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I have a dog in this fight as a professor, but I think the AI era may actually (and ironically) help reestablish colleges as a useful tool for employers. We ha

I have a dog in this fight as a professor, but I think the AI era may actually (and ironically) help reestablish colleges as a useful tool for employers. We have a significant amount of legacy infrastructure to support in-person testing, and non-digital written exams may be the best way to determine actual competency going forward. I have historically done my computer science classes entirely online, but I am switching to in-person on-paper tests and increasing their weight in my classes to deal with the cheating. As paul graham said: do things that don't scale.

Oras 10mo ago
And what kind of skills would you test with this method? Colleges are clearly not working, as evidenced by the number of unemployed graduates. Some will blame AI, but the reality is that any graduate would require training to be productive in the job, something they didn't learn in college. My point is, if colleges could adapt to the job market, they wouldn't be in their current state.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- recursivedoubts 10mo ago
  I plan on a mix of conceptual questions, pseudocode and code annotation. I think this may be on of those historical ironies where the slowness of universities to adapt actually works in its favor. I do agree that most universities do a bad job of preparing computer science students and I’m working to fix that as best I can where I teach. We will see how things pan out.
- loeg 10mo ago
  > Colleges are clearly not working, as evidenced by the number of unemployed graduates. What are you talking about? College-educated unemployment is 2.9% while for highschool-only it's 4.4%. Neither is high, but college-educated is definitely lower. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/unemployment-rates-for-persons-25-years-and-older-by-educational-attainment.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/unemployment...
  - Oras 10mo ago
    Those without college degree do not have the same debt, or the 4 years difference.
    - loeg 10mo ago
      I'll just note that those are totally different goalposts than your original claim.
    - mmooss 10mo ago
      If you add up the income and interest from income, the debt and 4 years are definitely worthwhile.
- kevin_thibedeau 10mo ago
  The point of college isn't vocational training. That's supposed to be performed by employers who stopped doing it.
  - Loughla 10mo ago
    At some point in my life, schools got tasked with teaching everything you need as a person. Things your parents or a business or the community or your employer taught you. I don't know when, but it wasn't always like this.
    - potato3732842 10mo ago
      The education industry actively tried to get all this "stuff" assigned to it because more stuff -> more activity -> more money flow -> the cut you skim becomes bigger. It doesn't help that our tax system actively incentivizes bringing everything you can under the umbrella of any institution that is nominally nonprofit.
      - Loughla 10mo ago
        You're just patently wrong on your first point. Schools and educators do not want to have to teach every life skill imaginable. They are trained in content areas, like science, math, and literacy. The extra stuff has historically been forced on schools by parents via elected officials and state/federal mandates. Also, unfunded mandates are wildly popular in education legislation. More requirements doesn't necessarily mean more money. And finally, are you claiming that educators want more money for schools specifically so they can steal (cut you skim) the extra funds? That is just absurd and completely asinine. I'm also not sure what your second point has to do with anything. Could you please explain what that means?
        potato3732842 10mo ago
        Lol. "Schools and educators" don't want massive football programs either yet what do they have? There is no way an honest person can look at the situation and come up with an opinion like yours. College education is run by MBAs looking at spreadsheets and projecting out a quarter or three like everything else these days. Colleges are (well maybe not all of them) megacorps that happen to be schools and happen to have funky tax rules. They're mission driven nonprofits to the same degree that hospitals are.
- xnx 10mo ago
  > evidenced by the number of unemployed graduates Students shop for colleges based more on the amenities and party atmosphere than then average salary of those who graduated 10 years prior. This also shows up in grade inflation. Students want easy classes and colleges want happy customers.
FloorEgg 10mo ago
In person exams make sense yes, but pen and paper? If you want high integrity, exams should be done on school computers with extra integrity monitoring software. In the current cheating paradigm, pen and paper are as easy to cheat as students using their own laptops. Note that students can take pictures of exam with their phones, glasses, even their pens. There are pens with cameras and LED screens on them that connect via Wi-Fi to chatgpt. Oral exams make for the best integrity but they are a pain to grade.
- recursivedoubts 10mo ago
  The exams will be proctored and in person. If someone is using a digital device it will be obvious enough. I would love to do oral exams but yes, hard to do with 100 students.
  - FloorEgg 10mo ago
    > The exams will be proctored and in person. If someone is using a digital device it will be obvious enough. This is only true if the proctors really care and are paying close attention the entire time, which unfortunately, from what I've seen, isn't the case most of the time. Note that now students can cheat using smart glasses, so proctors have to check glasses for cameras which isn't trivial. Are your proctors doing this? Also when students are caught cheating, most of the time there are no serious repercussions. There are too many disincentives in place to prevent professors from holding students accountable. It's tough when the institution has a philosophy that all students should graduate and any student failing is a failing of the institution. I think this cheating epidemic is one of the hardest problems I know about and I'm extremely skeptical of any single "simple" solution (including pen and paper). It's a cultural problem, a values misalignment problem, it's a social problem, it's an incentive system problem, it's a technical problem, it's an ease of cheating, benefit of cheating, downside of getting caught balance problem. My theory is that any sustainable solution will have several components and require significant cultural, economic and social support on behalf of the institution, and no institution I know of seems ready to lean into it yet. From what I've seen most institutions downplay how bad it is and some even to so far as hide evidence of it.

Oras 10mo ago

And what kind of skills would you test with this method? Colleges are clearly not working, as evidenced by the number of unemployed graduates. Some will blame AI, but the reality is that any graduate would require training to be productive in the job, something they didn't learn in college. My point is, if colleges could adapt to the job market, they wouldn't be in their current state.

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
recursivedoubts 10mo ago
I plan on a mix of conceptual questions, pseudocode and code annotation. I think this may be on of those historical ironies where the slowness of universities to adapt actually works in its favor. I do agree that most universities do a bad job of preparing computer science students and I’m working to fix that as best I can where I teach. We will see how things pan out.
loeg 10mo ago
> Colleges are clearly not working, as evidenced by the number of unemployed graduates. What are you talking about? College-educated unemployment is 2.9% while for highschool-only it's 4.4%. Neither is high, but college-educated is definitely lower. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/unemployment-rates-for-persons-25-years-and-older-by-educational-attainment.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/unemployment...
- Oras 10mo ago
  Those without college degree do not have the same debt, or the 4 years difference.
  - loeg 10mo ago
    I'll just note that those are totally different goalposts than your original claim.
  - mmooss 10mo ago
    If you add up the income and interest from income, the debt and 4 years are definitely worthwhile.
kevin_thibedeau 10mo ago
The point of college isn't vocational training. That's supposed to be performed by employers who stopped doing it.
- Loughla 10mo ago
  At some point in my life, schools got tasked with teaching everything you need as a person. Things your parents or a business or the community or your employer taught you. I don't know when, but it wasn't always like this.
  - potato3732842 10mo ago
    The education industry actively tried to get all this "stuff" assigned to it because more stuff -> more activity -> more money flow -> the cut you skim becomes bigger. It doesn't help that our tax system actively incentivizes bringing everything you can under the umbrella of any institution that is nominally nonprofit.
    - Loughla 10mo ago
      You're just patently wrong on your first point. Schools and educators do not want to have to teach every life skill imaginable. They are trained in content areas, like science, math, and literacy. The extra stuff has historically been forced on schools by parents via elected officials and state/federal mandates. Also, unfunded mandates are wildly popular in education legislation. More requirements doesn't necessarily mean more money. And finally, are you claiming that educators want more money for schools specifically so they can steal (cut you skim) the extra funds? That is just absurd and completely asinine. I'm also not sure what your second point has to do with anything. Could you please explain what that means?
      - potato3732842 10mo ago
        Lol. "Schools and educators" don't want massive football programs either yet what do they have? There is no way an honest person can look at the situation and come up with an opinion like yours. College education is run by MBAs looking at spreadsheets and projecting out a quarter or three like everything else these days. Colleges are (well maybe not all of them) megacorps that happen to be schools and happen to have funky tax rules. They're mission driven nonprofits to the same degree that hospitals are.
xnx 10mo ago
> evidenced by the number of unemployed graduates Students shop for colleges based more on the amenities and party atmosphere than then average salary of those who graduated 10 years prior. This also shows up in grade inflation. Students want easy classes and colleges want happy customers.

FloorEgg 10mo ago

In person exams make sense yes, but pen and paper? If you want high integrity, exams should be done on school computers with extra integrity monitoring software. In the current cheating paradigm, pen and paper are as easy to cheat as students using their own laptops. Note that students can take pictures of exam with their phones, glasses, even their pens. There are pens with cameras and LED screens on them that connect via Wi-Fi to chatgpt. Oral exams make for the best integrity but they are a pain to grade.

recursivedoubts 10mo ago
The exams will be proctored and in person. If someone is using a digital device it will be obvious enough. I would love to do oral exams but yes, hard to do with 100 students.
- FloorEgg 10mo ago
  > The exams will be proctored and in person. If someone is using a digital device it will be obvious enough. This is only true if the proctors really care and are paying close attention the entire time, which unfortunately, from what I've seen, isn't the case most of the time. Note that now students can cheat using smart glasses, so proctors have to check glasses for cameras which isn't trivial. Are your proctors doing this? Also when students are caught cheating, most of the time there are no serious repercussions. There are too many disincentives in place to prevent professors from holding students accountable. It's tough when the institution has a philosophy that all students should graduate and any student failing is a failing of the institution. I think this cheating epidemic is one of the hardest problems I know about and I'm extremely skeptical of any single "simple" solution (including pen and paper). It's a cultural problem, a values misalignment problem, it's a social problem, it's an incentive system problem, it's a technical problem, it's an ease of cheating, benefit of cheating, downside of getting caught balance problem. My theory is that any sustainable solution will have several components and require significant cultural, economic and social support on behalf of the institution, and no institution I know of seems ready to lean into it yet. From what I've seen most institutions downplay how bad it is and some even to so far as hide evidence of it.