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Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble)

164 points by jlangenauer 16y ago

hugh3 16y ago
What is it about this subject that encourages such hyperbole and overgeneralization? For what it's worth, I looked it up (thanks linkedin) and the author of this piece spent four years at some place called Linfield College in McMinville, Oregon, getting a BA in History, Philosophy, French and German. It's possible that her personal experiences may not generalize.
- grandalf 16y ago
  Hah. I was wondering that myself. I think it's sort of a sacred cow that higher education is good and beyond reproach, and that obtaining more formal education is usually a good idea.
- gammarator 16y ago
  For what it's worth, nothing in the article discusses her personal experiences or generalizes from them.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    You're right -- she skips the discussion of her personal experiences and jumps straight into the generalizations. "Our higher education system largely fails to educate... It’s nothing less than a deep institutional, cultural, societal and indeed humanitarian crisis." Really? I could have sworn that I learned a bunch of stuff about physics and pure mathematics in my four years of intensively studying physics and pure mathematics, but maybe I'm just crazy.
    - cj 16y ago
      The vast majority of graduates do not leave college having intensively studied anything as rigorous as physics or mathematics. Most leave college with a degree that they didn't work very hard to earn. College offers the opportunity to do what you did and work your ass off, but most have no such desire.
      - enjo 16y ago
        Again, a massive generalization that you quite frankly don't have a bit of data to support.
        cj 16y ago
        I'm a college student. I make my claims based on experience. Do you disagree with my claim? It may be a generalization, but by no means an overgeneralization.
        kenjackson 16y ago
        Most people I know who get a degree actually study a fair bit and learn a fair bit. For most people I know college is the first time they've ever really been pushed. Not to say this is the case for everyone, but I just want to point out that opinions can vary.
        deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
        entangld 16y ago
        Your generalization applies to just about everyone. Most people don't have higher educations at all. And only a percentage of those get through the classes that weed weaker students out. But are those classes actually teaching or just cutting grades? Hacker News users aren't exactly a representative sample of the population anyway (generally educated, probably middle class or higher and if not middle class, we probably have above average drive ambition). Secondly, just because someone passes classes doesn't mean they're educated. I had friends who pumped and dumped for tests and couldn't remember any of it the next semester. Other people learn outside of school and we have no way to measure or give credit for that. Clayton Christensen talks about the disruption of Harvard Business school in his book -> http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Solution-Creating-Sustaining-Successful/dp/1578518520 http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Solution-Creating-Sustainin... You can't compare everyone to an 'elite' anyway. It's statistically unfeasible. We need critical thinkers who have a thirst for knowledge. Some people don't have the latter. Especially people who think they are already educated. Those are things we need in our society and a degree doesn't guarantee that people have them. Although we wish it did.
    - ddkrone 16y ago
      What is it about math and physics majors that makes them think they somehow learn things more 'real' or relevant to the real world? Funny thing is this kind of attitude is way too common among the science majors. For some reason they think their degree is more real than the next guy's. Must have something to do with lack of emphasis on the humanitarian subjects. Before people jump the gun I should mention I have a graduate degree in mathematics and I paid for it what it was worth: 0 dollars.
- brandall10 16y ago
  Hyperbole = $$ (tuition/living expenses/opportunity costs) + 4-8 years of youth. Valuable stuff that inspires hand waving. Overgeneralization = The source of this ire seems to me to come from the idea of "hey, it wasn't long ago that a degree could guarantee me a job. Now not so much. Let's posit why." Although, I seem to remember that was the tone of the movie Reality Bites some two decades ago. So clearly, this isn't the first education bubble.
- jasonyyun 16y ago
  Expanding on grandalf's thought, I suspect that the alternative--that is, opting out of school to pursue a career or other business opportunity--can come off as overly selfish or capitalistic. Education is still often considered to have some sort of intrinsic value (though, of course, this is changing as students are increasingly viewing college for its instrumental value toward finding jobs); jumping straight into a career, on the other hand, is often associated (perhaps unfairly) with generating money, which has only instrumental value. This might be an unfair representation; there is, of course, intrinsic value to many people in pursuing a career that they're passionate about, and it's becoming increasingly the case that college is seen as having instrumental value. In the minds of many, though, college is still seen as more inherently valuable, and the arguments against going to college are just making us more and more capitalistic, at the expense of culture, education, and whatnot.
- crikli 16y ago
  From TFA: "What does it mean to be educated?" Observing the dialogues over the last few weeks it seems that the participants all define being "educated" differently. But they are not establishing their perspective before stating their cases. In other words, folks aren't declaring and initializing the variable before proceeding with their functional logic.
  - sliverstorm 16y ago
    You mean to say they didn't reset their registers, cascading down an undefined potentially metastable state?
- tokenadult 16y ago
  SAT and ACT score interquartile ranges for Linfield College, according to Common Data Set reporting: http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.jsp?collegeId=1485&profileId=6 http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.j...
  - joshhart 16y ago
    Pitiful. 75% of the students made below a 26 on the ACT. I scored at that level in 7th grade!
    - bartonfink 16y ago
      What's the point of bringing it up as if that's somehow a personal failure on their part? Surely you've done something with your life since then and have better things to do than put down those less fortunate than you.
      - joshhart 16y ago
        How do you equate poor performance on a standardized test with being less fortunate? It's my opinion that university admissions are way to lenient and that we'd do well to ratchet them up a major notch. Let community colleges serve their purpose. University studies should be for serious students capable of academic work. I brought up my score in this because it's the comparison most relevant to me.
        hugh3 16y ago
        How do you equate poor performance on a standardized test with being less fortunate? I'm sorry, are you under the impression that you were a smart twelve-year-old for some reason other than that you happened to draw some good cards from the gene pool? Feeling superior to others for being smarter is like feeling superior to others for being better-looking or having richer parents. It's just dickish. (edit: or perhaps I should say it's normal, but best kept to yourself lest folks think you're a dick) It's my opinion that university admissions are way to lenient If you are going to play the game where you mock those whom you consider to be intellectually inferior it's best to master the difference between "to" and "too" first.
- entangld 16y ago
  Are you attempting to attack her credibility or can you address her point? Steve Jobs never graduated college. I would still take his opinion on education. This is an argument that can be logically debated without having to go to credentials. Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory. -- Leonardo da Vinci
  - gruseom 16y ago
    Considering that da Vinci very likely never said that, your invocation of his authority is ironic. http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=argument+authority+inauthor:%22leonardo+da+vinci%22&num=100 http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=argumen... http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Leonardo_da_Vinci http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Leonardo_da_Vinci Edit: I retract that last bit. Quoting someone isn't necessarily arguing from their authority. But it almost certainly isn't Leonardo.
    - entangld 16y ago
      I could care less who said what. I have thousands of quotes. The quotes help me learn whose books I should read. I copied and pasted that quote because I had it. The words are more important than where they came from. I don't have much respect for authority in the first place. I would just rather spend more time debating actual arguments than arguing about credentials. RE: Leonardo - Well until we find out who said it, I'm attributing it to him. I don't throw away theories until they're disproven.
      - billybob 16y ago
        "I don't have much respect for authority in the first place." Really? Let me ask you a few questions, then. When was the American Revolution? What are the electrically charged parts of an atom? How does central banking work? How do red blood cells bind to oxygen? If you will only accept as fact information that you have personally verified, you will know a very small collection of facts. The sensible thing to do in many cases is to appeal to authority: the collective opinion of experts in a field. Heck, even in one's own area of specialty, one can't know everything. I can't personally evaluate every possible programming language or database in the world before choosing something; I take a clue from common opinion and narrow my search from there. Really, this is one of the things that makes civilization possible.
- ddkrone 16y ago
  How's her degree relevant other than the fact that it lends even more credibility to the fact that the piece is very well written.
- roc 16y ago
  Education reflects a major life decision, one which people feel strongly about. As such, it's very easy for emotion to trump a sober analysis of the situation and for the conversation to descend into the flinging of heated justifications. All sides are just as vulnerable to this.
georgieporgie 16y ago
I have a sneaking suspicion that people overestimate their own intelligence and the rigor of their education. I'm skeptical that education has truly gotten worse, and suspect that people like this lady have forgotten how dumb they used to be.
- crikli 16y ago
  That's symptomatic of being a fresh college grad (which this gal is...she's only four years out of school). You're still under the influence of being told you're smart because you got an A in whatever class. Take somebody like me, who's been out of school for 15 years. I know how dumb I am; it's a measured quantity and unfortunately has an observable and accelerating rate of growth.
- tsotha 16y ago
  The percentage of people going to college in the US has climbed pretty steadily over the years, so it probably is true the average college student is getting dumber. When I went to high school guidance councilors would steer you into the manual trades if your school work marked you as not being "college material". That just doesn't happen any more.
sardonicbryan 16y ago
Posts like this -- without any actual data/standards -- annoy me. I suspect that she perceives the quality of college education to be worse because she perceives the quality of college graduates to be worse. This may even be true. However, if this is the case, I don't think it's realistic to expect the standard of college graduates to be on par with what they were a generation ago or whenever she went to college, simply because there are so many more of them now, and college students are no longer mostly people who have self selected as unusually interested in learning/furthering their education and, for the most part, affluent.
- hugh3 16y ago
  I hope the author is reading this. I'd love to see the look on her face when she sees you guessing that she went to college "a generation ago", when the post starts with a big picture of her. She graduated in 2006.
- blahblahblah 16y ago
  I agree. She's way off base. If you search for worldwide rankings of universities, although answers vary depending on the source, higher education in the United States is universally well-regarded and the only other country that can really be considered to be a competitor for the #1 slot in overall quality of higher education is the United Kingdom. If we're "failing to educate" then the rest of the world is also failing. "The U.S. gets a lot of bad press for the failures of its education system, and some of the supporting data is frightening. A study by the Department of Education found that 30 million adults in the U.S. are functionally illiterate. Another Department of Ed report ranks the U.S. at 35 out of 57 countries for mathematics literacy among 15-year-olds. But when it comes to higher education, no one on Earth does better than the U.S., according to a new study by Times Higher Education (THE), a London magazine that tracks the higher ed market. Its 2010-'11 annual World University Rankings is dominated by U.S. schools. They hold 72 places among the world's top 200, including all the top five. Great Britain is a distant second, with 29 universities making the cut." (from Forbes http://www.forbes.com/2010/09/16/world-best-universities-ranking-leadership-careers-education.html http://www.forbes.com/2010/09/16/world-best-universities-ran...)
msluyter 16y ago
In answer to her question ("what does it mean to be educated"), Robin Hanson, an economist/blogger, suggests: The claim I’m most confident of: school is mostly not about the material taught in classes. I’m less sure to what extent it is about learning-to-learn, coming-to-obey, bonding with other kids, and signaling these features as well as intelligence and conscientiousness. I’m pretty sure signaling of various sorts is at least 30% of the average private value of school, and it could go as high as 80%. More interesting discussion can be found here: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/08/functions-of-school.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/08/functions-of-school.ht... http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/04/kling-on-school.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/04/kling-on-school.html Also, an interesting post by economist Bryan Caplan: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/08/bill_dickens_ve.html http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/08/bill_dickens_ve....
nbashaw 16y ago
One explanation of the possible higher education crisis could be that we simply have higher expectations. The world is moving faster and our education system hasn't caught up. Our grandparents typically stayed with the same company for decades, but we change jobs every couple years. Not only are we changing companies, we're changing skill sets. New competencies emerge and vanish in the course of years, not centuries. This is a very new development. Were universities always a mediocre way to get an education? By today's standards - yes. The thing is, "mediocre" is a relative term.
rdtsc 16y ago
> they only look like a bubble because we’ve learned to treat education as a market-driven commodity rather than a social good how can you not treat it as a market-driven commodity when a 4 year college degree can cost $120K ?
- kjksf 16y ago
  In the U.S. That is not the case in every country in the world (many have free college education) so it's not an inherent property of higher ed to be "marked-driven commodity". Therefore it's valid to criticize the U.S. implementation for being that given that it doesn't have to be.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    It's notable, however, that on any ranking of the world's top universities you'll find the US absolutely dominant, holding over half of the top one hundred, two hundred, whatever... spots. This suggests there must be something going right. And having spent time at various universities in various different countries I gotta tell you that the existence of a lot more money floating around the average US university certainly helps a lot.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
  - rdtsc 16y ago
    That is what I was trying to highlight, how in US something like that is bound to end up on Wall-Street. Legislation will be rewritten, lobbyists and PR will be involved and it ends up trading just like real-estate, oil and other commodities.
Tycho 16y ago
I was thinking about this today. I remember I used to think 'well, if you do a degree, at least you'll be an expert in something, even if you can't find a good job with it.' When I think of it now, the notion is almost laughable. University students don't become experts in anything. For a non-technical subject, the knowledge gained isn't really going to beat a normal member of the public with an interest in the subject. English literature students, for example, just leave with some long essays under their belts, they don't graduate as well-read authorities on different epochs of literature. For technical subjects, I suspect most the skills learnt are forgotten afterwards. It's just too easy for people to coast by, or cheat. The astonishingly low pass marks in some courses have the added effect that the bright students don't need to really get on top of their game to get a good grade. So most people who graduate are far from experts on what they were learning about. As in, if a member of the public needed any of those skills/knowledge to do their job, they could acquire them privately without much difficulty.
- cparedes 16y ago
  > University students don't become experts in anything. You're absolutely right. A bachelor's degree is supposed to be a mark of well roundedness, not specialization. > English literature students, for example, just leave with some long essays under their belts, they don't graduate as well-read authorities on different epochs of literature. They're not supposed to be authorities - if they wanted to dedicate time to become authorities, it's well understood that you'll have to specialize in English lit, likely in some kind of subfield, which is what a masters/PhD is for. > As in, if a member of the public needed any of those skills/knowledge to do their job, they could acquire them privately without much difficulty. That doesn't necessarily mean that University education is all for naught. University education purports to teach us how to be better thinkers, not necessarily produce people who are skilled in one kind of thing. The latter definition that I gave above is what the article is trying to defend.
  - Tycho 16y ago
    Maybe it's different where you live, but doing an Honours degree means specializing in the subject. For instance with English lit, you would typically choose 7 or 8 modules (spread over two years), each representing a different period of literature. For those classes you should read one or two books per week (but you have all summer to prepare), and write 3 essays for each module. You should also seek out criticism on the books, and for the ones you do essays or presentations on, read a lot of the related work. There will probably be a whole module on Shakespeare, so why not read all of Shakespeare? Max out. And since you're in university anyway, you might as well attend the lectures for modules you didn't choose, just to augment your knowledge. There is ample time to do all this. That would certainly make you an expert on your subject. Not a leading academic, obviously, but someone very well informed and educated on the matter. Of course, none of that really happens. Students do the minimum number of essays required (one, instead of three). They don't bother reading the books except the really short ones and the ones they need to write or present on. They barely even attend the lectures for the modules they did choose. Basically they finish having accomplished a fraction of the learning that was supposed to take place. Really no better than the average person who reads a lot of books.
hammock 16y ago
It's not just higher education that's been commoditized- take a look at US public schooling in general (or worldwide). There is this perception that "education solves social problems," but there is good education and bad education; you can't just put more people in schools and expect results.
stdbrouw 16y ago
I appreciated Peter Thiel's thoughts from a while back because he talked a little bit about the economics behind higher education, and why in some cases it doesn't make sense for some bright young kids to go to college. Couldn't agree more. This post, on the other hand, smells more like baseless weltschmerz. It's the kind of stuff I used to hear all day long while I was getting my education in liberal arts, from both students and professors: universities aren't what they used to be, we should get all the stupid people out, it's gotten so easy I could do this in my sleep (after which those same students proceed to get barely passing degrees, "because why would I bother going for more in an environment like this"), universities have become slave to the industry, and so on and so on. I like a bit of random pessimism and carping as much as the next guy, but I kind of thought most people were smart enough to realize that the whole "universities have lost their soul" thing was just a fun shtick rather than the actual state of things. Apparently not.
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
Without acceptance criteria -- some neutrally-given test that yields a yes or no -- you can't really measure the function of something. Education has been notorious for refusing to create or abide by acceptance criteria. So it becomes a brand-name game. You pay for the brand, you spend some time getting indoctrinated (most likely to how important this particular brand is) and you get your piece of paper. Somebody said once that the purpose of education is to create new habits. So, for instance, if you are an English speaker and develop a habit of reading a good Russian novel once a year, that might be an excellent habit to have. Or if you develop a habit of reading a dozen computer books a year, or perhaps you develop a habit of cross-checking politically-slanted stories you agree with. And so on. Lots of great habits that you can form. Some subset of these constitute what we call "critical thinking," which everybody seems to think is important. There are a bunch of entrepreneurial habits that I'd love to make sure folks had. If you want a job after college, developing great people, marketing, and networking habits would be awesome. But I don't think anybody wants to seriously start talking about what habits college graduates should mostly exhibit. To do that would cause controversy. Colleges are very much dependent on public dollars (at least in the states) and I don't think they are ready for the political firestorm that would occur once you start actually trying to define the thing that we're all paying for. It's not a bubble, except for the part about more and more money goes for less and less return. The problem is that there is no "thing" that is being returned. There's no bad guys here, but it's much more like a con: you pay increasing amounts of money for this intangible thing where there's no real way to determine if what you got was what you wanted. You don't really know if it's worth what you spent, because the seller is purposely keeping you in the dark about the value, continuing to assure you that this type of purchase at these rates is absolutely necessary. In fact, as time goes on they get more and more insistent that this thing is absolutely necessary -- at any price. That kind of building up of expectations, then jacking the price, then delivery of something that could roughly be considered what was needed but isn't enough, repeat-and-rinse, is much more indicative of a con (Disclaimer: I don't mean to imply intent here, and I also don't mean to imply outright fraud. Just trying to find the best metaphor. I also realize that I am making a large generalization, and all generalizations are false. Caveat Emptor.)
- ebiester 16y ago
davidhollander 16y ago
Flip the system and make the classwork homework and the homework classwork. Instead of a lecturer being the 5000th person trying to teach the subject with a varying degrees of preparedness, you just get the single best and most enthusiastic lecture of all time, everytime, as a video. Then in class teachers, TAs, and students can have normal humans conversations with each other to work through problems and peer interaction to motivate learning. Instead of this being relegated to additional office hours\recitations\labs.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  It's called the Khan Academy.
  - rooshdi 16y ago
    Khan Academy is definitely a good step in the right direction but still lacks the one on one interaction with a knowledgeable mentor some students need in order to ask varying questions and receive the personal answers suited to their rationalizations. I think a great next step for Khan Academy would be to try to create partnerships with willing schools and universities to accommodate their current learning material and structure.
    - kenjackson 16y ago
      Have you watched the TED video on their webpage? Watch that. Here's a blog from Los Altos which is using Khan Academy for some 5th (and 7th I believe) classes: http://lasdandkhanacademy.edublogs.org/ http://lasdandkhanacademy.edublogs.org/
- r00fus 16y ago
  This is the most interesting reply I've seen so far. How would one grade this effectively though?
shii 16y ago
These kinds of posts always pop up in a row, like a volley of arrows. Bemoaning education as failing students, falling in value, rising in cost, etc etc etc. What actual concrete alternatives are there for alarmed students (such as myself) that read these types of posts, jump through all the hoops, and still face a massive bill from Podunk U to get a BS or BA? Most of you all here have already gone through the rites and work at cushy tech or office jobs, and a few rebels with their own startups. What do you say to an incoming college freshman who isn't sure if he sees the light at the end of the tunnel or a $40K+ train barreling at him? It's nice to say work hard, network, go to a cheap state school, go to a 2 year community college first then transfer, etc...but this all seems to point a really broken system with little to no solutions in sight for those actively under the guillotine of crushing debt. Instead of pontificating, does anyone have actionable tips or advice?
- arohner 16y ago
  The current system is completely broken for people who don't get useful degrees, but only annoying for people who do get useful degrees. 1) Have a plan. Go into college with a measurable goal. Say "I'm going to get a degree in X, because that will help me get into my desired profession". Don't say "I'm going to go to become a well rounded person". 2) Get a useful degree. Generally, a useful degree is something that is technical, pays well after school, and doesn't require a masters / pHD. Things like Engineering, CS, Physics. Law and Medicine used to be good career paths, but I wouldn't recommend them anymore. 3) Don't assume the school will teach you everything you need to know. Instead, treat it as one source of knowledge among many. Learn about your major outside of school. Build things on your own. Get internships. Test out of easy classes. Intentionally take harder classes, or classes that would be harder to learn on your own after you've graduated.
  - billswift 16y ago
    As an extension of your number three: Take all the math and linguistics courses you can without shorting your major - these are among the most generally useful and hardest to learn on your own courses. By linguistics, I mean phonology, syntax, and semantics, our knowledge of how language works; languages are also well worth learning, but Berlitz and Pimsleur are at least as good as university courses at teaching them. Also take all the lab courses associated with your major - they will give you more tacit knowledge, knowledge of how things actually work, than theory courses. Note, I'm mostly self-taught (including calculus), these are the kind of things I wish I had learned in school when I was there.
jnhnum1 16y ago
This seems highly over-dramatized: "The stakes are high, higher even than most of us realize. Our answer to this question holds the very roots of our salvation… and our demise." From my own experience (I'm a sophomore studying computer science, physics, and math at MIT), nobody assumes that their brand-name degree will automatically get them a job. The most lucrative jobs for CS involve interviews that grill you relentlessly regardless of what your educational background is. For the most part, people are here to learn about science and engineering that interests them, while at the same time hoping to get a job with what they've learned. MIT helps a lot with this by being very flexible about what classes you can take. Prerequisites are all soft, and there is no credit limit. A lot of this may not generalize, but for a motivated student I think college is absolutely not a waste of time.
dlaw 16y ago
I agree that the cost of a college education is increasing, perhaps disproportionately, because demand is so high. However, I would not call higher education a bubble: as an undergrad, I have found that my education does not lack rigor or intensity. I have learned an incredible amount in a very short time, and for me, the personal value of a college education (disregarding the value perceived by society) far exceeds the cost. (I'm studying at MIT, so perhaps my college experience is different from the norm.) Many people at MIT drop out to start companies or work at startups. I don't know how common this is at other schools, but at MIT, "so-and-so dropped out to work full-time at his startup" is not an unusual thing to hear. It seems to me that students value their degrees less than society does.
rivalis 16y ago
On the subject of evidence for "failing to educate": there is statistical evidence (with a decent sample size and population) that a large percentage of students (36-ish) do not show improvement on the CLA (http://www.collegiatelearningassessment.org/ http://www.collegiatelearningassessment.org/) after four years of college, a test meant to measure the sorts of higher-order literacy skills that almost everyone agrees college students should learn.
vannevar 16y ago
Can we please stop abusing the term "bubble" in the context of higher education? Not every economic adjustment is the result of a bubble. When Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy, it wasn't because there was a bubble in the DVD market. If higher education is overpriced, people will stop buying. When they do, none of the people who did buy in will be any worse off than they were before. It's a completely different situation than the mortgage crisis, where the bursting of the bubble put everyone in a worse economic position.
- hugh3 16y ago
  Well, not everyone, but I agree with your central point. An "asset bubble" has certain characteristics, none of which is really present for higher education -- mostly, it's not an asset in any usual sense because I can't flog off my B.Sc. to some eighteen-year-old for a hundred grand. Asset bubbles are marked by prices being driven up by speculation followed by a crash... since there's no speculation there's no bubble. Now, if instead of asking "is there a higher education bubble" you want to ask the question "Is higher education overpriced" then you might be onto something. It's better to ask a more specific question though, since prices of degrees from different universities vary from nothing to craploads. It's like asking "Are cars overpriced?" without distinguishing between Bugattis and Kias. Certainly at the high end of the market you're likely to find some overpricing, because that's what always happens at the high end of the market. A Bugatti really doesn't have many practical advantages over a Kia for the average commuter. So, in conclusion, some people are paying too much for their university degrees and getting lousy value for money, while others are getting the deal of a lifetime. All I can say is do some research, choose wisely, and don't get blinded by the prestige of a big name if you can't afford it.
- nickpinkston 16y ago
  It's more correct to say that this is an economic bubble (look at academic cost inflation), within a larger societal change (the form of education is going to be massively disrupted). It's not like the classic investment bubble since the investment in completely illiquid outside of purchase - making it a one way market. Also, education's affect on the majority of the people wasn't as beneficial as they were led to believe - therefore the "collapse" of this bubble won't kill those who've invested. Instead, it's going to hurt those who are directly/indirect selling assets into this one-way market: school, publishers, etc. when the population decreases demand. In the mortgage crisis there was a sell-off bubble, but here this isn't relevant since there was never the possibility of liquidity except by extra "rents" generated by getting better jobs.
alphaoverlord 16y ago
Although it can be argued that current higher education is being commoditized, the OP is making an unrealistic comparison to some idealized past where education meant more and people were more educated simply because they went to college. Looking at the recent links on HN about the entrance exam to Harvard et al. in 1900s, I would be very skeptical that the students then learned greater or more applicable skills. Memorizing the philosophies of esoteric 18th century Frenchmen and the intricacies of "noble society" has equally negligible impact on real-life skills. It is true that education is more commoditized - more people go to college and there is greater opportunity to obtain education - but commoditization by itself does not mean a decrease in quality. Because it is now a commodity, brand name means much more.
jseliger 16y ago
One big problem: professors don't have a lot of incentives to educate. They have incentives to publish, which helps explain grade inflation: http://jseliger.com/2011/04/02/grade-inflation-what-grade-inflation http://jseliger.com/2011/04/02/grade-inflation-what-grade-in.... The current higher education system hasn't really designed around the needs of undergraduates, which a lot of people don't understand. This is part of the reason I wrote How Universities Work, or: What I Wish I’d Known Freshman Year: A Guide to American University Life for the Uninitiated -- http://jseliger.com/2010/09/26/how-universities-work-or-what-i-wish-i%E2%80%99d-known-freshman-year-a-guide-to-american-university-life-for-the-uninitiated http://jseliger.com/2010/09/26/how-universities-work-or-what... , which I give to my freshmen every semester.
weegy 16y ago
Realizing that college wasn't suited for me I dropped out.
GaryOlson 16y ago
Start by killing all the lawyers. Grade quality, cheating, and instructional quality have all been degraded by litigious students and parents. Caught cheating? Bad grade? Don’t like the faculty? Can’t collaborate with your project group? Universities are under constant assault by undisciplined, immature, lazy students who attack the University system in order to obtain a degree. In the end, the colleges find it easier to pass the cost of failures onto society than fight. I can’t say I blame them.
fecklessyouth 16y ago
After reading HN comments, I've come to the conclusion that, education bubble aside, you all went to really shitty schools. I can tell because of the emphasis on the degree and technical skills, one of which is useless and the other of which can be gained from other sources. I've learned very few technical, "useful" skills in my schoolwork, outside of external clubs/networking/training I've done through my school. And I would have dropped out first semester if my education's biggest reward was a diploma--my school is basically unknown outside my state. By these criteria, my education sucks. But it's been the best decision I ever made. I think that in these reoccurring debates, HN is overlooking a broad, challenging, great books-based liberal arts education like the one I'm in. By refusing to teach "technical" skills that are better learned on the job anyway, and instead actually building the strength of the mind, for the sole sake of, as John Newman said, the sake of it, liberal arts places itself in the unique position of external to current industry trends. They'll teach you to learn, and leave the technical training to you once you graduate.
aba_sababa 16y ago
I'm not sure that commoditization is a bad thing. I'd argue that education hasn't been commoditized enough. Imagine if all universities started running themselves like honest-to-god businesses by pleasing the consumer and creating great products. There would be competition, prices would go down, and the quality of the product would go up. Unfortunately, higher education is one product that paradoxically doesn't need to please its users.
RobertL 16y ago
No he's not.
omouse 16y ago
Wow, I like this article a lot. It's anti-capitalist and anti-turning everything into some profit-motivated enterprise, but it stops short of using communist/socialist/anarchist/revolutionary terminology! What an excellent read. The challenge is to see if the system can be reformed at all (most likely not) and to concentrate on building up alternatives that are more meaningful.
NY_USA_Hacker 16y ago
Okay, we are debating the value of education in college and beyond. My qualifications: I hold a Ph.D. in some topics in applied math from a world class research university. Before the Ph.D. I taught math in one university and computer science in another. After my Ph.D. I was a professor in an MBA program at a Big Ten university and a research scientist in an industrial computer science lab. Now I'm an entrepreneur. There are two collections of 'knowledge' that are dangerous: First, there is the knowledge you don't know but you should and should consider using. Second, is the knowledge you do know but shouldn't and should never use. Of these two dangers, in practice by far the worst is the second. My view is that the most important lesson in college is to learn to detect and reject the second of these two dangers. Next most important is to give you the background and practice in learning so that you can acquire knowledge to get around the first danger. Next, broadly, there is a big, huge challenge in the world, life, careers, etc. -- doing well with things that are new. Here is a bold, blunt, fact of life that illustrates the challenge and importance of doing well with things that are new: A 'career' usually has to last from a person's 20s to their 60s. We may raise that to a person's 70s. So, that's over 40 years of working and maybe 50 years, half a century. It might be nice to get an education for a 'good job', get such a 'job' in a 'good organization', and hold that good job for one's entire career. But a blunt fact is that so far the number of such jobs, that is, that will last over 40 years, have been only a very tiny fraction of the total number of jobs. None of IBM, GE, GM, AT&T have been able to provide many such jobs. It's not at all clear that Microsoft, Cisco, Google, Facebook, or Twitter will either. So, during those 40+ years, there will be a lot of changes, and nearly everyone will have to keep up with the changes, with the things that are new. This is important but a challenge. So, there is essentially no way college or anything else can get you ready for 'a good job' that will last 40+ years if only because such jobs are so rare. So, instead, college can try to get you ready to keep up with things that are new for 40+ years. Some years ago on TV was an ad for an electronics trade school. They showed a happy graduate standing behind a box of electronics and saying, "Learn to play one of these babies, and you are fixed for life.". What was the box? Sure: It was a computer disk drive with a removable stack of disks, 14" in diameter, with total capacity about 14 million bytes. What a laugh. So, in simple terms, first, college should teach you not what you need for a 'job' but how to keep up with things that are new for several jobs over 40+ years. Second college might also teach you how to be a leader in things that are new, that is, be one who gets a lot of benefit from things that are new. So, in working with things that are new, we come back to the two dangers, knowing things that are bad you should not use and not knowing things that are good you should use. So college should teach you how to separate these two and, for the second, how to learn. And, college might also teach you how to create good, new things you should use. For how to separate, it is good to have some practice in some solid fields where we can separate relatively easily. Of course the crowning jewel of such fields is math with its theorems and proofs. Likely next is mathematical physics and then other physical sciences, engineering, etc. So, these fields can teach 'intellectual discipline', that is, some examples in at least those fields how to separate the wheat from the chaff. All this is not very new but goes back to an old saying, "You can always tell a Harvard man, but you can't tell him much.". That is, he has obtained some good means for separating the wheat from the chaff and already knows a lot of the wheat and maybe how to create more. Is Harvard the only source of such education? Not nearly! There are hundreds of colleges in the US where a good student can get a good education -- maybe the outline here will help them know what to look for and pursue. And there are a few dozen US research universities that can provide world class guidance in creating powerful, new knowledge.
marknutter 16y ago
Of course it's a bubble. Just like the housing crisis, there's been a huge amount of speculation when it comes to higher education. The belief is that if we give out cheap and easy loans to as many students as we can they will not only be able to easily pay those loans back but also become much more valuable in the long term, just like all the McMansions in the housing market. The Universities respond to all this easy cash by raising their prices to try to distinguish themselves from other Universities and the students respond to this by accepting an ever increasing debt load because of their undying faith that they will land a high paying job when they graduate. The Universities aren't on the hook for these loans, which makes it even worse than the housing crisis. The students are on the hook, but they won't be able to pay them back, which means it will fall on the US taxpayer's shoulders to bail everybody out. The solution would be to stop issuing these cheap loans to all but the most qualified students entering into the most useful fields (science/engineering and not art-history/sports medicine). Once the money party stops, Universities will be forced to lower their prices, and cheaper education will become more prevalent as smaller institutions scramble to fill the huge increase in demand for cheap, effective education. But no, we have a "right to education." Sigh.
praeclarum 16y ago
College is an opportunity to learn. Better colleges are better opportunities. It's on the kids' backs whether they actually take the time to learn or slide through the system. If you didn't learn, it's most likely your fault, not the college's.

164 points by jlangenauer 16y ago

hugh3 16y ago

What is it about this subject that encourages such hyperbole and overgeneralization? For what it's worth, I looked it up (thanks linkedin) and the author of this piece spent four years at some place called Linfield College in McMinville, Oregon, getting a BA in History, Philosophy, French and German. It's possible that her personal experiences may not generalize.

grandalf 16y ago
Hah. I was wondering that myself. I think it's sort of a sacred cow that higher education is good and beyond reproach, and that obtaining more formal education is usually a good idea.
gammarator 16y ago
For what it's worth, nothing in the article discusses her personal experiences or generalizes from them.
- hugh3 16y ago
  You're right -- she skips the discussion of her personal experiences and jumps straight into the generalizations. "Our higher education system largely fails to educate... It’s nothing less than a deep institutional, cultural, societal and indeed humanitarian crisis." Really? I could have sworn that I learned a bunch of stuff about physics and pure mathematics in my four years of intensively studying physics and pure mathematics, but maybe I'm just crazy.
  - cj 16y ago
    The vast majority of graduates do not leave college having intensively studied anything as rigorous as physics or mathematics. Most leave college with a degree that they didn't work very hard to earn. College offers the opportunity to do what you did and work your ass off, but most have no such desire.
    - enjo 16y ago
      Again, a massive generalization that you quite frankly don't have a bit of data to support.
      - cj 16y ago
        I'm a college student. I make my claims based on experience. Do you disagree with my claim? It may be a generalization, but by no means an overgeneralization.
        kenjackson 16y ago
        Most people I know who get a degree actually study a fair bit and learn a fair bit. For most people I know college is the first time they've ever really been pushed. Not to say this is the case for everyone, but I just want to point out that opinions can vary.
        deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
        entangld 16y ago
        Your generalization applies to just about everyone. Most people don't have higher educations at all. And only a percentage of those get through the classes that weed weaker students out. But are those classes actually teaching or just cutting grades? Hacker News users aren't exactly a representative sample of the population anyway (generally educated, probably middle class or higher and if not middle class, we probably have above average drive ambition). Secondly, just because someone passes classes doesn't mean they're educated. I had friends who pumped and dumped for tests and couldn't remember any of it the next semester. Other people learn outside of school and we have no way to measure or give credit for that. Clayton Christensen talks about the disruption of Harvard Business school in his book -> http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Solution-Creating-Sustaining-Successful/dp/1578518520 http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Solution-Creating-Sustainin... You can't compare everyone to an 'elite' anyway. It's statistically unfeasible. We need critical thinkers who have a thirst for knowledge. Some people don't have the latter. Especially people who think they are already educated. Those are things we need in our society and a degree doesn't guarantee that people have them. Although we wish it did.
  - ddkrone 16y ago
    What is it about math and physics majors that makes them think they somehow learn things more 'real' or relevant to the real world? Funny thing is this kind of attitude is way too common among the science majors. For some reason they think their degree is more real than the next guy's. Must have something to do with lack of emphasis on the humanitarian subjects. Before people jump the gun I should mention I have a graduate degree in mathematics and I paid for it what it was worth: 0 dollars.
brandall10 16y ago
Hyperbole = $$ (tuition/living expenses/opportunity costs) + 4-8 years of youth. Valuable stuff that inspires hand waving. Overgeneralization = The source of this ire seems to me to come from the idea of "hey, it wasn't long ago that a degree could guarantee me a job. Now not so much. Let's posit why." Although, I seem to remember that was the tone of the movie Reality Bites some two decades ago. So clearly, this isn't the first education bubble.
jasonyyun 16y ago
Expanding on grandalf's thought, I suspect that the alternative--that is, opting out of school to pursue a career or other business opportunity--can come off as overly selfish or capitalistic. Education is still often considered to have some sort of intrinsic value (though, of course, this is changing as students are increasingly viewing college for its instrumental value toward finding jobs); jumping straight into a career, on the other hand, is often associated (perhaps unfairly) with generating money, which has only instrumental value. This might be an unfair representation; there is, of course, intrinsic value to many people in pursuing a career that they're passionate about, and it's becoming increasingly the case that college is seen as having instrumental value. In the minds of many, though, college is still seen as more inherently valuable, and the arguments against going to college are just making us more and more capitalistic, at the expense of culture, education, and whatnot.
crikli 16y ago
From TFA: "What does it mean to be educated?" Observing the dialogues over the last few weeks it seems that the participants all define being "educated" differently. But they are not establishing their perspective before stating their cases. In other words, folks aren't declaring and initializing the variable before proceeding with their functional logic.
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  You mean to say they didn't reset their registers, cascading down an undefined potentially metastable state?
tokenadult 16y ago
SAT and ACT score interquartile ranges for Linfield College, according to Common Data Set reporting: http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.jsp?collegeId=1485&profileId=6 http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.j...
- joshhart 16y ago
  Pitiful. 75% of the students made below a 26 on the ACT. I scored at that level in 7th grade!
  - bartonfink 16y ago
    What's the point of bringing it up as if that's somehow a personal failure on their part? Surely you've done something with your life since then and have better things to do than put down those less fortunate than you.
    - joshhart 16y ago
      How do you equate poor performance on a standardized test with being less fortunate? It's my opinion that university admissions are way to lenient and that we'd do well to ratchet them up a major notch. Let community colleges serve their purpose. University studies should be for serious students capable of academic work. I brought up my score in this because it's the comparison most relevant to me.
      - hugh3 16y ago
        How do you equate poor performance on a standardized test with being less fortunate? I'm sorry, are you under the impression that you were a smart twelve-year-old for some reason other than that you happened to draw some good cards from the gene pool? Feeling superior to others for being smarter is like feeling superior to others for being better-looking or having richer parents. It's just dickish. (edit: or perhaps I should say it's normal, but best kept to yourself lest folks think you're a dick) It's my opinion that university admissions are way to lenient If you are going to play the game where you mock those whom you consider to be intellectually inferior it's best to master the difference between "to" and "too" first.
entangld 16y ago
Are you attempting to attack her credibility or can you address her point? Steve Jobs never graduated college. I would still take his opinion on education. This is an argument that can be logically debated without having to go to credentials. Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory. -- Leonardo da Vinci
- gruseom 16y ago
  Considering that da Vinci very likely never said that, your invocation of his authority is ironic. http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=argument+authority+inauthor:%22leonardo+da+vinci%22&num=100 http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=argumen... http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Leonardo_da_Vinci http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Leonardo_da_Vinci Edit: I retract that last bit. Quoting someone isn't necessarily arguing from their authority. But it almost certainly isn't Leonardo.
  - entangld 16y ago
    I could care less who said what. I have thousands of quotes. The quotes help me learn whose books I should read. I copied and pasted that quote because I had it. The words are more important than where they came from. I don't have much respect for authority in the first place. I would just rather spend more time debating actual arguments than arguing about credentials. RE: Leonardo - Well until we find out who said it, I'm attributing it to him. I don't throw away theories until they're disproven.
    - billybob 16y ago
      "I don't have much respect for authority in the first place." Really? Let me ask you a few questions, then. When was the American Revolution? What are the electrically charged parts of an atom? How does central banking work? How do red blood cells bind to oxygen? If you will only accept as fact information that you have personally verified, you will know a very small collection of facts. The sensible thing to do in many cases is to appeal to authority: the collective opinion of experts in a field. Heck, even in one's own area of specialty, one can't know everything. I can't personally evaluate every possible programming language or database in the world before choosing something; I take a clue from common opinion and narrow my search from there. Really, this is one of the things that makes civilization possible.
ddkrone 16y ago
How's her degree relevant other than the fact that it lends even more credibility to the fact that the piece is very well written.
roc 16y ago
Education reflects a major life decision, one which people feel strongly about. As such, it's very easy for emotion to trump a sober analysis of the situation and for the conversation to descend into the flinging of heated justifications. All sides are just as vulnerable to this.

georgieporgie 16y ago

I have a sneaking suspicion that people overestimate their own intelligence and the rigor of their education. I'm skeptical that education has truly gotten worse, and suspect that people like this lady have forgotten how dumb they used to be.

crikli 16y ago
That's symptomatic of being a fresh college grad (which this gal is...she's only four years out of school). You're still under the influence of being told you're smart because you got an A in whatever class. Take somebody like me, who's been out of school for 15 years. I know how dumb I am; it's a measured quantity and unfortunately has an observable and accelerating rate of growth.
tsotha 16y ago
The percentage of people going to college in the US has climbed pretty steadily over the years, so it probably is true the average college student is getting dumber. When I went to high school guidance councilors would steer you into the manual trades if your school work marked you as not being "college material". That just doesn't happen any more.

sardonicbryan 16y ago

Posts like this -- without any actual data/standards -- annoy me. I suspect that she perceives the quality of college education to be worse because she perceives the quality of college graduates to be worse. This may even be true. However, if this is the case, I don't think it's realistic to expect the standard of college graduates to be on par with what they were a generation ago or whenever she went to college, simply because there are so many more of them now, and college students are no longer mostly people who have self selected as unusually interested in learning/furthering their education and, for the most part, affluent.

hugh3 16y ago
I hope the author is reading this. I'd love to see the look on her face when she sees you guessing that she went to college "a generation ago", when the post starts with a big picture of her. She graduated in 2006.
blahblahblah 16y ago
I agree. She's way off base. If you search for worldwide rankings of universities, although answers vary depending on the source, higher education in the United States is universally well-regarded and the only other country that can really be considered to be a competitor for the #1 slot in overall quality of higher education is the United Kingdom. If we're "failing to educate" then the rest of the world is also failing. "The U.S. gets a lot of bad press for the failures of its education system, and some of the supporting data is frightening. A study by the Department of Education found that 30 million adults in the U.S. are functionally illiterate. Another Department of Ed report ranks the U.S. at 35 out of 57 countries for mathematics literacy among 15-year-olds. But when it comes to higher education, no one on Earth does better than the U.S., according to a new study by Times Higher Education (THE), a London magazine that tracks the higher ed market. Its 2010-'11 annual World University Rankings is dominated by U.S. schools. They hold 72 places among the world's top 200, including all the top five. Great Britain is a distant second, with 29 universities making the cut." (from Forbes http://www.forbes.com/2010/09/16/world-best-universities-ranking-leadership-careers-education.html http://www.forbes.com/2010/09/16/world-best-universities-ran...)

msluyter 16y ago

In answer to her question ("what does it mean to be educated"), Robin Hanson, an economist/blogger, suggests: The claim I’m most confident of: school is mostly not about the material taught in classes. I’m less sure to what extent it is about learning-to-learn, coming-to-obey, bonding with other kids, and signaling these features as well as intelligence and conscientiousness. I’m pretty sure signaling of various sorts is at least 30% of the average private value of school, and it could go as high as 80%. More interesting discussion can be found here: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/08/functions-of-school.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/08/functions-of-school.ht... http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/04/kling-on-school.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/04/kling-on-school.html Also, an interesting post by economist Bryan Caplan: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/08/bill_dickens_ve.html http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/08/bill_dickens_ve....

nbashaw 16y ago

One explanation of the possible higher education crisis could be that we simply have higher expectations. The world is moving faster and our education system hasn't caught up. Our grandparents typically stayed with the same company for decades, but we change jobs every couple years. Not only are we changing companies, we're changing skill sets. New competencies emerge and vanish in the course of years, not centuries. This is a very new development. Were universities always a mediocre way to get an education? By today's standards - yes. The thing is, "mediocre" is a relative term.

rdtsc 16y ago

> they only look like a bubble because we’ve learned to treat education as a market-driven commodity rather than a social good how can you not treat it as a market-driven commodity when a 4 year college degree can cost $120K ?

kjksf 16y ago
In the U.S. That is not the case in every country in the world (many have free college education) so it's not an inherent property of higher ed to be "marked-driven commodity". Therefore it's valid to criticize the U.S. implementation for being that given that it doesn't have to be.
- hugh3 16y ago
  It's notable, however, that on any ranking of the world's top universities you'll find the US absolutely dominant, holding over half of the top one hundred, two hundred, whatever... spots. This suggests there must be something going right. And having spent time at various universities in various different countries I gotta tell you that the existence of a lot more money floating around the average US university certainly helps a lot.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- rdtsc 16y ago
  That is what I was trying to highlight, how in US something like that is bound to end up on Wall-Street. Legislation will be rewritten, lobbyists and PR will be involved and it ends up trading just like real-estate, oil and other commodities.

Tycho 16y ago

I was thinking about this today. I remember I used to think 'well, if you do a degree, at least you'll be an expert in something, even if you can't find a good job with it.' When I think of it now, the notion is almost laughable. University students don't become experts in anything. For a non-technical subject, the knowledge gained isn't really going to beat a normal member of the public with an interest in the subject. English literature students, for example, just leave with some long essays under their belts, they don't graduate as well-read authorities on different epochs of literature. For technical subjects, I suspect most the skills learnt are forgotten afterwards. It's just too easy for people to coast by, or cheat. The astonishingly low pass marks in some courses have the added effect that the bright students don't need to really get on top of their game to get a good grade. So most people who graduate are far from experts on what they were learning about. As in, if a member of the public needed any of those skills/knowledge to do their job, they could acquire them privately without much difficulty.

cparedes 16y ago
> University students don't become experts in anything. You're absolutely right. A bachelor's degree is supposed to be a mark of well roundedness, not specialization. > English literature students, for example, just leave with some long essays under their belts, they don't graduate as well-read authorities on different epochs of literature. They're not supposed to be authorities - if they wanted to dedicate time to become authorities, it's well understood that you'll have to specialize in English lit, likely in some kind of subfield, which is what a masters/PhD is for. > As in, if a member of the public needed any of those skills/knowledge to do their job, they could acquire them privately without much difficulty. That doesn't necessarily mean that University education is all for naught. University education purports to teach us how to be better thinkers, not necessarily produce people who are skilled in one kind of thing. The latter definition that I gave above is what the article is trying to defend.
- Tycho 16y ago
  Maybe it's different where you live, but doing an Honours degree means specializing in the subject. For instance with English lit, you would typically choose 7 or 8 modules (spread over two years), each representing a different period of literature. For those classes you should read one or two books per week (but you have all summer to prepare), and write 3 essays for each module. You should also seek out criticism on the books, and for the ones you do essays or presentations on, read a lot of the related work. There will probably be a whole module on Shakespeare, so why not read all of Shakespeare? Max out. And since you're in university anyway, you might as well attend the lectures for modules you didn't choose, just to augment your knowledge. There is ample time to do all this. That would certainly make you an expert on your subject. Not a leading academic, obviously, but someone very well informed and educated on the matter. Of course, none of that really happens. Students do the minimum number of essays required (one, instead of three). They don't bother reading the books except the really short ones and the ones they need to write or present on. They barely even attend the lectures for the modules they did choose. Basically they finish having accomplished a fraction of the learning that was supposed to take place. Really no better than the average person who reads a lot of books.

hammock 16y ago

It's not just higher education that's been commoditized- take a look at US public schooling in general (or worldwide). There is this perception that "education solves social problems," but there is good education and bad education; you can't just put more people in schools and expect results.

stdbrouw 16y ago

I appreciated Peter Thiel's thoughts from a while back because he talked a little bit about the economics behind higher education, and why in some cases it doesn't make sense for some bright young kids to go to college. Couldn't agree more. This post, on the other hand, smells more like baseless weltschmerz. It's the kind of stuff I used to hear all day long while I was getting my education in liberal arts, from both students and professors: universities aren't what they used to be, we should get all the stupid people out, it's gotten so easy I could do this in my sleep (after which those same students proceed to get barely passing degrees, "because why would I bother going for more in an environment like this"), universities have become slave to the industry, and so on and so on. I like a bit of random pessimism and carping as much as the next guy, but I kind of thought most people were smart enough to realize that the whole "universities have lost their soul" thing was just a fun shtick rather than the actual state of things. Apparently not.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

Without acceptance criteria -- some neutrally-given test that yields a yes or no -- you can't really measure the function of something. Education has been notorious for refusing to create or abide by acceptance criteria. So it becomes a brand-name game. You pay for the brand, you spend some time getting indoctrinated (most likely to how important this particular brand is) and you get your piece of paper. Somebody said once that the purpose of education is to create new habits. So, for instance, if you are an English speaker and develop a habit of reading a good Russian novel once a year, that might be an excellent habit to have. Or if you develop a habit of reading a dozen computer books a year, or perhaps you develop a habit of cross-checking politically-slanted stories you agree with. And so on. Lots of great habits that you can form. Some subset of these constitute what we call "critical thinking," which everybody seems to think is important. There are a bunch of entrepreneurial habits that I'd love to make sure folks had. If you want a job after college, developing great people, marketing, and networking habits would be awesome. But I don't think anybody wants to seriously start talking about what habits college graduates should mostly exhibit. To do that would cause controversy. Colleges are very much dependent on public dollars (at least in the states) and I don't think they are ready for the political firestorm that would occur once you start actually trying to define the thing that we're all paying for. It's not a bubble, except for the part about more and more money goes for less and less return. The problem is that there is no "thing" that is being returned. There's no bad guys here, but it's much more like a con: you pay increasing amounts of money for this intangible thing where there's no real way to determine if what you got was what you wanted. You don't really know if it's worth what you spent, because the seller is purposely keeping you in the dark about the value, continuing to assure you that this type of purchase at these rates is absolutely necessary. In fact, as time goes on they get more and more insistent that this thing is absolutely necessary -- at any price. That kind of building up of expectations, then jacking the price, then delivery of something that could roughly be considered what was needed but isn't enough, repeat-and-rinse, is much more indicative of a con (Disclaimer: I don't mean to imply intent here, and I also don't mean to imply outright fraud. Just trying to find the best metaphor. I also realize that I am making a large generalization, and all generalizations are false. Caveat Emptor.)

ebiester 16y ago

davidhollander 16y ago

Flip the system and make the classwork homework and the homework classwork. Instead of a lecturer being the 5000th person trying to teach the subject with a varying degrees of preparedness, you just get the single best and most enthusiastic lecture of all time, everytime, as a video. Then in class teachers, TAs, and students can have normal humans conversations with each other to work through problems and peer interaction to motivate learning. Instead of this being relegated to additional office hours\recitations\labs.

kenjackson 16y ago
It's called the Khan Academy.
- rooshdi 16y ago
  Khan Academy is definitely a good step in the right direction but still lacks the one on one interaction with a knowledgeable mentor some students need in order to ask varying questions and receive the personal answers suited to their rationalizations. I think a great next step for Khan Academy would be to try to create partnerships with willing schools and universities to accommodate their current learning material and structure.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    Have you watched the TED video on their webpage? Watch that. Here's a blog from Los Altos which is using Khan Academy for some 5th (and 7th I believe) classes: http://lasdandkhanacademy.edublogs.org/ http://lasdandkhanacademy.edublogs.org/
r00fus 16y ago
This is the most interesting reply I've seen so far. How would one grade this effectively though?

shii 16y ago

These kinds of posts always pop up in a row, like a volley of arrows. Bemoaning education as failing students, falling in value, rising in cost, etc etc etc. What actual concrete alternatives are there for alarmed students (such as myself) that read these types of posts, jump through all the hoops, and still face a massive bill from Podunk U to get a BS or BA? Most of you all here have already gone through the rites and work at cushy tech or office jobs, and a few rebels with their own startups. What do you say to an incoming college freshman who isn't sure if he sees the light at the end of the tunnel or a $40K+ train barreling at him? It's nice to say work hard, network, go to a cheap state school, go to a 2 year community college first then transfer, etc...but this all seems to point a really broken system with little to no solutions in sight for those actively under the guillotine of crushing debt. Instead of pontificating, does anyone have actionable tips or advice?

arohner 16y ago
The current system is completely broken for people who don't get useful degrees, but only annoying for people who do get useful degrees. 1) Have a plan. Go into college with a measurable goal. Say "I'm going to get a degree in X, because that will help me get into my desired profession". Don't say "I'm going to go to become a well rounded person". 2) Get a useful degree. Generally, a useful degree is something that is technical, pays well after school, and doesn't require a masters / pHD. Things like Engineering, CS, Physics. Law and Medicine used to be good career paths, but I wouldn't recommend them anymore. 3) Don't assume the school will teach you everything you need to know. Instead, treat it as one source of knowledge among many. Learn about your major outside of school. Build things on your own. Get internships. Test out of easy classes. Intentionally take harder classes, or classes that would be harder to learn on your own after you've graduated.
- billswift 16y ago
  As an extension of your number three: Take all the math and linguistics courses you can without shorting your major - these are among the most generally useful and hardest to learn on your own courses. By linguistics, I mean phonology, syntax, and semantics, our knowledge of how language works; languages are also well worth learning, but Berlitz and Pimsleur are at least as good as university courses at teaching them. Also take all the lab courses associated with your major - they will give you more tacit knowledge, knowledge of how things actually work, than theory courses. Note, I'm mostly self-taught (including calculus), these are the kind of things I wish I had learned in school when I was there.

jnhnum1 16y ago

This seems highly over-dramatized: "The stakes are high, higher even than most of us realize. Our answer to this question holds the very roots of our salvation… and our demise." From my own experience (I'm a sophomore studying computer science, physics, and math at MIT), nobody assumes that their brand-name degree will automatically get them a job. The most lucrative jobs for CS involve interviews that grill you relentlessly regardless of what your educational background is. For the most part, people are here to learn about science and engineering that interests them, while at the same time hoping to get a job with what they've learned. MIT helps a lot with this by being very flexible about what classes you can take. Prerequisites are all soft, and there is no credit limit. A lot of this may not generalize, but for a motivated student I think college is absolutely not a waste of time.

dlaw 16y ago

I agree that the cost of a college education is increasing, perhaps disproportionately, because demand is so high. However, I would not call higher education a bubble: as an undergrad, I have found that my education does not lack rigor or intensity. I have learned an incredible amount in a very short time, and for me, the personal value of a college education (disregarding the value perceived by society) far exceeds the cost. (I'm studying at MIT, so perhaps my college experience is different from the norm.) Many people at MIT drop out to start companies or work at startups. I don't know how common this is at other schools, but at MIT, "so-and-so dropped out to work full-time at his startup" is not an unusual thing to hear. It seems to me that students value their degrees less than society does.

rivalis 16y ago

On the subject of evidence for "failing to educate": there is statistical evidence (with a decent sample size and population) that a large percentage of students (36-ish) do not show improvement on the CLA (http://www.collegiatelearningassessment.org/ http://www.collegiatelearningassessment.org/) after four years of college, a test meant to measure the sorts of higher-order literacy skills that almost everyone agrees college students should learn.

vannevar 16y ago

Can we please stop abusing the term "bubble" in the context of higher education? Not every economic adjustment is the result of a bubble. When Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy, it wasn't because there was a bubble in the DVD market. If higher education is overpriced, people will stop buying. When they do, none of the people who did buy in will be any worse off than they were before. It's a completely different situation than the mortgage crisis, where the bursting of the bubble put everyone in a worse economic position.

hugh3 16y ago
Well, not everyone, but I agree with your central point. An "asset bubble" has certain characteristics, none of which is really present for higher education -- mostly, it's not an asset in any usual sense because I can't flog off my B.Sc. to some eighteen-year-old for a hundred grand. Asset bubbles are marked by prices being driven up by speculation followed by a crash... since there's no speculation there's no bubble. Now, if instead of asking "is there a higher education bubble" you want to ask the question "Is higher education overpriced" then you might be onto something. It's better to ask a more specific question though, since prices of degrees from different universities vary from nothing to craploads. It's like asking "Are cars overpriced?" without distinguishing between Bugattis and Kias. Certainly at the high end of the market you're likely to find some overpricing, because that's what always happens at the high end of the market. A Bugatti really doesn't have many practical advantages over a Kia for the average commuter. So, in conclusion, some people are paying too much for their university degrees and getting lousy value for money, while others are getting the deal of a lifetime. All I can say is do some research, choose wisely, and don't get blinded by the prestige of a big name if you can't afford it.
nickpinkston 16y ago
It's more correct to say that this is an economic bubble (look at academic cost inflation), within a larger societal change (the form of education is going to be massively disrupted). It's not like the classic investment bubble since the investment in completely illiquid outside of purchase - making it a one way market. Also, education's affect on the majority of the people wasn't as beneficial as they were led to believe - therefore the "collapse" of this bubble won't kill those who've invested. Instead, it's going to hurt those who are directly/indirect selling assets into this one-way market: school, publishers, etc. when the population decreases demand. In the mortgage crisis there was a sell-off bubble, but here this isn't relevant since there was never the possibility of liquidity except by extra "rents" generated by getting better jobs.

alphaoverlord 16y ago

Although it can be argued that current higher education is being commoditized, the OP is making an unrealistic comparison to some idealized past where education meant more and people were more educated simply because they went to college. Looking at the recent links on HN about the entrance exam to Harvard et al. in 1900s, I would be very skeptical that the students then learned greater or more applicable skills. Memorizing the philosophies of esoteric 18th century Frenchmen and the intricacies of "noble society" has equally negligible impact on real-life skills. It is true that education is more commoditized - more people go to college and there is greater opportunity to obtain education - but commoditization by itself does not mean a decrease in quality. Because it is now a commodity, brand name means much more.

jseliger 16y ago

One big problem: professors don't have a lot of incentives to educate. They have incentives to publish, which helps explain grade inflation: http://jseliger.com/2011/04/02/grade-inflation-what-grade-inflation http://jseliger.com/2011/04/02/grade-inflation-what-grade-in.... The current higher education system hasn't really designed around the needs of undergraduates, which a lot of people don't understand. This is part of the reason I wrote How Universities Work, or: What I Wish I’d Known Freshman Year: A Guide to American University Life for the Uninitiated -- http://jseliger.com/2010/09/26/how-universities-work-or-what-i-wish-i%E2%80%99d-known-freshman-year-a-guide-to-american-university-life-for-the-uninitiated http://jseliger.com/2010/09/26/how-universities-work-or-what... , which I give to my freshmen every semester.

weegy 16y ago

Realizing that college wasn't suited for me I dropped out.

GaryOlson 16y ago

Start by killing all the lawyers. Grade quality, cheating, and instructional quality have all been degraded by litigious students and parents. Caught cheating? Bad grade? Don’t like the faculty? Can’t collaborate with your project group? Universities are under constant assault by undisciplined, immature, lazy students who attack the University system in order to obtain a degree. In the end, the colleges find it easier to pass the cost of failures onto society than fight. I can’t say I blame them.

fecklessyouth 16y ago

After reading HN comments, I've come to the conclusion that, education bubble aside, you all went to really shitty schools. I can tell because of the emphasis on the degree and technical skills, one of which is useless and the other of which can be gained from other sources. I've learned very few technical, "useful" skills in my schoolwork, outside of external clubs/networking/training I've done through my school. And I would have dropped out first semester if my education's biggest reward was a diploma--my school is basically unknown outside my state. By these criteria, my education sucks. But it's been the best decision I ever made. I think that in these reoccurring debates, HN is overlooking a broad, challenging, great books-based liberal arts education like the one I'm in. By refusing to teach "technical" skills that are better learned on the job anyway, and instead actually building the strength of the mind, for the sole sake of, as John Newman said, the sake of it, liberal arts places itself in the unique position of external to current industry trends. They'll teach you to learn, and leave the technical training to you once you graduate.

aba_sababa 16y ago

I'm not sure that commoditization is a bad thing. I'd argue that education hasn't been commoditized enough. Imagine if all universities started running themselves like honest-to-god businesses by pleasing the consumer and creating great products. There would be competition, prices would go down, and the quality of the product would go up. Unfortunately, higher education is one product that paradoxically doesn't need to please its users.

RobertL 16y ago

No he's not.

omouse 16y ago

Wow, I like this article a lot. It's anti-capitalist and anti-turning everything into some profit-motivated enterprise, but it stops short of using communist/socialist/anarchist/revolutionary terminology! What an excellent read. The challenge is to see if the system can be reformed at all (most likely not) and to concentrate on building up alternatives that are more meaningful.

NY_USA_Hacker 16y ago

Okay, we are debating the value of education in college and beyond. My qualifications: I hold a Ph.D. in some topics in applied math from a world class research university. Before the Ph.D. I taught math in one university and computer science in another. After my Ph.D. I was a professor in an MBA program at a Big Ten university and a research scientist in an industrial computer science lab. Now I'm an entrepreneur. There are two collections of 'knowledge' that are dangerous: First, there is the knowledge you don't know but you should and should consider using. Second, is the knowledge you do know but shouldn't and should never use. Of these two dangers, in practice by far the worst is the second. My view is that the most important lesson in college is to learn to detect and reject the second of these two dangers. Next most important is to give you the background and practice in learning so that you can acquire knowledge to get around the first danger. Next, broadly, there is a big, huge challenge in the world, life, careers, etc. -- doing well with things that are new. Here is a bold, blunt, fact of life that illustrates the challenge and importance of doing well with things that are new: A 'career' usually has to last from a person's 20s to their 60s. We may raise that to a person's 70s. So, that's over 40 years of working and maybe 50 years, half a century. It might be nice to get an education for a 'good job', get such a 'job' in a 'good organization', and hold that good job for one's entire career. But a blunt fact is that so far the number of such jobs, that is, that will last over 40 years, have been only a very tiny fraction of the total number of jobs. None of IBM, GE, GM, AT&T have been able to provide many such jobs. It's not at all clear that Microsoft, Cisco, Google, Facebook, or Twitter will either. So, during those 40+ years, there will be a lot of changes, and nearly everyone will have to keep up with the changes, with the things that are new. This is important but a challenge. So, there is essentially no way college or anything else can get you ready for 'a good job' that will last 40+ years if only because such jobs are so rare. So, instead, college can try to get you ready to keep up with things that are new for 40+ years. Some years ago on TV was an ad for an electronics trade school. They showed a happy graduate standing behind a box of electronics and saying, "Learn to play one of these babies, and you are fixed for life.". What was the box? Sure: It was a computer disk drive with a removable stack of disks, 14" in diameter, with total capacity about 14 million bytes. What a laugh. So, in simple terms, first, college should teach you not what you need for a 'job' but how to keep up with things that are new for several jobs over 40+ years. Second college might also teach you how to be a leader in things that are new, that is, be one who gets a lot of benefit from things that are new. So, in working with things that are new, we come back to the two dangers, knowing things that are bad you should not use and not knowing things that are good you should use. So college should teach you how to separate these two and, for the second, how to learn. And, college might also teach you how to create good, new things you should use. For how to separate, it is good to have some practice in some solid fields where we can separate relatively easily. Of course the crowning jewel of such fields is math with its theorems and proofs. Likely next is mathematical physics and then other physical sciences, engineering, etc. So, these fields can teach 'intellectual discipline', that is, some examples in at least those fields how to separate the wheat from the chaff. All this is not very new but goes back to an old saying, "You can always tell a Harvard man, but you can't tell him much.". That is, he has obtained some good means for separating the wheat from the chaff and already knows a lot of the wheat and maybe how to create more. Is Harvard the only source of such education? Not nearly! There are hundreds of colleges in the US where a good student can get a good education -- maybe the outline here will help them know what to look for and pursue. And there are a few dozen US research universities that can provide world class guidance in creating powerful, new knowledge.

marknutter 16y ago

Of course it's a bubble. Just like the housing crisis, there's been a huge amount of speculation when it comes to higher education. The belief is that if we give out cheap and easy loans to as many students as we can they will not only be able to easily pay those loans back but also become much more valuable in the long term, just like all the McMansions in the housing market. The Universities respond to all this easy cash by raising their prices to try to distinguish themselves from other Universities and the students respond to this by accepting an ever increasing debt load because of their undying faith that they will land a high paying job when they graduate. The Universities aren't on the hook for these loans, which makes it even worse than the housing crisis. The students are on the hook, but they won't be able to pay them back, which means it will fall on the US taxpayer's shoulders to bail everybody out. The solution would be to stop issuing these cheap loans to all but the most qualified students entering into the most useful fields (science/engineering and not art-history/sports medicine). Once the money party stops, Universities will be forced to lower their prices, and cheaper education will become more prevalent as smaller institutions scramble to fill the huge increase in demand for cheap, effective education. But no, we have a "right to education." Sigh.

praeclarum 16y ago

College is an opportunity to learn. Better colleges are better opportunities. It's on the kids' backs whether they actually take the time to learn or slide through the system. If you didn't learn, it's most likely your fault, not the college's.