustrate as challenges.
    - game_the0ry 6y ago
      Interesting. This makes a lot of sense, anecdotally. I am a tech worker in a highly bureaucratic and "political" type of company (finance). No wonder the "management" has been pushing the return to office so hard - they need the "face time" with their bosses.
    - wutbrodo 6y ago
      As someone who studiously avoided office politics on principle (to my detriment) until my latest company (where politics is crucial), I've observed the opposite. Information flow is a lot harder and less visible now, which makes politics even more important for making sure the right people hear the things you want them to. It's true that certain types of politicking are harder now, since you can't charm people in the kitchenette or over lunch. But setting meetings and making promises and aligning others' incentives in a way that benefits you is a lot easier in an environment that cuts the non-politicker off from, eg, seeing people walk out of a meeting room and checking their calendars to see what they were meeting about.
  - lowmemcpu 6y ago
    I am enjoying working from home, many of my coworkers too. I'd probably say it's 50/50 here
  - reallydontask 6y ago
    > I don't know where you work but no one where I work considers the current situation fine why not? My previous team was distributed across three sites with some people WFH and it worked really well. Admittedly the people WFH, myself included, had a home office (i.e. a dedicated room for work), the lack of which, I guess, is the main reason for a lot of people not enjoying WFH, that and the children running around :)
    - ck425 6y ago
      So very few people have separate dedicated working spaces. Lots of folk have childcare duties. Many of those who don't live alone live alone and that's extremely difficult in its own way (I'm in that boat and it's been rough on my mental health). Even without those issues WFH requires a lot of self-discipline to create and stick to a routine. That suits some people but a lot of people need and value the external factors of a commute and office to enforce routine.
rjkennedy98 6y ago
Higher education so far as I can tell now is indistinguishable from a cult. You have to pay homage to various absurd beliefs, contribute money to them, and worship the value of it no matter what the apparent merit of it is, and more than anything it has its heresies which appear to be self-directed development and independent thinking.
- zests 6y ago
  What massive group of people is not indistinguishable from a cult? A book exists that argues that all mass movements (religion, cults, political parties) have very similar characteristics and can be analyzed with the same lens. I have no doubt that "supporters of X" can also be put in the same group where in this case X = higher education. I've never read this book but it was published several decades ago and I agree with the premise. Unfortunately I forgot which book it was so this comment is partly an effort to see if anyone else knows which book this is so I can finally get around to reading it.
  - HeroOfAges 6y ago
    The book you might be referring to is "The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer. Published in 1951. It's about 175 pages. If you've ever wondered why political correctness, BLM and anti-racism resemble a religion (non-theistic) it is definitely worth a read. *edit I would have liked to remove the part about political correctness, BLM and anti-racism as it does nothing to contribute to the discussion and the question can be answered without a reference to any of those things. I will not, because to do so feels misleading.
    - Wistar 6y ago
      Hoffer certainly led an unusual life. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hoffer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hoffer
    - zests 6y ago
      This is the book, thank you for responding. In general, I appreciate how old the book is because its removed from all modern political discussion yet the advice applies the same. I also appreciate how it has fans on all sides of the political aisle (details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer).
b5n 6y ago
I'd think strategically about a gap year. If you're a great student with excellent college prospects a gap year might make sense, admissions are going to be very competitive for 21/22. If you're not the best student it might make sense to try and get accepted for 20/21 due to smaller field of applicants.
- kerkeslager 6y ago
  That applies to inbound freshman, but for students going into their sophomore-to-senior years, who are already accepted, taking a year off seems like a no-brainer.
  - buildawesome 6y ago
    I believe you can defer commitment as a freshman.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Depends on the school at this point. One I know usually allows incoming freshmen to defer until April or May or something like that. When they later put out very draconian restrictions for the fall (they're allowing freshmen on campus but basically locking students in their rooms), it took a fairly major revolt from parents and alumni to make them relent.
  - dminzi 6y ago
    Everybody keeps saying that it is a no brainer to take a gap year. I am headed into my senior year and I don't think it is as clear cut as everybody here makes it out to be. What are my options when I take a gap year? I can either live in my apartment near my school and do nothing or live at home. Either way, I am doing nothing because I have no money. I haven't gone to classes consistently since the end of my sophomore year. As this year has unfolded, I've discovered that I can learn material much faster out of a textbook. I miss lectures because it was nice having a professor physically near me for questions and advice. That said, I am managing fine. Testing has been completely changed at my University and the anxiety I had around it is gone. I have 24 hours + open book for my exams now. I actually fill in many of the gaps in my course knowledge during the midterms and finals, leading to a more complete understanding of the class. This is obviously not true for everybody, but I am learning more and faster than I was before, leaving free time to explore adjacent interests and read. The biggest problem I am facing with my learning at the moment is administrative nonsense. Enrolling for classes was already bad (UC). Now, not only is it bad, but it is pointlessly bad. I am not allowed to enroll in a class because there are 35 students in it. Based on what I've seen, maybe 20 will watch the live zoom lectures. Why is an online class that hardly anybody shows up to being capped? I believe it is because there is some contractual limit on how many students a prof/ta can be "responsible for". My roommate got that explanation after he was told he couldn't enroll in the last class he needed to graduate last quarter. In my mind, that reasoning does not hold at all given the current situation. It is either shocking that the administrators don't realize this or it is disgusting that they do realize it and choose not to change it. That said, I am paying nearly $70,000 this year. Same as I paid last year. I am being ripped off this year. I was ripped off last year. Last year was terrible and this year is extremely terrible. At this point, I want to put the whole thing behind me. College has been great because all I've had to do is learn and I've made amazing friends. This year we'll be in our apartment carrying on. The biggest concern that I have is the job market I'll graduate into.
x87678r 6y ago
Go on a gap year when you can backpack around the world. This is literally the worst time to have a gap year. If you're stuck at home you might as well study.
- game_the0ry 6y ago
  > If you're stuck at home you might as well study. Exactly. It's a good opportunity for self directed study. I would spend time doing something productive, not traveling.
  - wutbrodo 6y ago
    Self-directed study is challenging, especially for 17 year-olds that don't have anyone (eg parents) who are in tune enough with autodidactism to guide them. One of the biggest advantages of college for me was realizing how much there was to learn and how easy it was to do it (after skating through all of my schooling with straight As), and I only really refined my autodidactic abilities in my mid-20s.
    - game_the0ry 6y ago
      > Self-directed study is challenging Fair point, but that's because students are not encouraged to learn what they are interested in.
      - astura 6y ago
        Or they literally don't know how to learn what they are interested in? I went into computer science as a major because I was interested in computers. College was literally the only way I was able to learn because I didn't know anything about getting started - I didn't know what a programming language was, for example, so I wouldn't know to learn to program. I grew up poor and my public education was very substandard. College allowed me to get past that, I couldn't imagine trying to do it myself with literally zero guidance. I know some of you are just so smart you don't need college - but please consider there's a vast about of us plebs that do.
humanistbot 6y ago
Except "embracing" is definitely not the right word. Very few professors I know are happy about this whole situation. Universities are begrudgingly accepting the fact that they can't have in-person classes, so they have to turn to online alternatives. Tuition can't be changed because the few costs that are being saved (facilities still need maintenance) are offset by the massive losses in revenue from student housing and the added costs in prepping online classes. Very few professors are thinking that they're delivering the same quality of education online, even though they're having to work even more to create and deliver an online alternative from scratch, plus having to teach themselves video production skills.
- game_the0ry 6y ago
  > Except "embracing" is definitely not the right word. Fair point. Still, students are not getting what they are paying for and colleges will not be able to adequately justify the same cost to students, whatever their fixed operating expenses may be, especially since students do not benefit from those expenses.
  - dathinab 6y ago
    Yes, but tbh I'm not sure if the US study costs had been reasonable even when they where not online.
- albatross 6y ago
  It seems like an educational instituion relying on income from real estate properties points to the greater issue here: General lack of funding for education. Making money off housing will disproportionately affect students of differing income backgrounds, so this is not the same as moving that cost to tuition fees. Schools shouldn't have to run themselves like a traditional business, yet that is exactly the model most are forced to follow in order to survive. Edit: "shouldn't" not "should"
  - sieabahlpark 6y ago
    What do you mean they lack funding? They are probably the single most well funded areas of our country with guaranteed student loans from the government.
willismonroe 6y ago
I think you might be conflating two camps of academics. There have been folks for a while now who were vehemently against online education, and there are also those pushing digital pedagogy forward. The former were stuck in a rut when classes moved online this spring, and the latter were there to pick up the slack and start organizing workshops and trying to make all university teaching better online.
- codekansas 6y ago
  Seems obvious when you consider that Udacity, Coursera, MIT OpenCourseWare were all started at universities
war1025 6y ago
I had a professor who was adamantly against any recordings of his lectures because he felt that it was a move by the university to cheat him out of pay by reusing content. Not sure where I land on that, but I would guess it's not an uncommon sentiment.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  Only a matter of time before low pay adjuncts get told to grind out content.
fiftyfifty 6y ago
The problem with gap years is you loose an additional year of income at the college graduate level on the backend, that's a pretty big missed financial opportunity. With the economy in the state it's in now, it's unlikely most college students will be able to land decent paying jobs during a gap year, if they can find a job at all. Better to just finish the degree as quickly as possible and be ready to enter the work force as a college graduate when, in a couple of years, our economy should be in a strong rebound. We have 3 college students in our household. We've had these conversations many times in our house over the last few months. The above is the conclusion I've come to for my own kids, that a gap year is basically a waste of time in the current economy. The last thing I'll add is we are saving some money on online classes, room and board makes up roughly $10,000-$15,000 of the cost of sending a kid to college, having the kids at home doing online classes at least saves us that.
- pdabbadabba 6y ago
  If your point is that students shouldn't take a gap year just because its a year when they aren't getting paid, then I think you are missing the nonmonetary value (or value that is difficult to capture in monetary terms) of travel, volunteering, and the other things that people do during gap years that are much harder to replicate once you're out of school. (You're "waste of time" comment makes me thing that this is probably what you mean--but I'm not sure.) But if your point is that gap years are expensive, and not everyone has the luxury to take one--especially in the current economic climate--then I totally agree. #Edit: I thought you were talking about gap years generally. But, looking back at the context, maybe you mean that 2020-2021 is a particularly bad time to take a gap year, and that current students should tough it out and get their credits in, saving the gap year frivolities for a year when there are more opportunities and less economic uncertainty. If so, I could see this being good advice for a lot of students (though, of course, much depends on one's individual circumstances).
  - dhimes 6y ago
    Part of the point is at the time of decision it's not clear that the students can do that gap year stuff if they take a gap year now. They wouldn't be doing it so they can travel to Brazil, but so they don't have a difficult semester (or year) in college.
mnky9800n 6y ago
I don't think this is fair. I worked at Georgia tech during the mooc "revolution" and helped put on a physics course with a lab, something most thought was really impossible because labs are so hard with a classroom and now we just got rid of it. There were positives and negatives of what we generated, but at the end of the day it worked well enough. I am not exactly for online education nor do I agree it can replace on campus education. The problem is that there are many parts of being on campus that lead to success after you leave campus and also that keep you attending your degree. So it's almost an apples to oranges comparison. I definitely agree with you on the gap year.
duxup 6y ago
I think they're making the best of a bad situation ... not singing an entirely different tune.
briandear 6y ago
> Now they are singing a different tune once they don't have a choice They are happy to sing when they get paid the same amount.
darth_avocado 6y ago
You're confusing professors and admins. All professors that I know from undergrad (one of the best unis in the country for tech), recorded all the lectures, sessions and discussions and made all the class material online, including reading material, because they were of the opinion that education should be available in all ways possible. If you didn't feel comfortable concentrating in a class, you could do it later, because that is what effective education is. Admins on the other hand are just a bunch of insecure pricks who know that the only reason they have a job is the bloated organizations they themselves created, which can only be supported as long as students keep paying that ridiculous tuitions.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  I wish when I went to college I'd had the foresight to simply record the lectures on cassette tapes.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    There was somebody who used to run ads in print magazines, when cassette tapes were a thing, touting the world's best lecturers on a variety of topics. I think this may be them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Courses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Courses https://web.archive.org/web/20090714005930/http://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/16/news/16iht-videduc.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090714005930/http://www.nytime... Looks like they have adjusted, but used to provide videotapes and cassettes.
    - willcipriano 6y ago
      I've been listening to TTC for decades. Prior to MIT and others opening up courses online it was the only way someone like myself could get access to anything like that. In the office, Michael Scott is asked to give a lecture and brings a boombox with the same music the TTC lectures start off with. Its a hilarious in joke if you get the reference.
dathinab 6y ago
I have studied in Germany this included some online curses. From my experience studying online will be harder for a non-small degree of students. (Through for some it's easier as they anyway don't show up for curses and do anything from home "ad-hock".) I believ that for courses which are mainly frontal putting this part online will be majorly helpful (e.g. a reading in front of a large publicum with close to no questions from the publicum). But especially during a CS master many curses are smaller and with a lot of student professor interactions. This translates not so well to online, even with video conferences. And that is assuming that students do have a easy to access internet connection which is good enough to do a ~20 people conference. So while I hope for a lot of improvements by putting parts of the studium online I also hope it will be just part of it. Lastly in-person studium creates a social environment (similar to in-person work) having online only studies/work would have _major_ health risks for a non small amount of people (such which e.g. are already somewhat depressive, have problems creating social connections, have a weak social net, lost most of their friends due to problems in their school years etc.). I have meat at least one person who would not unlikely already have committed suicide in a "online only" world...
shinjitsu 6y ago
>College students heading into the fall semester should take a gap year. I know I would. The problem with taking a gap year for current students (in the US) is that many of them have federal student loans whose interest is deferred as long as they are studying full time. A gap year means they will incur interest for the rest of their University time and have that much more to pay off at the end.
thayne 6y ago
> I know I would. unfortunately, for many students that isn't an option. Some students rely on living off of student loans, which they can't get during a gap. Some student's income is tied to the university (for example, working as a TA, or research assistent).

dudul 6y ago

It reminds me of all this companies that were forcing employees to relocate because good work can only be done when everyone is seating in the open space for 9 hours every day. Suddenly, once this is not possible anymore, no biggy, just work from home! It's fine!

ck425 6y ago
I don't know where you work but no one where I work considers the current situation fine. It's workable but it's definitely no where near 100%.
- User23 6y ago
  I like it because it disadvantages the politically competent types while advantaging the technically competent types. Guess which category I fall into.
  - nondave 6y ago
    There can be disadvantages for technically competent folks too. I'm really missing going over technical ideas on a whiteboard with colleagues.
    - mcny 6y ago
      And you can't do that remotely because we don't have a decent network connection?
    - mixedCase 6y ago
      There are a variety of online whiteboards. Miro is one the company I work at uses. There's a valid argument in the annoyance of audio latency for this making it not as efficient as physical presence but it's still a very workable solution and gets most of the way there.
  - war1025 6y ago
    We are definitely at a disadvantage in terms of having robust technical discussions before implementing new features at my work. Something that previously would be discussed by the whole team is now either just implemented solo or discussed between one or two other people before moving forward. One of the big issues we've had, which I think we're getting better at, is not realizing how much others on the team are in the dark when you had a discussion but no one else was in on it. This led to a lot of friction and frustration in March / April for us.
    - Raidion 6y ago
      This problem is identical to the one you get when you're in the office. If you have a conversation with someone that impacts the group, you need to either a) have that conversation in a public channel (like a team slack channel) and/or b) need to provide a set of notes from the 'meeting' to your team. If you're used to being able to just tap people on the shoulder and get a group of people looking at something, you can still do that, just get everyone on a call. Working remote, those "collaboration" sessions start to look more like "interruptions", for better or worse. If your team doesn't have more robust communications strategies than being in earshot of each other, it's going to show.
    - WrongThinkerNo5 6y ago
      I think what you are expressing a difficult time with is more of an effect from the uncertainty and operating under a state of what was supposed to be a short term emergency measure to "flatten the curve". Unfortunately I think that it is also a symptom of poor adaptation to the supposed pandemic, just as much as it is uncertainty for how long this will go on that keeps people and organizations from rebuilding and reorganizing to permanently/temporarily adapt to the current situation. Humans do not do well under perpetual states of uncertainty, no marginally advanced life form really does. Every life form wants and needs predictability, certainty, and habits/patterns. Patterns are the core of life, as they are to the technology sector. Most people were told we need to "flatten the curve" for two or so weeks and therefore we need to take emergency and short term measures. That was now going on 5 months ago, and without any kind of definitive event horizon for when everyone can "go back to the office". We hear anything from "we will reassess in two weeks" … every two weeks … to "not until a vaccine is discovered" … which could literally be never, and everything in between. Just alone that ambiguity and uncertainty is causing stress and anxiety because people cannot even plan for their children's education schedule. People are still often operating as if it's a short term emergency, while it is becoming ever more apparent that it may be a permanent shift in reality, especially as companies realize or are pressured to cut costs with remote work that cuts out overhead costs that can be translated into profits or at least revenues to offset the massive costs/losses. Again, I find that the uncertainty and lack of commitment is a far more damaging situation that may also even lead to severe shake-ups as companies that did commit to remote work and reconsidered and reworked their whole structure to accommodate that, start gaining market share. What a smart business would do is to commit to some long term schedule as some tech companies already have, e.g, no changes to remote work before the new year, so that people have some certainty, and they would also start investing and rethinking their processes to support remote work to accommodate the things you illustrate as challenges.
  - game_the0ry 6y ago
    Interesting. This makes a lot of sense, anecdotally. I am a tech worker in a highly bureaucratic and "political" type of company (finance). No wonder the "management" has been pushing the return to office so hard - they need the "face time" with their bosses.
  - wutbrodo 6y ago
    As someone who studiously avoided office politics on principle (to my detriment) until my latest company (where politics is crucial), I've observed the opposite. Information flow is a lot harder and less visible now, which makes politics even more important for making sure the right people hear the things you want them to. It's true that certain types of politicking are harder now, since you can't charm people in the kitchenette or over lunch. But setting meetings and making promises and aligning others' incentives in a way that benefits you is a lot easier in an environment that cuts the non-politicker off from, eg, seeing people walk out of a meeting room and checking their calendars to see what they were meeting about.
- lowmemcpu 6y ago
  I am enjoying working from home, many of my coworkers too. I'd probably say it's 50/50 here
- reallydontask 6y ago
  > I don't know where you work but no one where I work considers the current situation fine why not? My previous team was distributed across three sites with some people WFH and it worked really well. Admittedly the people WFH, myself included, had a home office (i.e. a dedicated room for work), the lack of which, I guess, is the main reason for a lot of people not enjoying WFH, that and the children running around :)
  - ck425 6y ago
    So very few people have separate dedicated working spaces. Lots of folk have childcare duties. Many of those who don't live alone live alone and that's extremely difficult in its own way (I'm in that boat and it's been rough on my mental health). Even without those issues WFH requires a lot of self-discipline to create and stick to a routine. That suits some people but a lot of people need and value the external factors of a commute and office to enforce routine.

rjkennedy98 6y ago

Higher education so far as I can tell now is indistinguishable from a cult. You have to pay homage to various absurd beliefs, contribute money to them, and worship the value of it no matter what the apparent merit of it is, and more than anything it has its heresies which appear to be self-directed development and independent thinking.

zests 6y ago
What massive group of people is not indistinguishable from a cult? A book exists that argues that all mass movements (religion, cults, political parties) have very similar characteristics and can be analyzed with the same lens. I have no doubt that "supporters of X" can also be put in the same group where in this case X = higher education. I've never read this book but it was published several decades ago and I agree with the premise. Unfortunately I forgot which book it was so this comment is partly an effort to see if anyone else knows which book this is so I can finally get around to reading it.
- HeroOfAges 6y ago
  The book you might be referring to is "The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer. Published in 1951. It's about 175 pages. If you've ever wondered why political correctness, BLM and anti-racism resemble a religion (non-theistic) it is definitely worth a read. *edit I would have liked to remove the part about political correctness, BLM and anti-racism as it does nothing to contribute to the discussion and the question can be answered without a reference to any of those things. I will not, because to do so feels misleading.
  - Wistar 6y ago
    Hoffer certainly led an unusual life. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hoffer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hoffer
  - zests 6y ago
    This is the book, thank you for responding. In general, I appreciate how old the book is because its removed from all modern political discussion yet the advice applies the same. I also appreciate how it has fans on all sides of the political aisle (details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer).

b5n 6y ago

I'd think strategically about a gap year. If you're a great student with excellent college prospects a gap year might make sense, admissions are going to be very competitive for 21/22. If you're not the best student it might make sense to try and get accepted for 20/21 due to smaller field of applicants.

kerkeslager 6y ago
That applies to inbound freshman, but for students going into their sophomore-to-senior years, who are already accepted, taking a year off seems like a no-brainer.
- buildawesome 6y ago
  I believe you can defer commitment as a freshman.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Depends on the school at this point. One I know usually allows incoming freshmen to defer until April or May or something like that. When they later put out very draconian restrictions for the fall (they're allowing freshmen on campus but basically locking students in their rooms), it took a fairly major revolt from parents and alumni to make them relent.
- dminzi 6y ago
  Everybody keeps saying that it is a no brainer to take a gap year. I am headed into my senior year and I don't think it is as clear cut as everybody here makes it out to be. What are my options when I take a gap year? I can either live in my apartment near my school and do nothing or live at home. Either way, I am doing nothing because I have no money. I haven't gone to classes consistently since the end of my sophomore year. As this year has unfolded, I've discovered that I can learn material much faster out of a textbook. I miss lectures because it was nice having a professor physically near me for questions and advice. That said, I am managing fine. Testing has been completely changed at my University and the anxiety I had around it is gone. I have 24 hours + open book for my exams now. I actually fill in many of the gaps in my course knowledge during the midterms and finals, leading to a more complete understanding of the class. This is obviously not true for everybody, but I am learning more and faster than I was before, leaving free time to explore adjacent interests and read. The biggest problem I am facing with my learning at the moment is administrative nonsense. Enrolling for classes was already bad (UC). Now, not only is it bad, but it is pointlessly bad. I am not allowed to enroll in a class because there are 35 students in it. Based on what I've seen, maybe 20 will watch the live zoom lectures. Why is an online class that hardly anybody shows up to being capped? I believe it is because there is some contractual limit on how many students a prof/ta can be "responsible for". My roommate got that explanation after he was told he couldn't enroll in the last class he needed to graduate last quarter. In my mind, that reasoning does not hold at all given the current situation. It is either shocking that the administrators don't realize this or it is disgusting that they do realize it and choose not to change it. That said, I am paying nearly $70,000 this year. Same as I paid last year. I am being ripped off this year. I was ripped off last year. Last year was terrible and this year is extremely terrible. At this point, I want to put the whole thing behind me. College has been great because all I've had to do is learn and I've made amazing friends. This year we'll be in our apartment carrying on. The biggest concern that I have is the job market I'll graduate into.

x87678r 6y ago

Go on a gap year when you can backpack around the world. This is literally the worst time to have a gap year. If you're stuck at home you might as well study.

game_the0ry 6y ago
> If you're stuck at home you might as well study. Exactly. It's a good opportunity for self directed study. I would spend time doing something productive, not traveling.
- wutbrodo 6y ago
  Self-directed study is challenging, especially for 17 year-olds that don't have anyone (eg parents) who are in tune enough with autodidactism to guide them. One of the biggest advantages of college for me was realizing how much there was to learn and how easy it was to do it (after skating through all of my schooling with straight As), and I only really refined my autodidactic abilities in my mid-20s.
  - game_the0ry 6y ago
    > Self-directed study is challenging Fair point, but that's because students are not encouraged to learn what they are interested in.
    - astura 6y ago
      Or they literally don't know how to learn what they are interested in? I went into computer science as a major because I was interested in computers. College was literally the only way I was able to learn because I didn't know anything about getting started - I didn't know what a programming language was, for example, so I wouldn't know to learn to program. I grew up poor and my public education was very substandard. College allowed me to get past that, I couldn't imagine trying to do it myself with literally zero guidance. I know some of you are just so smart you don't need college - but please consider there's a vast about of us plebs that do.

humanistbot 6y ago

Except "embracing" is definitely not the right word. Very few professors I know are happy about this whole situation. Universities are begrudgingly accepting the fact that they can't have in-person classes, so they have to turn to online alternatives. Tuition can't be changed because the few costs that are being saved (facilities still need maintenance) are offset by the massive losses in revenue from student housing and the added costs in prepping online classes. Very few professors are thinking that they're delivering the same quality of education online, even though they're having to work even more to create and deliver an online alternative from scratch, plus having to teach themselves video production skills.

game_the0ry 6y ago
> Except "embracing" is definitely not the right word. Fair point. Still, students are not getting what they are paying for and colleges will not be able to adequately justify the same cost to students, whatever their fixed operating expenses may be, especially since students do not benefit from those expenses.
- dathinab 6y ago
  Yes, but tbh I'm not sure if the US study costs had been reasonable even when they where not online.
albatross 6y ago
It seems like an educational instituion relying on income from real estate properties points to the greater issue here: General lack of funding for education. Making money off housing will disproportionately affect students of differing income backgrounds, so this is not the same as moving that cost to tuition fees. Schools shouldn't have to run themselves like a traditional business, yet that is exactly the model most are forced to follow in order to survive. Edit: "shouldn't" not "should"
- sieabahlpark 6y ago
  What do you mean they lack funding? They are probably the single most well funded areas of our country with guaranteed student loans from the government.

willismonroe 6y ago

I think you might be conflating two camps of academics. There have been folks for a while now who were vehemently against online education, and there are also those pushing digital pedagogy forward. The former were stuck in a rut when classes moved online this spring, and the latter were there to pick up the slack and start organizing workshops and trying to make all university teaching better online.

codekansas 6y ago
Seems obvious when you consider that Udacity, Coursera, MIT OpenCourseWare were all started at universities

war1025 6y ago

I had a professor who was adamantly against any recordings of his lectures because he felt that it was a move by the university to cheat him out of pay by reusing content. Not sure where I land on that, but I would guess it's not an uncommon sentiment.

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
Only a matter of time before low pay adjuncts get told to grind out content.

fiftyfifty 6y ago

The problem with gap years is you loose an additional year of income at the college graduate level on the backend, that's a pretty big missed financial opportunity. With the economy in the state it's in now, it's unlikely most college students will be able to land decent paying jobs during a gap year, if they can find a job at all. Better to just finish the degree as quickly as possible and be ready to enter the work force as a college graduate when, in a couple of years, our economy should be in a strong rebound. We have 3 college students in our household. We've had these conversations many times in our house over the last few months. The above is the conclusion I've come to for my own kids, that a gap year is basically a waste of time in the current economy. The last thing I'll add is we are saving some money on online classes, room and board makes up roughly $10,000-$15,000 of the cost of sending a kid to college, having the kids at home doing online classes at least saves us that.

pdabbadabba 6y ago
If your point is that students shouldn't take a gap year just because its a year when they aren't getting paid, then I think you are missing the nonmonetary value (or value that is difficult to capture in monetary terms) of travel, volunteering, and the other things that people do during gap years that are much harder to replicate once you're out of school. (You're "waste of time" comment makes me thing that this is probably what you mean--but I'm not sure.) But if your point is that gap years are expensive, and not everyone has the luxury to take one--especially in the current economic climate--then I totally agree. #Edit: I thought you were talking about gap years generally. But, looking back at the context, maybe you mean that 2020-2021 is a particularly bad time to take a gap year, and that current students should tough it out and get their credits in, saving the gap year frivolities for a year when there are more opportunities and less economic uncertainty. If so, I could see this being good advice for a lot of students (though, of course, much depends on one's individual circumstances).
- dhimes 6y ago
  Part of the point is at the time of decision it's not clear that the students can do that gap year stuff if they take a gap year now. They wouldn't be doing it so they can travel to Brazil, but so they don't have a difficult semester (or year) in college.

mnky9800n 6y ago

I don't think this is fair. I worked at Georgia tech during the mooc "revolution" and helped put on a physics course with a lab, something most thought was really impossible because labs are so hard with a classroom and now we just got rid of it. There were positives and negatives of what we generated, but at the end of the day it worked well enough. I am not exactly for online education nor do I agree it can replace on campus education. The problem is that there are many parts of being on campus that lead to success after you leave campus and also that keep you attending your degree. So it's almost an apples to oranges comparison. I definitely agree with you on the gap year.

duxup 6y ago

I think they're making the best of a bad situation ... not singing an entirely different tune.

briandear 6y ago

> Now they are singing a different tune once they don't have a choice They are happy to sing when they get paid the same amount.

darth_avocado 6y ago

You're confusing professors and admins. All professors that I know from undergrad (one of the best unis in the country for tech), recorded all the lectures, sessions and discussions and made all the class material online, including reading material, because they were of the opinion that education should be available in all ways possible. If you didn't feel comfortable concentrating in a class, you could do it later, because that is what effective education is. Admins on the other hand are just a bunch of insecure pricks who know that the only reason they have a job is the bloated organizations they themselves created, which can only be supported as long as students keep paying that ridiculous tuitions.

WalterBright 6y ago
I wish when I went to college I'd had the foresight to simply record the lectures on cassette tapes.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  There was somebody who used to run ads in print magazines, when cassette tapes were a thing, touting the world's best lecturers on a variety of topics. I think this may be them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Courses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Courses https://web.archive.org/web/20090714005930/http://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/16/news/16iht-videduc.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090714005930/http://www.nytime... Looks like they have adjusted, but used to provide videotapes and cassettes.
  - willcipriano 6y ago
    I've been listening to TTC for decades. Prior to MIT and others opening up courses online it was the only way someone like myself could get access to anything like that. In the office, Michael Scott is asked to give a lecture and brings a boombox with the same music the TTC lectures start off with. Its a hilarious in joke if you get the reference.

dathinab 6y ago

I have studied in Germany this included some online curses. From my experience studying online will be harder for a non-small degree of students. (Through for some it's easier as they anyway don't show up for curses and do anything from home "ad-hock".) I believ that for courses which are mainly frontal putting this part online will be majorly helpful (e.g. a reading in front of a large publicum with close to no questions from the publicum). But especially during a CS master many curses are smaller and with a lot of student professor interactions. This translates not so well to online, even with video conferences. And that is assuming that students do have a easy to access internet connection which is good enough to do a ~20 people conference. So while I hope for a lot of improvements by putting parts of the studium online I also hope it will be just part of it. Lastly in-person studium creates a social environment (similar to in-person work) having online only studies/work would have _major_ health risks for a non small amount of people (such which e.g. are already somewhat depressive, have problems creating social connections, have a weak social net, lost most of their friends due to problems in their school years etc.). I have meat at least one person who would not unlikely already have committed suicide in a "online only" world...

shinjitsu 6y ago

>College students heading into the fall semester should take a gap year. I know I would. The problem with taking a gap year for current students (in the US) is that many of them have federal student loans whose interest is deferred as long as they are studying full time. A gap year means they will incur interest for the rest of their University time and have that much more to pay off at the end.

thayne 6y ago

> I know I would. unfortunately, for many students that isn't an option. Some students rely on living off of student loans, which they can't get during a gap. Some student's income is tied to the university (for example, working as a TA, or research assistent).