5 ms·

The thing is, they aren't doing it as a selfless act. If I want to get a liberal arts education I can go onto open courseware and get a free education. I know s

The thing is, they aren't doing it as a selfless act. If I want to get a liberal arts education I can go onto open courseware and get a free education. I know so many people getting degrees to get a job that shouldn't need them. I know many that went from a stem degree to a throw away degree because they felt stem was too hard for them and interfered with their social life. A real fix for the student loan crisis would be to make a national competency test instead of using a bachelor's degree gauge competence. Then get rid of government backed student loans. My time in college could have been halved if I could have not taken a bunch of the classes that added no value to my education. Honestly, it's shameful how bad those Gen Ed classes are. They exist to check a box. And I'd be pretty upset to pay for someone else to get a liberal arts degree, especially when it doesn't contribute anything and could have been gotten for free if the person took some initiative.

woodruffw 4y ago
This boils down to the “welfare freeloaders” polemic, turned onto people who are pursuing higher education. The fact that you can’t see what they contribute (or more accurately, can’t appreciate it because you’ve been consistently failed by the educational system) doesn’t make it worthless. When I talk to people with STEM degrees who are around my age, it frequently comes out that their “gen ed” classes were pathetically easy. They generally feel some kind of mild resentment around this, since they’re (1) paying for a degree, and (2) generally intelligent people who can handle a more challenging class. But there’s a reason it’s that way, one that I experienced firsthand when CS students popped into my philosophy courses thinking they’d be easy: they frequently performed miserably and were suddenly at risk of having their CS progression slowed by a non-major requirement. In other words: many schools have thrown up their hands and (tacitly) admitted defeat on STEM students, funneling them through no-fail liberal arts requirements rather than actually challenging them (where they might fail, slow down their STEM degree, and complain about all the irrelevant coursework they have to do even more). And that hasn’t worked so well either: instead of keeping STEM students happy, it’s produced a generation of undergraduates who think their kid-glove treatment is what liberal arts is actually like.
ModernMech 4y ago
One of the reasons for “gen ed ” classes is to give you exposure to different fields at a time when many students don’t know what they want to do in life. Not everyone goes into college 100% sure they want a CS degree and to be a software engineer or whatever. One of the reasons they are easy is because they are intro courses at the doorway of an entire field of study that is not lacking in depth or complexity. Intro to CS is also very easy (this is a variable, this is an if statement, this is a while loop), but that doesn’t mean the 400 level OS or AI course is a walk in the park. The same goes for philosophy, physics, biology, chemistry, history, or any other subject you perhaps thought was a joke. The ease of the 100 level course is so it doesn’t scare you away entirely, not because the field is intrinsically easy. Many students will take that gen ed course and then switch into that major because they found the topic fascinating. You took it and found it dull, which actually did add value to your education because it reaffirmed your choice of your major. Some people aren’t so lucky and pick a career they hate, only to find something they love much later in life. Anyway, this idea that opencourseware is equivalent to a university education is not true in my experience. From my perspective, learning is a multiplayer activity. My students learn best when they are helping each other, doing group projects, teaching eachother things they’ve just learned, and going through the college experience as a cohort. University isn’t just about the facts in the book or the curriculum. I think if that were true, the University system would have been obviated long ago by open courseware. But that has t happened and it won’t because open courseware is just a projection of a university education, not the full thing.

woodruffw 4y ago

This boils down to the “welfare freeloaders” polemic, turned onto people who are pursuing higher education. The fact that you can’t see what they contribute (or more accurately, can’t appreciate it because you’ve been consistently failed by the educational system) doesn’t make it worthless. When I talk to people with STEM degrees who are around my age, it frequently comes out that their “gen ed” classes were pathetically easy. They generally feel some kind of mild resentment around this, since they’re (1) paying for a degree, and (2) generally intelligent people who can handle a more challenging class. But there’s a reason it’s that way, one that I experienced firsthand when CS students popped into my philosophy courses thinking they’d be easy: they frequently performed miserably and were suddenly at risk of having their CS progression slowed by a non-major requirement. In other words: many schools have thrown up their hands and (tacitly) admitted defeat on STEM students, funneling them through no-fail liberal arts requirements rather than actually challenging them (where they might fail, slow down their STEM degree, and complain about all the irrelevant coursework they have to do even more). And that hasn’t worked so well either: instead of keeping STEM students happy, it’s produced a generation of undergraduates who think their kid-glove treatment is what liberal arts is actually like.

ModernMech 4y ago

One of the reasons for “gen ed ” classes is to give you exposure to different fields at a time when many students don’t know what they want to do in life. Not everyone goes into college 100% sure they want a CS degree and to be a software engineer or whatever. One of the reasons they are easy is because they are intro courses at the doorway of an entire field of study that is not lacking in depth or complexity. Intro to CS is also very easy (this is a variable, this is an if statement, this is a while loop), but that doesn’t mean the 400 level OS or AI course is a walk in the park. The same goes for philosophy, physics, biology, chemistry, history, or any other subject you perhaps thought was a joke. The ease of the 100 level course is so it doesn’t scare you away entirely, not because the field is intrinsically easy. Many students will take that gen ed course and then switch into that major because they found the topic fascinating. You took it and found it dull, which actually did add value to your education because it reaffirmed your choice of your major. Some people aren’t so lucky and pick a career they hate, only to find something they love much later in life. Anyway, this idea that opencourseware is equivalent to a university education is not true in my experience. From my perspective, learning is a multiplayer activity. My students learn best when they are helping each other, doing group projects, teaching eachother things they’ve just learned, and going through the college experience as a cohort. University isn’t just about the facts in the book or the curriculum. I think if that were true, the University system would have been obviated long ago by open courseware. But that has t happened and it won’t because open courseware is just a projection of a university education, not the full thing.