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The entire situation you described is perfectly relatable if you’ve read The Case Against Education by Bryan Caplan [1]. In it, Caplan argues that the true purp

The entire situation you described is perfectly relatable if you’ve read The Case Against Education by Bryan Caplan [1]. In it, Caplan argues that the true purpose of education is not to improve students but for students to signal their worth as employees to their future employers. He backs up this argument with a bibliography of studies many pages long. I read the book as part of a philosophy course I took in university and as a decidedly non-libertarian person (Caplan is a libertarian economist), I found it a very challenging argument to confront. What was so vexing was how much his points seemed to agree with my experiences. My peers and fellow classmates were doing exactly as he described in the book: taking “bird courses” instead of challenging ones, only taking the minimum requirements for their degree and avoiding the optional challenging electives, memorizing / begging / borrowing / stealing / cheating their way to the best grades possible in their classes at the expense of actual learning. In the COVID era of online classes, class averages have gone way up. The academic integrity offices of most faculties have been overwhelmed with cheating cases. If the true purpose of education is to better oneself, why are so many people taking the opportunity to cheat at a time when schools have less ability to monitor for it? This is a question that vexes me endlessly, as a student trying to get the most out of his education. I have been taking as many challenging courses as I can, and plan to continue doing so for the remainder of my degree. I don’t cheat and consequently I find myself well below the high class averages. It leaves me wondering: am I the naïve one? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education

_jal 6y ago
The US is a culture that has been repeating things like 'winning isn't everything, it is the only thing' from TVs, books, role models and T-shirts since before you could read. We have a president (for a bit longer) that celebrates not paying taxes. Many forms of white-collar crime are profitable after penalties. Culturally, you're being told you're a sucker if you don't cheat. Is it any surprise that an unmotivated person, (or a motivated one feeling pressure) will then turn around and cheat?
- chongli 6y ago
  The US is a culture that has been repeating things like 'winning isn't everything, it is the only thing' A large proportion of the students we've caught cheating in our course (I'm a full-time assistant for a first-year CS course) are international students. This is a global phenomenon, not a US-specific one.
  - csharptwdec19 6y ago
    I don't know if it is a fully global phenomenon, but it is certainly not a US-Centric one. For every politician who is in the news for 'bragging' about not paying taxes, there's usually at least one politician finger-wagging at them that avoids taxes to the same extent, but is just 'quiet' about it. People who are decrying cheating while cheating themselves are a far larger problem; when someone boasts they don't pay taxes, everyone else can point at them and go 'what an asshole!'. But when people discover someone doesn't pay taxes, yet goes after those who are public about not doing so, -that- is when the idea that 'everybody cheats'. becomes cemented.
  - marktangotango 6y ago
    What is "cheating" exactly though? Isn't that also culturally specific? Like why shouldn't the collective benefit from the work of a few, if the few are willing? That was certainly the attitude of students of many different cultures when I was in college. Many called sharing work "cheating" I'm certain they saw it as "stupid not too" and "helping their countrymen".
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      I can pretty much guarantee you that any CS department will have a clearly worded policy on what they consider "cheating", usually any sharing of code whatsoever on a take-home assignment. of course, you will likely see that policy blatantly violated every day in the computer lab.
      - jcranmer 6y ago
ghaff 6y ago
>In the COVID era of online classes, class averages have gone way up. Which is why there aren't great answers if certifications matter (and they do) whether in regular school or professional certifications. In the latter case it's right there in the name and it has a direct bearing on employment prospects. Should schools be reorienting evaluations in a way that isn't as cheatable? Probably. Use take home open book exams and just use ongoing take home assignments instead of proctored finals as much as possible. Maybe universities could have made classes in the current year pass/fail. But that has its own set of problems as many would just coast and be ill-prepared for future classes. Getting rid of most controls just isn't always possible. And as soon as you start proctoring there's going to be a tradeoff between effectiveness and invasiveness.
helen___keller 6y ago
> In it, Caplan argues that the true purpose of education is not to improve students but for students to signal their worth as employees to their future employers I was under the impression this is common knowledge. There's a reason people continue attending college as college costs skyrocket - education is a competitive signal, and being below the pack is probably the worst mistake you can make, unless you have some way to make up for it.
- phillc73 6y ago
  > being below the pack is probably the worst mistake you can make This entirely depends upon your life view. If you believe the most important thing in life is the accumulation of wealth and material possessions, then your argument may well be valid. If you believe there are other things to strive for in life and that happiness can be obtained through other measures, then being 'below the pack' matters almost not at all.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Rising housing costs mean that being a bit below the pack becomes a compounding disadvantage, to the point that the other measures of happiness are unattainable because you can't afford food, shelter, or medical care.
analog31 6y ago
Ideology aside, what you describe is the behavior of your classmates, not the purpose of the system. This has always been a paradox in education: It thrives on freedom, yet freedom comes with the freedom to abuse it. My view is that higher education comes with the flexibility to apply it towards your own use, which you have to decide. If that use is empty "signaling," so be it. If you want a real education, it's probably there for the taking. Choosing a use for you would make education more paternalistic, and possibly not solve the problem of signaling anyway. I did the same thing as you are doing, because I had a view of education that came from my family culture. Having no adult responsibilities and being taught higher math and physics for the same price as what my friends were paying for sociology and religion courses seemed like the ultimate cheat. What you learn will be of more lasting importance than your grades, and in any event, employers know the difference between the bird courses and the ones with real meat on the bones.
- tw25506007 6y ago
  > what you describe is the behavior of your classmates, not the purpose of the system While the GP used the word "purpose", thus prompting your is-ought comment, knowing Caplan, I suspect it was inaccurate. Economics is largely about an emergent phenomenon, thus falling squarely on the "is" side of things. Emergence is a relatively recent concept in the linguistic timeline. For most of human history, everything seemed to be either of human action and human intention (turning on a light), or neither of human action nor of human intention (the weather). As such, languages did not emerge (ha!) that easily expressed emergent behaviors, things that were of human action but not of human intention (traffic jams). Similarly, one can see this with the subject of biological evolution (another emergent phenomenon). It's been nearly two centuries since Darwin got that ball rolling, and still almost any discussion about evolution is rife with inaccurately implied intention. One other consequence of this linguistic difficulty is that it leads people to propose solutions to perceived problems as if they were just about human action/human intention...
  - analog31 6y ago
    That's fair, and perhaps I could have described it in a different way, which is that purpose aside, the education system is eminently hackable. One such hack is to let your friends take bird courses while you take meaty courses. Another is to find a way to learn from the bird courses while your classmates sleep through them. In the same terms, one could say that higher education has emerged to produce empty signaling as a widespread outcome, while allowing itself to be hackable enough to produce other desired outcomes as well. Empty signaling is the prevailing hack, but not the only hack.
KingMachiavelli 6y ago
> In it, Caplan argues that the true purpose of education is not to improve students but for students to signal their worth as employees to their future employers. While those two goals are not antithetical to each other, it is not at all a secret. I would say engineering/STEM schools are openly designed to get students good jobs. But good engineering schools don not have "bird courses", the number of mandatory classes to electives is really high. If you are at a school where students are doing the behavior you say, perhaps you are at the wrong institution or degree program. For example, I have heard rumors that business-area degrees tend to attract people who just want to buy their way to a credential.
- chongli 6y ago
  No, I’m at a school that is highly ranked for engineering. The engineering students have barely any electives at all. They’re always working their butts off and super stressed out all the time. For the few electives they do have they tend to choose bird courses. I’m a pure math student though. Math students tend to have way more flexibility in what they study. You can take extremely rigorous courses like functional analysis and algebraic topology. Or you can do a math-based accounting program and pretty much stop taking hard math courses after first year.
  - iguy 6y ago
    I thought this was true of math almost anywhere. Those who are serious will take hard courses and learn a lot, there is no ceiling. The reward isn't a high GPA, but if something formal is needed, a transcript naming what you took ought to be fairly readable. Perfect scores on soft math-accounting courses won't open any doors. Engineering programs are a bit different, and more interested in making sure the floor is high. More like medicine in that they are concerned that a certified professional should be competent.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Math is also a bit of an outlier in that, to a greater degree than most STEM majors, what's relatively easy for some is "I could just as soon flap my arms and fly as graduate with a math degree" for others. My math was OK enough to graduate with an engineering degree. I could never have contemplated getting a math degree. (Probably uniquely among degrees where I went. Well, maybe physics, but same thing.)
you_are_naive 6y ago
You are the naive one. I don't live in US but almost everyone cheats where I am from. I thought integrity mattered but it doesn't for people. It doesn't even register to students that cheating is wrong. I never cheated and it got me really nowhere. I was a top student throughout school but I only lost time I could have used for better if I had cheated. People don't even put little effort into cheating. I complained about students who cheated blatantly and got punished by the teacher because he was chewed by the management. At graduation, the cheaters get the same certificate. There is almost no difference and most schools don't care about cheating but enrolling more students. I was a fool for doing busy work for school while everyone copied or ignored it. I don't see the world outside school as more honest. You can't change the world without political power and money and to have both, you need to be as bad as the person sitting on the throne. People care about party names, political slogans, etc more than actual work. They care about media shout outs, endorsed by celebrity, institution name etc more.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  Where are you from? You realize that it's very bad if a place is known for cheating right? Like applications tossed in the bin bad.
leetcrew 6y ago
a lot of employers will set arbitrary GPA cutoffs (3.0 or even 3.5 sometimes) for straight-out-of-college positions. so if you let your GPA fall too far in pursuit of challenging/interesting courses, you are unfortunately shooting yourself in the foot. as long as you maintain a reasonable GPA, I think you will find that the joke will eventually be on your less scrupulous classmates. the "relevant coursework" section of a resume can make or break an application for an intern/entry-level role if the applicant is light on work experience. people that do hiring are not stupid. they understand that every CS major is required to take data structures, OS, etc. if you took a risk with a challenging elective that happens to be relevant to the business, your resume will stand out.
YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
I didn't know what a "bird course" is so I looked it up. Now I know and I also found a platform for sharing information about bird courses in the US and Canada: https://birdcourses.com/ https://birdcourses.com/
- reaperducer 6y ago
  I didn't know what a "bird course" is so I looked it up. So why didn't you share the answer with the rest of us, instead of linking to some web site that doesn't answer the question, either? It makes your comment look like spam.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
    Hi. Here are the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html I draw your attention to the following one in particular: Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
coffeecat 6y ago
As a TA, I'm well aware that the students getting As are mostly collaborating and that the "lone wolf" students tend to do worse despite putting more effort in and possibly having a better understanding of the material. And I feel bad about it. But aside from horrible spyware, I don't see any good solution that would make exams more fair for the "lone wolf" students. My approach is to grade in a way that's disproportionately harsh when I see multiple similar-but-wrong answers and lenient when I see a unique wrong answer.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> If the true purpose of education is to better oneself There is no transcendent “true purpose” of any broad category of human activity. There is only the actual purpose of each individual choosing to engage in it. And, very commonly, those purposes vary considerably from individual to individual. Any argument about what the “true purpose” of such a category of activity is, or any argument dependent on assumption about such a “true purpose”, is something beyond merely wrong.
cmattoon 6y ago
IMO, most courses are shortcuts to actual experience, and there are no shortcuts to such things. One might describe this as Education vs. Learning. I do agree with the general-case argument that Education (vs Learning) is largely a filter for conformity (and socioeconomic status). However, depending on the job (and company) you're applying for, conformity may or may not be a desirable trait. I recall an after-dinner conversation with a CEO and some VC's who said their favorite (illegal) interview question was "Have you ever been arrested? If so, for what?". Answering in the negative or pleading the 5th was a hard pass (as were stupid and/or egregious crimes) - they wanted people who were direct, honest, and took (calculated) risks. The typical college student is conditioned to avoid risk - memorizing/cheating/etc to get the highest GPA, or at least making sure they get the credits required to graduate. Pick the project idea that you know you can do in a week (okay, a weekend), pick the uncontroversial/uninteresting subject for your paper, etc. - just keep your head down and pass the class. Often, this seems to translate into people who can't program their way out of a FOR loop (or whatever the appropriate metaphor is for their field), solve new problems, or create new products. Inside-the-box thinking is great for passing standardized tests but somewhat less great for innovation. At that point, your four-point-whatever GPA and the two semesters you spent as the Deputy Assistant Vice Co-President of the Student Navelgazing Council are really just reasons to mock you after you've left the interview. Maybe the HR department of a dusty institution with those upload-and-re-type-your-resume-style portals will care, but I've never met a recruiter, hiring manager, or staff engineer that did. On the other hand, I've met people without CS degrees who have clearly put in the effort and know what they're talking about. A prior CTO once remarked that he had more respect for open source contributions and Coursera courses than he did for people who only had a degree to show. All a degree indicated, he said, was that their parents could afford to send them to college. Also, I don't mean to disparage extracurriculars with my above comment, but there's a similar phenomenon there, too: people who sign up for some club or organization just to pad their resume are less impressive than people who have developed some degree of skill in non-trivial hobbies. It demonstrates that you're capable of developing yourself on multiple levels rather than simply checking as many boxes as your parents will pay for. TL;DR I'd say you're far from naive if you're striving to learn and understand rather than recite and recall. You might get fewer wins when you punch above your weight class, but you'll be better in the end for doing it, especially when stacked up against people who never got off the metaphorical couch.
908B64B197 6y ago
> My peers and fellow classmates were doing exactly as he described in the book: taking “bird courses” instead of challenging ones, only taking the minimum requirements for their degree and avoiding the optional challenging electives, memorizing / begging / borrowing / stealing / cheating their way to the best grades possible in their classes at the expense of actual learning. That's why I love pass or fail. Some places (Stanford does) let you take classes as pass or fail. That incentivize students to try something a little out of their comfort zone. If it doesn't work or they end up not liking it it's not a big deal. Same thing goes for the first semester at MIT. > In the COVID era of online classes, class averages have gone way up. The academic integrity offices of most faculties have been overwhelmed with cheating cases. If the true purpose of education is to better oneself, why are so many people taking the opportunity to cheat at a time when schools have less ability to monitor for it? This is a question that vexes me endlessly, as a student trying to get the most out of his education. I have been taking as many challenging courses as I can, and plan to continue doing so for the remainder of my degree. I don’t cheat and consequently I find myself well below the high class averages. Caltech had tremendous success with take home exams. They select incoming students based on their desire to learn and honor. Maybe your institution is admitting too many students?

_jal 6y ago

The US is a culture that has been repeating things like 'winning isn't everything, it is the only thing' from TVs, books, role models and T-shirts since before you could read. We have a president (for a bit longer) that celebrates not paying taxes. Many forms of white-collar crime are profitable after penalties. Culturally, you're being told you're a sucker if you don't cheat. Is it any surprise that an unmotivated person, (or a motivated one feeling pressure) will then turn around and cheat?

chongli 6y ago
The US is a culture that has been repeating things like 'winning isn't everything, it is the only thing' A large proportion of the students we've caught cheating in our course (I'm a full-time assistant for a first-year CS course) are international students. This is a global phenomenon, not a US-specific one.
- csharptwdec19 6y ago
  I don't know if it is a fully global phenomenon, but it is certainly not a US-Centric one. For every politician who is in the news for 'bragging' about not paying taxes, there's usually at least one politician finger-wagging at them that avoids taxes to the same extent, but is just 'quiet' about it. People who are decrying cheating while cheating themselves are a far larger problem; when someone boasts they don't pay taxes, everyone else can point at them and go 'what an asshole!'. But when people discover someone doesn't pay taxes, yet goes after those who are public about not doing so, -that- is when the idea that 'everybody cheats'. becomes cemented.
- marktangotango 6y ago
  What is "cheating" exactly though? Isn't that also culturally specific? Like why shouldn't the collective benefit from the work of a few, if the few are willing? That was certainly the attitude of students of many different cultures when I was in college. Many called sharing work "cheating" I'm certain they saw it as "stupid not too" and "helping their countrymen".
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    I can pretty much guarantee you that any CS department will have a clearly worded policy on what they consider "cheating", usually any sharing of code whatsoever on a take-home assignment. of course, you will likely see that policy blatantly violated every day in the computer lab.
    - jcranmer 6y ago

ghaff 6y ago

>In the COVID era of online classes, class averages have gone way up. Which is why there aren't great answers if certifications matter (and they do) whether in regular school or professional certifications. In the latter case it's right there in the name and it has a direct bearing on employment prospects. Should schools be reorienting evaluations in a way that isn't as cheatable? Probably. Use take home open book exams and just use ongoing take home assignments instead of proctored finals as much as possible. Maybe universities could have made classes in the current year pass/fail. But that has its own set of problems as many would just coast and be ill-prepared for future classes. Getting rid of most controls just isn't always possible. And as soon as you start proctoring there's going to be a tradeoff between effectiveness and invasiveness.

helen___keller 6y ago

> In it, Caplan argues that the true purpose of education is not to improve students but for students to signal their worth as employees to their future employers I was under the impression this is common knowledge. There's a reason people continue attending college as college costs skyrocket - education is a competitive signal, and being below the pack is probably the worst mistake you can make, unless you have some way to make up for it.

phillc73 6y ago
> being below the pack is probably the worst mistake you can make This entirely depends upon your life view. If you believe the most important thing in life is the accumulation of wealth and material possessions, then your argument may well be valid. If you believe there are other things to strive for in life and that happiness can be obtained through other measures, then being 'below the pack' matters almost not at all.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  Rising housing costs mean that being a bit below the pack becomes a compounding disadvantage, to the point that the other measures of happiness are unattainable because you can't afford food, shelter, or medical care.

analog31 6y ago

Ideology aside, what you describe is the behavior of your classmates, not the purpose of the system. This has always been a paradox in education: It thrives on freedom, yet freedom comes with the freedom to abuse it. My view is that higher education comes with the flexibility to apply it towards your own use, which you have to decide. If that use is empty "signaling," so be it. If you want a real education, it's probably there for the taking. Choosing a use for you would make education more paternalistic, and possibly not solve the problem of signaling anyway. I did the same thing as you are doing, because I had a view of education that came from my family culture. Having no adult responsibilities and being taught higher math and physics for the same price as what my friends were paying for sociology and religion courses seemed like the ultimate cheat. What you learn will be of more lasting importance than your grades, and in any event, employers know the difference between the bird courses and the ones with real meat on the bones.

tw25506007 6y ago
> what you describe is the behavior of your classmates, not the purpose of the system While the GP used the word "purpose", thus prompting your is-ought comment, knowing Caplan, I suspect it was inaccurate. Economics is largely about an emergent phenomenon, thus falling squarely on the "is" side of things. Emergence is a relatively recent concept in the linguistic timeline. For most of human history, everything seemed to be either of human action and human intention (turning on a light), or neither of human action nor of human intention (the weather). As such, languages did not emerge (ha!) that easily expressed emergent behaviors, things that were of human action but not of human intention (traffic jams). Similarly, one can see this with the subject of biological evolution (another emergent phenomenon). It's been nearly two centuries since Darwin got that ball rolling, and still almost any discussion about evolution is rife with inaccurately implied intention. One other consequence of this linguistic difficulty is that it leads people to propose solutions to perceived problems as if they were just about human action/human intention...
- analog31 6y ago
  That's fair, and perhaps I could have described it in a different way, which is that purpose aside, the education system is eminently hackable. One such hack is to let your friends take bird courses while you take meaty courses. Another is to find a way to learn from the bird courses while your classmates sleep through them. In the same terms, one could say that higher education has emerged to produce empty signaling as a widespread outcome, while allowing itself to be hackable enough to produce other desired outcomes as well. Empty signaling is the prevailing hack, but not the only hack.

KingMachiavelli 6y ago

> In it, Caplan argues that the true purpose of education is not to improve students but for students to signal their worth as employees to their future employers. While those two goals are not antithetical to each other, it is not at all a secret. I would say engineering/STEM schools are openly designed to get students good jobs. But good engineering schools don not have "bird courses", the number of mandatory classes to electives is really high. If you are at a school where students are doing the behavior you say, perhaps you are at the wrong institution or degree program. For example, I have heard rumors that business-area degrees tend to attract people who just want to buy their way to a credential.

chongli 6y ago
No, I’m at a school that is highly ranked for engineering. The engineering students have barely any electives at all. They’re always working their butts off and super stressed out all the time. For the few electives they do have they tend to choose bird courses. I’m a pure math student though. Math students tend to have way more flexibility in what they study. You can take extremely rigorous courses like functional analysis and algebraic topology. Or you can do a math-based accounting program and pretty much stop taking hard math courses after first year.
- iguy 6y ago
  I thought this was true of math almost anywhere. Those who are serious will take hard courses and learn a lot, there is no ceiling. The reward isn't a high GPA, but if something formal is needed, a transcript naming what you took ought to be fairly readable. Perfect scores on soft math-accounting courses won't open any doors. Engineering programs are a bit different, and more interested in making sure the floor is high. More like medicine in that they are concerned that a certified professional should be competent.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Math is also a bit of an outlier in that, to a greater degree than most STEM majors, what's relatively easy for some is "I could just as soon flap my arms and fly as graduate with a math degree" for others. My math was OK enough to graduate with an engineering degree. I could never have contemplated getting a math degree. (Probably uniquely among degrees where I went. Well, maybe physics, but same thing.)

you_are_naive 6y ago

You are the naive one. I don't live in US but almost everyone cheats where I am from. I thought integrity mattered but it doesn't for people. It doesn't even register to students that cheating is wrong. I never cheated and it got me really nowhere. I was a top student throughout school but I only lost time I could have used for better if I had cheated. People don't even put little effort into cheating. I complained about students who cheated blatantly and got punished by the teacher because he was chewed by the management. At graduation, the cheaters get the same certificate. There is almost no difference and most schools don't care about cheating but enrolling more students. I was a fool for doing busy work for school while everyone copied or ignored it. I don't see the world outside school as more honest. You can't change the world without political power and money and to have both, you need to be as bad as the person sitting on the throne. People care about party names, political slogans, etc more than actual work. They care about media shout outs, endorsed by celebrity, institution name etc more.

908B64B197 6y ago
Where are you from? You realize that it's very bad if a place is known for cheating right? Like applications tossed in the bin bad.

leetcrew 6y ago

a lot of employers will set arbitrary GPA cutoffs (3.0 or even 3.5 sometimes) for straight-out-of-college positions. so if you let your GPA fall too far in pursuit of challenging/interesting courses, you are unfortunately shooting yourself in the foot. as long as you maintain a reasonable GPA, I think you will find that the joke will eventually be on your less scrupulous classmates. the "relevant coursework" section of a resume can make or break an application for an intern/entry-level role if the applicant is light on work experience. people that do hiring are not stupid. they understand that every CS major is required to take data structures, OS, etc. if you took a risk with a challenging elective that happens to be relevant to the business, your resume will stand out.

YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago

I didn't know what a "bird course" is so I looked it up. Now I know and I also found a platform for sharing information about bird courses in the US and Canada: https://birdcourses.com/ https://birdcourses.com/

reaperducer 6y ago
I didn't know what a "bird course" is so I looked it up. So why didn't you share the answer with the rest of us, instead of linking to some web site that doesn't answer the question, either? It makes your comment look like spam.
- YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
  Hi. Here are the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html I draw your attention to the following one in particular: Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

coffeecat 6y ago

As a TA, I'm well aware that the students getting As are mostly collaborating and that the "lone wolf" students tend to do worse despite putting more effort in and possibly having a better understanding of the material. And I feel bad about it. But aside from horrible spyware, I don't see any good solution that would make exams more fair for the "lone wolf" students. My approach is to grade in a way that's disproportionately harsh when I see multiple similar-but-wrong answers and lenient when I see a unique wrong answer.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> If the true purpose of education is to better oneself There is no transcendent “true purpose” of any broad category of human activity. There is only the actual purpose of each individual choosing to engage in it. And, very commonly, those purposes vary considerably from individual to individual. Any argument about what the “true purpose” of such a category of activity is, or any argument dependent on assumption about such a “true purpose”, is something beyond merely wrong.

cmattoon 6y ago

IMO, most courses are shortcuts to actual experience, and there are no shortcuts to such things. One might describe this as Education vs. Learning. I do agree with the general-case argument that Education (vs Learning) is largely a filter for conformity (and socioeconomic status). However, depending on the job (and company) you're applying for, conformity may or may not be a desirable trait. I recall an after-dinner conversation with a CEO and some VC's who said their favorite (illegal) interview question was "Have you ever been arrested? If so, for what?". Answering in the negative or pleading the 5th was a hard pass (as were stupid and/or egregious crimes) - they wanted people who were direct, honest, and took (calculated) risks. The typical college student is conditioned to avoid risk - memorizing/cheating/etc to get the highest GPA, or at least making sure they get the credits required to graduate. Pick the project idea that you know you can do in a week (okay, a weekend), pick the uncontroversial/uninteresting subject for your paper, etc. - just keep your head down and pass the class. Often, this seems to translate into people who can't program their way out of a FOR loop (or whatever the appropriate metaphor is for their field), solve new problems, or create new products. Inside-the-box thinking is great for passing standardized tests but somewhat less great for innovation. At that point, your four-point-whatever GPA and the two semesters you spent as the Deputy Assistant Vice Co-President of the Student Navelgazing Council are really just reasons to mock you after you've left the interview. Maybe the HR department of a dusty institution with those upload-and-re-type-your-resume-style portals will care, but I've never met a recruiter, hiring manager, or staff engineer that did. On the other hand, I've met people without CS degrees who have clearly put in the effort and know what they're talking about. A prior CTO once remarked that he had more respect for open source contributions and Coursera courses than he did for people who only had a degree to show. All a degree indicated, he said, was that their parents could afford to send them to college. Also, I don't mean to disparage extracurriculars with my above comment, but there's a similar phenomenon there, too: people who sign up for some club or organization just to pad their resume are less impressive than people who have developed some degree of skill in non-trivial hobbies. It demonstrates that you're capable of developing yourself on multiple levels rather than simply checking as many boxes as your parents will pay for. TL;DR I'd say you're far from naive if you're striving to learn and understand rather than recite and recall. You might get fewer wins when you punch above your weight class, but you'll be better in the end for doing it, especially when stacked up against people who never got off the metaphorical couch.

908B64B197 6y ago

> My peers and fellow classmates were doing exactly as he described in the book: taking “bird courses” instead of challenging ones, only taking the minimum requirements for their degree and avoiding the optional challenging electives, memorizing / begging / borrowing / stealing / cheating their way to the best grades possible in their classes at the expense of actual learning. That's why I love pass or fail. Some places (Stanford does) let you take classes as pass or fail. That incentivize students to try something a little out of their comfort zone. If it doesn't work or they end up not liking it it's not a big deal. Same thing goes for the first semester at MIT. > In the COVID era of online classes, class averages have gone way up. The academic integrity offices of most faculties have been overwhelmed with cheating cases. If the true purpose of education is to better oneself, why are so many people taking the opportunity to cheat at a time when schools have less ability to monitor for it? This is a question that vexes me endlessly, as a student trying to get the most out of his education. I have been taking as many challenging courses as I can, and plan to continue doing so for the remainder of my degree. I don’t cheat and consequently I find myself well below the high class averages. Caltech had tremendous success with take home exams. They select incoming students based on their desire to learn and honor. Maybe your institution is admitting too many students?