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Mastery learning and one-on-one learning aren’t cost-efficient at scale. For the same price as 'out of state' tuition at UC Berkeley, you could hire a $100/hou

Mastery learning and one-on-one learning aren’t cost-efficient at scale. For the same price as 'out of state' tuition at UC Berkeley, you could hire a $100/hour tutor for 1:1 sessions, 8 hours a week.

BobaFloutist 2y ago
Yeah but you wouldn't get access to active research projects, equipment (including lab equipment and super-computers), and various other programs. The point of universities has always been network effects, not the quality of pedagogy of individual professors. Universities also usually have free tutoring centers. So, for the cost of tuition, you get access to (often more than) 8 hours of tutoring a week in addition to all the other stuff. Also 8 hours a week would be an absurdly low courseload.
- rahimnathwani 2y ago
  Also 8 hours a week would be an absurdly low courseload. I'm not talking about 8 hours per week of studying. I'm talking about 8 hours per week of 1:1 tutoring. Those 8 hours would be used to improve the effectiveness of the other 32 to 40 hours the student spends studying. At Oxford, undergraduates in humanities and social sciences get 2 hours per week of lectures, and 2 hours per week of 1:1 or 2:1 tutorials. That's half the 8 hours I'm suggesting (and even less when you consider that Oxford has only 24 weeks of term per year). Do you think those students are taking an 'absurdly low courseload'? So, for the cost of tuition, you get access to (often more than) 8 hours of tutoring a week in addition to all the other stuff. At which US university does every student get an average of 8 hours per week of 1:1 tutoring?
  - Cpoll 2y ago
    > At Oxford, undergraduates in humanities and social sciences get 2 hours per week of lectures Per course, right?
    - rahimnathwani 2y ago
      No. 1 hour lecture and 1 hour tutorial per week per course. 2 courses simultaneously so total 2 hour lecture and 2 hour tutorial. Most of the time is spent reading. Some of the time is spent writing. 2 hours per week are spent in tutorials discussing what you've read and written.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  Those facilities are incredibly overrated. Most universities have outdated labs not state of the art stuff. And certainly they aren’t in line with the cost. Berkeley doesn’t even have supercomputers.
musicale 2y ago
> For the same price as 'out of state' tuition at UC Berkeley, you could hire a $100/hour tutor for 1:1 sessions, 8 hours a week. Out-of-state fees raise tuition from $17K to $51K, but $17K is still a lot of money (and overall costs add up to about $51K a year even for in-state students.) Besides expensive $100/hour tutors - Berkeley could (as many schools do) hire cheap undergrads from the previous cohort. It also seems to me that the basic idea of mastery could be implemented with self-paced learning and individualized assessment, which could potentially be batched based on milestones.
- rahimnathwani 2y ago
  which could potentially be batched based on milestones This is a form of 'ability grouping'. Many people in California don't like ability grouping, for ideological reasons, even though it works.
  - UltraSane 2y ago
    You cannot effectively teach children UNLESS you do ability grouping. The gap just becomes too large. You can't teach one child calculus while another in the same math class can't multiply.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - musicale 2y ago
    In this case "ability" would basically be "the set (or sequence) of course objectives that you have completed so far." Such an assessment is not an evaluation of future potential, nor is it a moral judgment. The purpose is simply to determine what the next thing to learn should be.
    - rahimnathwani 2y ago
      If you're in a group and some of your peers leave the group because they've mastered the material, you might feel like you're being 'held back'. And observers might feel that certain demographic or identity groups are being 'held back' at a higher rate than others. Sure, perhaps you leave it up to the student to decide which group they should be in. But what if they move to the next group when they're not ready? Does the tutor cater to them or to the rest of the group? What if some demographic group is less confident on average, and doesn't move ahead even when ready? The setup you've described might work, but people will find all sorts of reasons to be mad about it, to claim discrimination and/or to use whatever outcomes there are to claim that somebody is being treated unfairly. The academic literature on 'mismatch' doesn't all lean in one direction. You should read Sonja Starr's article on the coming magnet school wars. She definitely has an opinion, but she made a decent attempt to present fairly both sides of each issue she covers.

BobaFloutist 2y ago

Yeah but you wouldn't get access to active research projects, equipment (including lab equipment and super-computers), and various other programs. The point of universities has always been network effects, not the quality of pedagogy of individual professors. Universities also usually have free tutoring centers. So, for the cost of tuition, you get access to (often more than) 8 hours of tutoring a week in addition to all the other stuff. Also 8 hours a week would be an absurdly low courseload.

rahimnathwani 2y ago
Also 8 hours a week would be an absurdly low courseload. I'm not talking about 8 hours per week of studying. I'm talking about 8 hours per week of 1:1 tutoring. Those 8 hours would be used to improve the effectiveness of the other 32 to 40 hours the student spends studying. At Oxford, undergraduates in humanities and social sciences get 2 hours per week of lectures, and 2 hours per week of 1:1 or 2:1 tutorials. That's half the 8 hours I'm suggesting (and even less when you consider that Oxford has only 24 weeks of term per year). Do you think those students are taking an 'absurdly low courseload'? So, for the cost of tuition, you get access to (often more than) 8 hours of tutoring a week in addition to all the other stuff. At which US university does every student get an average of 8 hours per week of 1:1 tutoring?
- Cpoll 2y ago
  > At Oxford, undergraduates in humanities and social sciences get 2 hours per week of lectures Per course, right?
  - rahimnathwani 2y ago
    No. 1 hour lecture and 1 hour tutorial per week per course. 2 courses simultaneously so total 2 hour lecture and 2 hour tutorial. Most of the time is spent reading. Some of the time is spent writing. 2 hours per week are spent in tutorials discussing what you've read and written.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
Those facilities are incredibly overrated. Most universities have outdated labs not state of the art stuff. And certainly they aren’t in line with the cost. Berkeley doesn’t even have supercomputers.

musicale 2y ago

> For the same price as 'out of state' tuition at UC Berkeley, you could hire a $100/hour tutor for 1:1 sessions, 8 hours a week. Out-of-state fees raise tuition from $17K to $51K, but $17K is still a lot of money (and overall costs add up to about $51K a year even for in-state students.) Besides expensive $100/hour tutors - Berkeley could (as many schools do) hire cheap undergrads from the previous cohort. It also seems to me that the basic idea of mastery could be implemented with self-paced learning and individualized assessment, which could potentially be batched based on milestones.

rahimnathwani 2y ago
which could potentially be batched based on milestones This is a form of 'ability grouping'. Many people in California don't like ability grouping, for ideological reasons, even though it works.
- UltraSane 2y ago
  You cannot effectively teach children UNLESS you do ability grouping. The gap just becomes too large. You can't teach one child calculus while another in the same math class can't multiply.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- musicale 2y ago
  In this case "ability" would basically be "the set (or sequence) of course objectives that you have completed so far." Such an assessment is not an evaluation of future potential, nor is it a moral judgment. The purpose is simply to determine what the next thing to learn should be.
  - rahimnathwani 2y ago
    If you're in a group and some of your peers leave the group because they've mastered the material, you might feel like you're being 'held back'. And observers might feel that certain demographic or identity groups are being 'held back' at a higher rate than others. Sure, perhaps you leave it up to the student to decide which group they should be in. But what if they move to the next group when they're not ready? Does the tutor cater to them or to the rest of the group? What if some demographic group is less confident on average, and doesn't move ahead even when ready? The setup you've described might work, but people will find all sorts of reasons to be mad about it, to claim discrimination and/or to use whatever outcomes there are to claim that somebody is being treated unfairly. The academic literature on 'mismatch' doesn't all lean in one direction. You should read Sonja Starr's article on the coming magnet school wars. She definitely has an opinion, but she made a decent attempt to present fairly both sides of each issue she covers.