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I think there is a double standard applied to educational reformers like MOOCs, bootcamps, and video courses. Education largely does not work for most people w
by Gunax 5y ago
I think there is a double standard applied to educational reformers like MOOCs, bootcamps, and video courses.
Education largely does not work for most people who enrol. Most college students do not finish, and something like a third of university students do not either. And even among those students who receive the credential, many are probably able to slide through without actually learning much.
Anecdotally I think you'll find education has a pareto distribution: the top few percent of students learn enormously, the top 20% learn a decent amount, the next 20% or so squeek through with marginal benefit, and the bottom half does not even finish.
The reason I get annoyed is that I think these new, data-driven forms of education shoot themselves in the foot by gathering data. If they just shut their ears and pretended that everyone was learning based on the grades/assessments like universities and colleges do, they might be just as successful.
In other words, the proper comparison is not whether the education is most likely to succeed, but how likely it is to succeed in comparison to other forms. Sort of like those quit smoking aids which reportedly double your success rate of quitting--in a notoriously difficult task like quitting smoking, going from a 3% success to 6% is profound.
- bwing 5y agoIt's only a double standard if you're assuming the people critical of Lambda aren't also critical of selling valueless $200k college educations to checked-out students.
- akanet 5y agoI agree but would suggest you apply further rigor. There are bootcamps that are performing well. Bootcamps should be compared to other bootcamps.
- threatofrain 5y agoDo you have any recommendations or a shortlist?
- sanxiyn 5y agocirr.org has data you can compare.
- sunny--tech 5y agoYou can’t compare uni and bootcamps because they’re a false equivalency as someone else pointed out. The sole purpose of a bootcamp is to get a job afterwards. That’s why they market their job placement rates so much. Uni, video courses, and MOOCs are for education. Not everyone uses them to get a job, so job placement for a video course or uni compared to bootcamp doesn’t give you much info. Anecdote: I did a self-paced online school to get my first software job. I did research on it in regards to job placement. After getting my first software job, I have since taking many video courses and even went back to uni to get a degree in Computer Science. All of that was purely for further education, not getting a job. I wouldn’t go to a bootcamp in my position because I don’t need it. They aren’t focused on education or academics but job training.
- TheMagicHorsey 5y agoWish someone told me before I got $300,000 into debt that my liberal arts degree wasn't going to help me get employment. My university was certainly not up front about that. And if they had been honest about the fact that the degree was worth fuckall in the job market I would have not wasted my money there.
- sunny--tech 5y agoI definitely agree, I do think uni degrees are severely over priced and don’t prepare people for jobs as much as people think. I have an oceanography degree that just collects dust in my parent’s attic. But that in itself doesn’t mean what Lambda did was any better. If anything, they both need serious reforms.
- ldiracdelta 5y agoBankruptcy law should somehow apply to school loans after 7 years. Bankruptcy puts some of the onus of bad, ill-advised loans on the lender. Bankrupcy law partially aligns lender goals with borrower goals, as they then have a vested interest in your success.
- cm2012 5y agoThe only people to who can afford to go to school to broaden their education without a clear job benefit are those born rich. In other words, the people who used to go to college pre 1970s.
- cm2012 5y agoThis. Based on public outcome data, Lamba is an incredible decision compared to a standard college degree.