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As a professor in a computer science department at a state run university (that has one of the oldest CS departments in the nation), I actually am far more afra

As a professor in a computer science department at a state run university (that has one of the oldest CS departments in the nation), I actually am far more afraid of the book publishers than "big tech". They are going down the road of "who needs uni, just use our text, our online learning aids, our online _courses_"... With each new ad from the textbook publishing company, I see a push to have learners just use their material... the large problem is the university expects you to use books from well known publishers, so they have leverage to get you to use the book+material. Big tech giving software and courses is one thing, but those come and go... it is like learning to use any tool, hey do you use a DeWalt or Milwaukee? Each are the same but different. In 10 years, you might use a completely different tool, but the tool was just that, it is the ideas and concepts that you are supposed to learn in (and outside of) the classroom. It is my job to teach you _how_ to solve problems, perhaps using the DeWalt or the Milwaukee or both. Eh, as others have noted, companies have been donating for years, we could argue that grants shape our research too, but as long as professors keep the goal in mind (how do I get students to effectively and efficiently solve problems using available tools of the day), I think our future will be alright.

throwaway7281 6y ago
Maybe it is a better way to learn independently, with regular, e.g. monthly or quarterly check-ins with an experienced mentor? Would solve quite a few problems altogether - people getting more independent and following their interests. You would still have competition, but that would be moderated by actual needs, both in the private and public sector. Not sure an end to the classic higher-ed system would be a bad thing.
impendia 6y ago
> the large problem is the university expects you to use books from well known publishers Interesting, and disturbing. I am a math professor at a US state university, and thankfully I haven't observed any of this at all. For lower-level classes such as calculus we all use the same book, decided upon by the department as a whole, but when teaching upper-level classes I generally choose as I see fit. I am curious, what form does this expectation/pressure take? At my university, if administrators tried to do this, my colleagues (at least the tenure-track/tenured ones) would briefly chuckle, delete the email, and not remember it five minutes later.
kungito 6y ago
Why can't the books be able to teach about "how" as well? I'm from a mediocre country where I went to the best CS college and 99% of the things I learned there was from powerpoint presentations, pdf scripts or books full of math exercises. I still got into FAMANG as my first full time job and so did many other people from there. I just never saw the value in our professors. They mostly repeated stuff from text books, had 10 year old lab assignments and similar exams for 20 years. And I don't think it's that bad. It teaches you enough of the basics for average programming job or as basis for you to expand into what's more interesting to you specifically. The only thing missing was cool projects like having your college develop GHC or stuff like that. Point being, I think college professors overestimate their impact a bit when regarding bachelors/masters topics. All that is too basic to really need some expert domain knowledge and is knowledge which hasn't really changed that much the last 20 years. SVM's were invented in the 90s. Linear algebra some time before that. The rest is industry or postdoc stuff. I get the "teaching" part but if you are "teaching" a room of 50 student's it isn't really that different from watching a youtube video for them.
- username90 6y ago
  You need positive teaching and negative teaching. Positive teaches how, negative teaches how not to. Without negative teaching people will accumulate a lot of bad or right out wrong beliefs and patterns as they study. A book cannot provide negative teaching, it can only teach you how to do things.
  - freedomben 6y ago
    I would humbly submit that you aren't using very good books. I read all my text books during my CS degree, and there was plenty of negative teaching in there. A well written book or tutorial covers common pitfalls and equips you to recognize bad as well as good. I do think there is a ton of value in getting feedback from a professor or colleague, but you can get pretty far with a book.
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      I’m reminded of Ben Eater’s tutorials on YouTube. Even though he knows what he’s writing won’t work, he writes the naive form and acts confused when it doesn’t work. Then he explains why it didn’t work. Compare that to basically every tutorial that just says “do this” without explaining why.
notenoughhorses 6y ago
I’m doing a CS degree now, mostly lower level classes now. I find that teaching well does make a difference. Interestingly, when my professors use slides provided to them by the textbook company, I generally find it much harder to be engaged by watching their lecture. Compare to professors who make custom material and truly have some skill in presenting it. Professors who choose to use the full suite of textbook, plus textbook provided slides, plus electronic auto graded homework might save themselves some time, but definitely are less effective educators, in my limited experiences.
stateprof 6y ago
Just to add another anecdote: I'm also a CS professor at a well-known state university. We are free to choose whatever books we want for classes. To the best of my knowledge, these choices are not even reviewed. We are also free to use no textbook and just hand out lecture notes or whatever.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  This lack of restriction does lead to the professor using a book they wrote themselves. So to take their class, you need to buy their book as well. I understand why they do that, but it just feels wrong. Obviously there’s some textbooks written by teachers that are quite amazing (The Art of Electronics for example), but not all are like that.
  - samspenc 6y ago
    Just to add, there is a flip side to this. As a grad student who did research and TA work, I've actually discussed this with fellow grad students and professors in the past and it comes down to the following... A professor would rather spend their time teaching students and finding the best existing book (less expensive if possible, but better quality is more important) so they can use it for teaching. I'm sure there are professors who have been thinking of writing their own textbook and getting students to buy them ... the downside is apparently writing technical books and textbooks earns less than minimum wage, and that's if you are lucky because of the way revenue split works with textbooks. So they have to charge exorbitant rates on the textbooks to make even a little bit of money. So most professors don't bother and instead use an existing good quality textbook. Not to say there aren't others who would try to write and sell their own.
weRnotU 6y ago
I do not worry about the loss of social constructs like university per se. To a large extent it’s a political institution, with outdated historical baubles forced upon it (administrative nightmare). We’re at a hinge point in social evolution where perhaps a university is generally unnecessary. Accurate information discovery, storage, and retrieval is what a university was built for conceptually. It’s a matter of human history it is mired in old political speech and social construct. Not necessity to execute its purpose. You have skills to teach people. Teach them. Dispose of the pretense of teaching “in politically normalized settings”. Go teach. Really historically you’re teaching people who paid the political price. How free.
jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
Those publishers are so predatory and user-hostile, I wonder if they will actually be able to restrain themselves long enough to establish a market. As it is, very few people are stupid enough to buy a "textbook" that comes with auto-self-destruct DRM that renders it unusable at the end of the semester. Of course many college kids are just kids fresh out of highschool with no financial skills or haggling skills so I guess I take back what I said about there not being enough dumb-dumbs to fuel a market for DRM "textbooks". People do still take out loans to finance their English major, after all.
- yoyonamite 6y ago
  The auto-self-destruct DRM isn't the textbook, it's the mandatory online quizzes provided by the publishers that require an active login. If you don't pay ~$60+ for the login, which only lasts a semester, you can't take the quizzes. If you can't take the quizzes, you fail the class.
  - jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
    They make limited access "textbooks" too.

throwaway7281 6y ago

Maybe it is a better way to learn independently, with regular, e.g. monthly or quarterly check-ins with an experienced mentor? Would solve quite a few problems altogether - people getting more independent and following their interests. You would still have competition, but that would be moderated by actual needs, both in the private and public sector. Not sure an end to the classic higher-ed system would be a bad thing.

impendia 6y ago

> the large problem is the university expects you to use books from well known publishers Interesting, and disturbing. I am a math professor at a US state university, and thankfully I haven't observed any of this at all. For lower-level classes such as calculus we all use the same book, decided upon by the department as a whole, but when teaching upper-level classes I generally choose as I see fit. I am curious, what form does this expectation/pressure take? At my university, if administrators tried to do this, my colleagues (at least the tenure-track/tenured ones) would briefly chuckle, delete the email, and not remember it five minutes later.

kungito 6y ago

Why can't the books be able to teach about "how" as well? I'm from a mediocre country where I went to the best CS college and 99% of the things I learned there was from powerpoint presentations, pdf scripts or books full of math exercises. I still got into FAMANG as my first full time job and so did many other people from there. I just never saw the value in our professors. They mostly repeated stuff from text books, had 10 year old lab assignments and similar exams for 20 years. And I don't think it's that bad. It teaches you enough of the basics for average programming job or as basis for you to expand into what's more interesting to you specifically. The only thing missing was cool projects like having your college develop GHC or stuff like that. Point being, I think college professors overestimate their impact a bit when regarding bachelors/masters topics. All that is too basic to really need some expert domain knowledge and is knowledge which hasn't really changed that much the last 20 years. SVM's were invented in the 90s. Linear algebra some time before that. The rest is industry or postdoc stuff. I get the "teaching" part but if you are "teaching" a room of 50 student's it isn't really that different from watching a youtube video for them.

username90 6y ago
You need positive teaching and negative teaching. Positive teaches how, negative teaches how not to. Without negative teaching people will accumulate a lot of bad or right out wrong beliefs and patterns as they study. A book cannot provide negative teaching, it can only teach you how to do things.
- freedomben 6y ago
  I would humbly submit that you aren't using very good books. I read all my text books during my CS degree, and there was plenty of negative teaching in there. A well written book or tutorial covers common pitfalls and equips you to recognize bad as well as good. I do think there is a ton of value in getting feedback from a professor or colleague, but you can get pretty far with a book.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    I’m reminded of Ben Eater’s tutorials on YouTube. Even though he knows what he’s writing won’t work, he writes the naive form and acts confused when it doesn’t work. Then he explains why it didn’t work. Compare that to basically every tutorial that just says “do this” without explaining why.

notenoughhorses 6y ago

I’m doing a CS degree now, mostly lower level classes now. I find that teaching well does make a difference. Interestingly, when my professors use slides provided to them by the textbook company, I generally find it much harder to be engaged by watching their lecture. Compare to professors who make custom material and truly have some skill in presenting it. Professors who choose to use the full suite of textbook, plus textbook provided slides, plus electronic auto graded homework might save themselves some time, but definitely are less effective educators, in my limited experiences.

stateprof 6y ago

Just to add another anecdote: I'm also a CS professor at a well-known state university. We are free to choose whatever books we want for classes. To the best of my knowledge, these choices are not even reviewed. We are also free to use no textbook and just hand out lecture notes or whatever.

colejohnson66 6y ago
This lack of restriction does lead to the professor using a book they wrote themselves. So to take their class, you need to buy their book as well. I understand why they do that, but it just feels wrong. Obviously there’s some textbooks written by teachers that are quite amazing (The Art of Electronics for example), but not all are like that.
- samspenc 6y ago
  Just to add, there is a flip side to this. As a grad student who did research and TA work, I've actually discussed this with fellow grad students and professors in the past and it comes down to the following... A professor would rather spend their time teaching students and finding the best existing book (less expensive if possible, but better quality is more important) so they can use it for teaching. I'm sure there are professors who have been thinking of writing their own textbook and getting students to buy them ... the downside is apparently writing technical books and textbooks earns less than minimum wage, and that's if you are lucky because of the way revenue split works with textbooks. So they have to charge exorbitant rates on the textbooks to make even a little bit of money. So most professors don't bother and instead use an existing good quality textbook. Not to say there aren't others who would try to write and sell their own.

weRnotU 6y ago

I do not worry about the loss of social constructs like university per se. To a large extent it’s a political institution, with outdated historical baubles forced upon it (administrative nightmare). We’re at a hinge point in social evolution where perhaps a university is generally unnecessary. Accurate information discovery, storage, and retrieval is what a university was built for conceptually. It’s a matter of human history it is mired in old political speech and social construct. Not necessity to execute its purpose. You have skills to teach people. Teach them. Dispose of the pretense of teaching “in politically normalized settings”. Go teach. Really historically you’re teaching people who paid the political price. How free.

jacobwilliamroy 6y ago

Those publishers are so predatory and user-hostile, I wonder if they will actually be able to restrain themselves long enough to establish a market. As it is, very few people are stupid enough to buy a "textbook" that comes with auto-self-destruct DRM that renders it unusable at the end of the semester. Of course many college kids are just kids fresh out of highschool with no financial skills or haggling skills so I guess I take back what I said about there not being enough dumb-dumbs to fuel a market for DRM "textbooks". People do still take out loans to finance their English major, after all.

yoyonamite 6y ago
The auto-self-destruct DRM isn't the textbook, it's the mandatory online quizzes provided by the publishers that require an active login. If you don't pay ~$60+ for the login, which only lasts a semester, you can't take the quizzes. If you can't take the quizzes, you fail the class.
- jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
  They make limited access "textbooks" too.