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I hate to say this as most of my income is from teaching at a University, but this pandemic has shown us that you can get a quality education remotely. Also, mo

I hate to say this as most of my income is from teaching at a University, but this pandemic has shown us that you can get a quality education remotely. Also, most of college can be learned free online or in books these days. The only real value anymore are the friends you make who will one day be people who will help you get work.

nickff 6y ago
If people really wanted to learn, they could have been auditing courses. The obvious reality is that most students don't 'learn' much, and it doesn't matter. You needn't fear, because your university (like all the others) is in the business of providing a scarce resource (degrees). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education#:~:text=The%20Case%20Against%20Education%3A%20Why%20the%20Education%20System,in%20labor%20economics.%20Caplan%20argues%20that%20the%20prima https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education#:...
- alextheparrot 6y ago
  I’m a bit confused by this - are you asking people who have an otherwise full course load to additionally audit courses or asking people out of school to continue education by auditing courses? Maybe I’m a bit of an outlier, but I still watch lecture series on YouTube long after graduating college and didn’t really have time to audit courses alongside my other courses in college.
  - nickff 6y ago
    I'm saying they could audit courses instead of 'taking' them if learning was the objective. Of course, 19-year-olds would never audit courses instead of taking them, because they understand that the degree is valuable, and the knowledge is not.
    - xboxnolifes 6y ago
      I've looked into auditing courses for free a few times at my local and graduated college, but I could never find any decent information for the process accept for full-time students (which is straight forward). And for the alternative of paying to audit the course, what is the point? It's the same course, may as well get the credits for it. It's the same as not auditing.
      - nickff 6y ago
        Many universities and professors allow auditing for free; there's often no process for it because nobody wants to audit.
      - unishark 6y ago
        Officially, schools need to restrict access to classes for liability and other reasons. As an alum you may be allowed to audit by paying a fee. It should be a lot cheaper than tuition. Or, since you know the place, you can just drop in and ask the prof if it's ok to sit in. They'll probably say yes and be happy to have you sit in their class (i.e. not demand you enroll and pay the fee; Professors generally aren't big on toeing the line on such rules). This is extremely common.
- sjy 6y ago
  This is far from obvious. Caplan’s thesis is contrary to the common sense view accepted by the vast majority of people – the purpose of formal education is to learn stuff, and it works. Of course, that doesn’t make it false, but the argument is so far from obvious that even other libertarians have challenged it: https://reason.com/2018/03/24/bryan-caplans-case-against-education/ https://reason.com/2018/03/24/bryan-caplans-case-against-edu...
lordnacho 6y ago
I think this is true in the pure educational sense. There's nothing in most non-research degrees that you need a particular person or scarce resource to learn. Everything is public and nowadays online. It's even better: If you don't understand one guy's explanation of vector calculus, you can get another guy's without getting out of your seat. The problem is there are so many people with degrees, and there's a vague but established pecking order of universities. People still would rather hire someone from a top uni, especially in the Anglosphere. For most things that aren't dev work it's like the old IBM quote, you won't get fired for hiring the Harvard grad. For not-top unis that teach you the same stuff, I think they're gonna be in trouble. The mini-mill has already been built, and there's a huge gap in price that will only make it more attractive to just do a degree online. Even looking at my own education, it could have been done a lot faster. In terms of time it added up to 96 weeks of class time. At the time you needed professors meaning it had to be spread over 4 years, so you got a bit of socialising as well, but it's have loved to just do a massive intense 2 year course and be done with it. Fact is you socialise better at work: you'll have more varied people and a bit of cash to pay for stuff.
- amaajemyfren 6y ago
  I like your statement 'the mini-mill has already been made'. The thing is though not everyone needs an employee with Harvard degrees. Small companies may be happy with a finance person with a 4 year degree from a smaller university for example.
- michaelt 6y ago
  > Fact is you socialise better at work: you'll have more varied people and a bit of cash to pay for stuff. At a tech company your work colleagues will have much more varied ages but much less varied genders
klunger 6y ago
If you need help or someone to ask questions about the material, than it is very valuable to have access to a teacher or tutor. Sure, a lot can be self-taught. But some material is just hard and many people will require a more knowledgeable/experience person in that subject to help them grasp it. However, if online learning could be paired with effective online tutoring, than I think you are absolutely right.
read_if_gay_ 6y ago
> this pandemic has shown us that you can get a quality education remotely It might just be my university, but to me that reads like a joke. The last semester has been utterly useless to me. I might as well have taught myself (actually, I mostly did.)
- manquer 6y ago
  Even 12-15 years ago when I attended University, a lot of times Khan academy and youtube was better way to learn than the faculty from my university, And I attended schools from global top 100-200 range . You are always self-taught. That's the only way to actually learn . University only does three things 1) pacing and structure , 2) grouping you with other similar level peers you learn along with 3) giving access to experts who can help when stuck in a complex topic. Some people don't need a lot of this , some do. Most attend to get a job after graduation not because they may or may not need assistance to learn.
hobofan 6y ago
> Also, most of college can be learned free online or in books these days. Very much depends on the subject. And sure you could've always learned via books, but if you go that route you will be spending a big multiple of the time to gain the core knowledge than you would have at university, because as a non-subject matter expert, you can't judge yet what's going to be important or not. It might work well for computer science, as that's more or less a subject native to the internet, but for most other subjects there is basically nothing there. I'm currently studying biochemistry as an undergrad, and for every course beyond the second semester, there are barely any resources available. I wouldn't even dare and dream of a full open source(/access) curriculum like they exist for CS.
Ologn 6y ago
My college said I should spend at least three hours studying for every hour in class. So in a sense, three of my four years at college were getting "a quality education remotely. Also, most of college can be learned free online or in books these days." There is a pedagogical and psychological question of how much one learns from reading books on ones own, at one's owns pace and reading order - and how much one learns from lecture, from speaking to the professor before, during and after class and during office hours, and from working with and talking with other students taking these classes. Plus access to the library, the computer network and different servers, computer rooms, internships, student computer club meetings and open talks etc. Plus the usual of making friends, growing as a person, having access to a nice gym and swimming pool etc. Does the unguided student even know what to study? I took graph theory for a semester and wondered why it was a prerequisite until my data structures course where I dealt with trees, graphs etc. How many people without a Bachelors in Computer Science can explain the difference between O(n) and O(log n), other than maybe they know O(log n) is faster? Yes, having a BSCS doesn't guarantee you can, but I rarely meet people without a BSCS who have any kind of theoretical basis in computer science. Maybe they went to a bootcamp for a few weeks/months and can code CRUD apps in Javascript. I can go on...I took a writing class from a very good teacher. Although this would probably fall off the path of any focus on STEM, it improved my writing skill. Reading e-mails, instant messages, documentation, code review comments, code comments, architecture plans, presentations etc., I think a lot of people can do with a good course in writing, and it would help more IT projects get on track if people knew how to write and communicate clearly. It is not something on the clear path of STEM, but in a sense it is, and is just another thing college helps at. It can refine people in a way that helps them go on to professional work.
908B64B197 6y ago
It's not just the textbooks and lectures. The amount of learning that happened outside of classes, during labs with my peers, was on par with lecture halls if not more. I've seen side projects, discussed random technologies, even startup MVPs on Campus. That will be hard to replicate going fully remote.

nickff 6y ago

If people really wanted to learn, they could have been auditing courses. The obvious reality is that most students don't 'learn' much, and it doesn't matter. You needn't fear, because your university (like all the others) is in the business of providing a scarce resource (degrees). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education#:~:text=The%20Case%20Against%20Education%3A%20Why%20the%20Education%20System,in%20labor%20economics.%20Caplan%20argues%20that%20the%20prima https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education#:...

alextheparrot 6y ago
I’m a bit confused by this - are you asking people who have an otherwise full course load to additionally audit courses or asking people out of school to continue education by auditing courses? Maybe I’m a bit of an outlier, but I still watch lecture series on YouTube long after graduating college and didn’t really have time to audit courses alongside my other courses in college.
- nickff 6y ago
  I'm saying they could audit courses instead of 'taking' them if learning was the objective. Of course, 19-year-olds would never audit courses instead of taking them, because they understand that the degree is valuable, and the knowledge is not.
  - xboxnolifes 6y ago
    I've looked into auditing courses for free a few times at my local and graduated college, but I could never find any decent information for the process accept for full-time students (which is straight forward). And for the alternative of paying to audit the course, what is the point? It's the same course, may as well get the credits for it. It's the same as not auditing.
    - nickff 6y ago
      Many universities and professors allow auditing for free; there's often no process for it because nobody wants to audit.
    - unishark 6y ago
      Officially, schools need to restrict access to classes for liability and other reasons. As an alum you may be allowed to audit by paying a fee. It should be a lot cheaper than tuition. Or, since you know the place, you can just drop in and ask the prof if it's ok to sit in. They'll probably say yes and be happy to have you sit in their class (i.e. not demand you enroll and pay the fee; Professors generally aren't big on toeing the line on such rules). This is extremely common.
sjy 6y ago
This is far from obvious. Caplan’s thesis is contrary to the common sense view accepted by the vast majority of people – the purpose of formal education is to learn stuff, and it works. Of course, that doesn’t make it false, but the argument is so far from obvious that even other libertarians have challenged it: https://reason.com/2018/03/24/bryan-caplans-case-against-education/ https://reason.com/2018/03/24/bryan-caplans-case-against-edu...

lordnacho 6y ago

I think this is true in the pure educational sense. There's nothing in most non-research degrees that you need a particular person or scarce resource to learn. Everything is public and nowadays online. It's even better: If you don't understand one guy's explanation of vector calculus, you can get another guy's without getting out of your seat. The problem is there are so many people with degrees, and there's a vague but established pecking order of universities. People still would rather hire someone from a top uni, especially in the Anglosphere. For most things that aren't dev work it's like the old IBM quote, you won't get fired for hiring the Harvard grad. For not-top unis that teach you the same stuff, I think they're gonna be in trouble. The mini-mill has already been built, and there's a huge gap in price that will only make it more attractive to just do a degree online. Even looking at my own education, it could have been done a lot faster. In terms of time it added up to 96 weeks of class time. At the time you needed professors meaning it had to be spread over 4 years, so you got a bit of socialising as well, but it's have loved to just do a massive intense 2 year course and be done with it. Fact is you socialise better at work: you'll have more varied people and a bit of cash to pay for stuff.

amaajemyfren 6y ago
I like your statement 'the mini-mill has already been made'. The thing is though not everyone needs an employee with Harvard degrees. Small companies may be happy with a finance person with a 4 year degree from a smaller university for example.
michaelt 6y ago
> Fact is you socialise better at work: you'll have more varied people and a bit of cash to pay for stuff. At a tech company your work colleagues will have much more varied ages but much less varied genders

klunger 6y ago

If you need help or someone to ask questions about the material, than it is very valuable to have access to a teacher or tutor. Sure, a lot can be self-taught. But some material is just hard and many people will require a more knowledgeable/experience person in that subject to help them grasp it. However, if online learning could be paired with effective online tutoring, than I think you are absolutely right.

read_if_gay_ 6y ago

> this pandemic has shown us that you can get a quality education remotely It might just be my university, but to me that reads like a joke. The last semester has been utterly useless to me. I might as well have taught myself (actually, I mostly did.)

manquer 6y ago
Even 12-15 years ago when I attended University, a lot of times Khan academy and youtube was better way to learn than the faculty from my university, And I attended schools from global top 100-200 range . You are always self-taught. That's the only way to actually learn . University only does three things 1) pacing and structure , 2) grouping you with other similar level peers you learn along with 3) giving access to experts who can help when stuck in a complex topic. Some people don't need a lot of this , some do. Most attend to get a job after graduation not because they may or may not need assistance to learn.

hobofan 6y ago

> Also, most of college can be learned free online or in books these days. Very much depends on the subject. And sure you could've always learned via books, but if you go that route you will be spending a big multiple of the time to gain the core knowledge than you would have at university, because as a non-subject matter expert, you can't judge yet what's going to be important or not. It might work well for computer science, as that's more or less a subject native to the internet, but for most other subjects there is basically nothing there. I'm currently studying biochemistry as an undergrad, and for every course beyond the second semester, there are barely any resources available. I wouldn't even dare and dream of a full open source(/access) curriculum like they exist for CS.

Ologn 6y ago

My college said I should spend at least three hours studying for every hour in class. So in a sense, three of my four years at college were getting "a quality education remotely. Also, most of college can be learned free online or in books these days." There is a pedagogical and psychological question of how much one learns from reading books on ones own, at one's owns pace and reading order - and how much one learns from lecture, from speaking to the professor before, during and after class and during office hours, and from working with and talking with other students taking these classes. Plus access to the library, the computer network and different servers, computer rooms, internships, student computer club meetings and open talks etc. Plus the usual of making friends, growing as a person, having access to a nice gym and swimming pool etc. Does the unguided student even know what to study? I took graph theory for a semester and wondered why it was a prerequisite until my data structures course where I dealt with trees, graphs etc. How many people without a Bachelors in Computer Science can explain the difference between O(n) and O(log n), other than maybe they know O(log n) is faster? Yes, having a BSCS doesn't guarantee you can, but I rarely meet people without a BSCS who have any kind of theoretical basis in computer science. Maybe they went to a bootcamp for a few weeks/months and can code CRUD apps in Javascript. I can go on...I took a writing class from a very good teacher. Although this would probably fall off the path of any focus on STEM, it improved my writing skill. Reading e-mails, instant messages, documentation, code review comments, code comments, architecture plans, presentations etc., I think a lot of people can do with a good course in writing, and it would help more IT projects get on track if people knew how to write and communicate clearly. It is not something on the clear path of STEM, but in a sense it is, and is just another thing college helps at. It can refine people in a way that helps them go on to professional work.

908B64B197 6y ago

It's not just the textbooks and lectures. The amount of learning that happened outside of classes, during labs with my peers, was on par with lecture halls if not more. I've seen side projects, discussed random technologies, even startup MVPs on Campus. That will be hard to replicate going fully remote.