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Oh yes. When I'm teaching a class of 200 students it's totally plausible that we're going to do 10 15 minute one on one conversations with every student. Becaus

Oh yes. When I'm teaching a class of 200 students it's totally plausible that we're going to do 10 15 minute one on one conversations with every student. Because that's only 20 days non stop with no sleep. We would need to increase the amount of teaching staff by well over 10x to do this. The costs would be astronomical.

lupusreal 2y ago
When they're paying 27k maybe they deserve a lower student to instructor ratio. And for that matter, a lower administration to student ratio. The whole system is very inefficient, there's a lot of room for improvement.
lotsofpulp 2y ago
>The costs would be astronomical. Countries have no problem spending astronomical amounts on old people. If the country wants productive young people, the country will find a way.
- arrowsmith 2y ago
  We’ve already found a way: it’s called “mass immigration.” Why bother training and educating the young people who are already here when you can just import them from poorer countries?
kubb 2y ago
But you can read 200 essays? At this point you can be replaced with AI, you’re not adding any value anymore.
- abenga 2y ago
  Essays are async and easier to delegate.
  - thechao 2y ago
    If I'm paying 30k$/yr the professor is damn well reading my essay. If they don't want to teach & grade, they can get a pure research position. Fun fact: pure research positions don't pay as well.
    - lupire 2y ago
      Pure taching positions pay barely minimum wage. Look up "adjunct".
      - lupusreal 2y ago
        If their situation is that bad they can walk into a local staffing agency and get a factory job that pays 3x the federal minimum wage. Poor pay as a adjunct is a situation they choose for themselves for some reason.
        analog31 2y ago
        I was an adjunct for a semester at a Big Ten university, many years ago. Like you say, there's usually a reason, such as collecting benefits while running some kind of side hustle. A teaching gig lends itself to this because the hours are flexible (outside of your scheduled class time), there is utterly no supervision, and no questions asked about what your other income sources are. My office mate in engineering was trying to get funding for a start-up. I was trying to get a consulting business off the ground. Neither of us achieved those things, but whatever. He got a teaching gig at the community college, which is unionized and actually a pretty good situation. I found a regular day job through his network. A friend of mine had an adjunct gig in the humanities, and used his off-time to learn how to code. A lot of academic spouses get adjunct gigs, especially if they want to balance part time work with child care.
        light_hue_1 2y ago
        This is spot on! And that reason is peer pressure. A lot of adjuncts sit around in precarious financial situations, developing serious mental health issues, and drinking problems because the system taught them that this is a form of success. Going to industry and making money? That's failure. That's an "alternate career". Not scraping by in a system that couldn't care less about you. That's success. It's pretty vile. I've never had a student become an adjunct. It would be a personal failure that I haven't given them the tools to thrive.
michaelt 2y ago
I said one conversation per student per class, and ten classes per year. Not 10 conversations per class per student. > The costs would be astronomical. Those 200 students have paid the college $549,600 for your class. The costs are already astronomical. Is it so unreasonable for some of that money to be spent on providing education?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- light_hue_1 2y ago
  I can't express how out of touch with reality this reply is. The students paid me nothing. The university provides some TAs, that's it. But even if they gave me all of that money in cash to spend, this would be totally impossible. I'm supposed to grade a student based on 1 conversation? Do you know how grading and teaching work? Can you imagine the complains that would come out of this process? How unfair it is to say that you have one 15 minute shot at a grade? But fine, even if we say that I can grade someone based on 1 conversation. What am I supposed to ask during this 15 minute conversation? Because if I ask the every student the same thing, they'll just share the questions and we're back to being useless. So now I need to prep unique questions for 200 people? Reading their background materials, projects, test results, and then thinking of questions? I need to do that and review it all before every session. Even with a team of TAs this would be impossible. But even if I do all of this. I spend hours per student to figure out what they did and know. I ask unique questions for 15 minutes so that we can talk without information leakage mattering. You know what the outcome will be? Everyone will complain that my questions to them were harder than those that I asked others. And we'll be in office hours with 200 people for weeks on end sorting this out and dealing with all the paperwork for the complaints. This is just the beginning of the disaster that this idea would be. It's easy to sit in the peanut gallery and say "Oh, wow, why didn't my arm surgery take 10 minutes, they just screwed two bones together right?" until you actually need to do the thing and you notice that it's far more complex than you thought.
  - selimthegrim 2y ago
    OK, so how is it that USSR made this work?
lwhi 2y ago
Would AI be used to carry out the conversation?
screcth 2y ago
Well, you could pick only 10% of the class for one on ones. Pick that 10% randomly or based on your intuition on the authenticity of their work. That threat may be enough to dissuade students from cheating with AI.
- lnsru 2y ago
  Pick 4 students per slot for oral examination and bring an assistant. That’s how my last exam worked. Assistant went through standard questionary and the main lector asked complex questions. The group of 50 was processed in a day with official grades and paperwork.
potato3732842 2y ago
>We would need to increase the amount of teaching staff by well over 10x to do this. The costs would be astronomical. We all know they'll just exploit grad students rather than hire real teachers.
batch12 2y ago
200 students at 15 minutes is 50 hours or 33 hours and 20 minutes with 10 minute sessions. So just around the amount of time in a typical work week.
lupire 2y ago
That's what teaching fellows are for.

lupusreal 2y ago

When they're paying 27k maybe they deserve a lower student to instructor ratio. And for that matter, a lower administration to student ratio. The whole system is very inefficient, there's a lot of room for improvement.

lotsofpulp 2y ago

>The costs would be astronomical. Countries have no problem spending astronomical amounts on old people. If the country wants productive young people, the country will find a way.

arrowsmith 2y ago
We’ve already found a way: it’s called “mass immigration.” Why bother training and educating the young people who are already here when you can just import them from poorer countries?

kubb 2y ago

But you can read 200 essays? At this point you can be replaced with AI, you’re not adding any value anymore.

abenga 2y ago
Essays are async and easier to delegate.
- thechao 2y ago
  If I'm paying 30k$/yr the professor is damn well reading my essay. If they don't want to teach & grade, they can get a pure research position. Fun fact: pure research positions don't pay as well.
  - lupire 2y ago
    Pure taching positions pay barely minimum wage. Look up "adjunct".
    - lupusreal 2y ago
      If their situation is that bad they can walk into a local staffing agency and get a factory job that pays 3x the federal minimum wage. Poor pay as a adjunct is a situation they choose for themselves for some reason.
      - analog31 2y ago
        I was an adjunct for a semester at a Big Ten university, many years ago. Like you say, there's usually a reason, such as collecting benefits while running some kind of side hustle. A teaching gig lends itself to this because the hours are flexible (outside of your scheduled class time), there is utterly no supervision, and no questions asked about what your other income sources are. My office mate in engineering was trying to get funding for a start-up. I was trying to get a consulting business off the ground. Neither of us achieved those things, but whatever. He got a teaching gig at the community college, which is unionized and actually a pretty good situation. I found a regular day job through his network. A friend of mine had an adjunct gig in the humanities, and used his off-time to learn how to code. A lot of academic spouses get adjunct gigs, especially if they want to balance part time work with child care.
      - light_hue_1 2y ago
        This is spot on! And that reason is peer pressure. A lot of adjuncts sit around in precarious financial situations, developing serious mental health issues, and drinking problems because the system taught them that this is a form of success. Going to industry and making money? That's failure. That's an "alternate career". Not scraping by in a system that couldn't care less about you. That's success. It's pretty vile. I've never had a student become an adjunct. It would be a personal failure that I haven't given them the tools to thrive.

michaelt 2y ago

I said one conversation per student per class, and ten classes per year. Not 10 conversations per class per student. > The costs would be astronomical. Those 200 students have paid the college $549,600 for your class. The costs are already astronomical. Is it so unreasonable for some of that money to be spent on providing education?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
light_hue_1 2y ago
I can't express how out of touch with reality this reply is. The students paid me nothing. The university provides some TAs, that's it. But even if they gave me all of that money in cash to spend, this would be totally impossible. I'm supposed to grade a student based on 1 conversation? Do you know how grading and teaching work? Can you imagine the complains that would come out of this process? How unfair it is to say that you have one 15 minute shot at a grade? But fine, even if we say that I can grade someone based on 1 conversation. What am I supposed to ask during this 15 minute conversation? Because if I ask the every student the same thing, they'll just share the questions and we're back to being useless. So now I need to prep unique questions for 200 people? Reading their background materials, projects, test results, and then thinking of questions? I need to do that and review it all before every session. Even with a team of TAs this would be impossible. But even if I do all of this. I spend hours per student to figure out what they did and know. I ask unique questions for 15 minutes so that we can talk without information leakage mattering. You know what the outcome will be? Everyone will complain that my questions to them were harder than those that I asked others. And we'll be in office hours with 200 people for weeks on end sorting this out and dealing with all the paperwork for the complaints. This is just the beginning of the disaster that this idea would be. It's easy to sit in the peanut gallery and say "Oh, wow, why didn't my arm surgery take 10 minutes, they just screwed two bones together right?" until you actually need to do the thing and you notice that it's far more complex than you thought.
- selimthegrim 2y ago
  OK, so how is it that USSR made this work?

lwhi 2y ago

Would AI be used to carry out the conversation?

screcth 2y ago

Well, you could pick only 10% of the class for one on ones. Pick that 10% randomly or based on your intuition on the authenticity of their work. That threat may be enough to dissuade students from cheating with AI.

lnsru 2y ago
Pick 4 students per slot for oral examination and bring an assistant. That’s how my last exam worked. Assistant went through standard questionary and the main lector asked complex questions. The group of 50 was processed in a day with official grades and paperwork.

potato3732842 2y ago

>We would need to increase the amount of teaching staff by well over 10x to do this. The costs would be astronomical. We all know they'll just exploit grad students rather than hire real teachers.

batch12 2y ago

200 students at 15 minutes is 50 hours or 33 hours and 20 minutes with 10 minute sessions. So just around the amount of time in a typical work week.

lupire 2y ago

That's what teaching fellows are for.