4 ms·

replying to my own thread here, but this got me thinking, so thanks OP, but... can anyone here think of some better ways where we could decouple the education

replying to my own thread here, but this got me thinking, so thanks OP, but... can anyone here think of some better ways where we could decouple the education process from the work process? To me this seems like the main problem. It seems that we've decided that "get good grades == good employee" collectively. I know I'm a bad employee (which is why I work for myself now but that's another story), but I got great grades in school. I don't know, I just feel like school was rarely about actually learning / growing and was mostly about vocational work most of my time in undergrad, and I wish we could de-couple that some? But maybe I'm naive here...

SturgeonsLaw 4mo ago
Make education free. I'd love to study something like philosophy or art history but there's just no return on that investment. Unless you're already wealthy, it doesn't make sense to drop five or six figures on a degree unless it's likely to pay for itself. Which is even becoming less likely with STEM, as we hit a confluence of higher education costs, fewer job openings, and AI as a competitor for work.
- piloto_ciego 4mo ago
  I totally agree! And I think you're right! Education should be free.
  - rbanffy 4mo ago
    Another thing we can add is sealing grades. If you can’t use your grades as a credential, the incentive to cheat is reduced. This won’t solve the relation between getting a job and living - that’s a job for UBI and a comprehensive social security system.
    - piloto_ciego 4mo ago
      Or, maybe we get rid of them. Like maybe the idea of having grades is kind of silly in the first place?
      - eudamoniac 4mo ago
        Free education and no grades with no business purpose already exists; it's called learning about things that interest you on your own time. I don't see why the taxpayer needs to pay for someone to do this.
        piloto_ciego 4mo ago
        Then you're missing the point of higher education.
        eudamoniac 4mo ago
        No, I understand the point of it, I just don't think it is worth the tens of thousands per person that it would cost to do it. I could accept a value argument for free university education in some form, but that form would not be for gradeless/credentialless unproductive studies. And it's not just that it would cost a lot, it's that it would cost a lot and a motivated person can already do a 90% job of it for free on their own.
        piloto_ciego 4mo ago
        who defines "unproductive?" You? That's the thing, like, there's not a whole hell of a lot I learned in Phil 201 that is directly applicable to my job, but, you know the class is valuable. I took art history in college. Turned into being one of the most important classes I ever took and I'm one of those stem major types. Productivity shouldn't be the point of education - you get productivity indirectly out of the education and search for knowledge, but if we want more data plumbers (which is largely what most of the programming I do for money on a regular basis is), I don't think we necessarily need to make certain that college is paying for them. I mean, think bigger - this new technology is going to be utterly transformative to our society and economic system. If we could actually approach some sort of reasonable post-scarcity world, what would we want it to be like? So, maybe there's grades, but it's "pass/fail" or something, but all of these metrics that we use to evaluate have become targets.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- bell-cot 4mo ago
  Old geezer question: Are you thinking to make education free? Or to give everyone 4+ years at the upscale-lifestyle-resorts-with-classes which the US's major universities have evolved into over the past half century?
  - piloto_ciego 4mo ago
    Middle aged geezer answer: I don’t think my university experience when I went to grad school several years ago was a “upscale lifestyle resort.” But maybe things are different on the east coast or whatever? But I’d say, yeah, if you’re young/poor you oughta be able to get room and board covered too?
    - bell-cot 4mo ago
      Fair enough. FWIW, I live near the Univ. of Michigan. I've talked to a well-to-do stockbroker, who graduated from U-M a couple decades ago - but can't believe just how opulent U-M's latest round of rebuilding their old undergraduate dorms was. Suffice to say that none of his own ample wealth is going to the U.
ItsMonkk 4mo ago
It's probably cleaner to directly couple those that want it, so that those that want to decouple can be left to the academic path. It's pretty normal to hear from people that when they entered the workforce they learned way more than what they learned at college. Let's incentivize this. Governments should directly subsidize education. Instead of getting student loans and going to college for 4 years where you don't accomplish much, companies should directly offer high school students 4 year full paid internships. At the end the student needs to go through a test from an expert in that field, possibly a professor lead examination, and to the degree that they pass the company and student share in a large prize. If they pass that test, they officially get the degree.
- piloto_ciego 4mo ago
  Doesn't this just kind of become kind of allow companies to direct the research towards their ends and the education be damned though? I wouldn't be opposed to this sort of thing intrinsically, but I worry about the incentives here.
  - ItsMonkk 4mo ago
    This aligns the incentives. Education provides positive externalities that the market will not provide. > allow companies to direct the research towards their ends So long as they hit the requirements to reward the prize, I don't much care what else the students are driven to do. One might ask how does this differ from when a company hires a fresh graduate? In fact, I wouldn't mind also applying this system to those that have degrees, and are trying to advance in their careers. My only concern is that the students would then be able to be hire-able by other companies in their field. If that answer is mostly yes, the system is working as intended. If it's not, the requirements would be raised until they are.
    - piloto_ciego 4mo ago
      Meh, I don't think this is the right incentives we want to be pushing. Hire-ability shouldn't be what education is about...
csa 4mo ago
> can anyone here think of some better ways where we could decouple the education process from the work process? The excessive education requirements for jobs came about mainly to provide easy legal ways to cull a large pool of applicants. This credentialism trend has grown far beyond anything that is healthy. One possible and feasible solution is to encourage (via funding and guidance) more coop and internship programs and partnerships. This is especially true for local junior colleges, but is also useful for 4-year schools. That doesn’t really decouple education and work, but it would be something that could move the needle from the local level to the national level. If you want to decouple education and work, I will humbly suggest that the system already exists. It’s people using their personal networks. Many people seem to find this to be incredibly unfair (however one defines unfair), but it’s an absolute cheat code / life hack for decoupling education and work. Simple example: I graduated from a prestigious school (one that is known for feeding Wall Street) a year and change after a stock market collapse. Only half of the graduates from the previous year had jobs in their chosen career fields. My year was worse. When we saw who got Wall Street jobs, it was folks in the top 10% of the class, and about the same number randomly scattered amongst the rest. Some of these folks were very low ranked, and they were known for aggressively taking advantage of the “gentleman’s C” system. What was the common thread of all of the non-top 10%? It was almost always a personal connection, often a close one like a parent, being in a position of power at the employer. None of this was or is obvious in boom times, but in times of distress we were able to see who was swimming naked in terms of connections/nepotism.

SturgeonsLaw 4mo ago

Make education free. I'd love to study something like philosophy or art history but there's just no return on that investment. Unless you're already wealthy, it doesn't make sense to drop five or six figures on a degree unless it's likely to pay for itself. Which is even becoming less likely with STEM, as we hit a confluence of higher education costs, fewer job openings, and AI as a competitor for work.

piloto_ciego 4mo ago
I totally agree! And I think you're right! Education should be free.
- rbanffy 4mo ago
  Another thing we can add is sealing grades. If you can’t use your grades as a credential, the incentive to cheat is reduced. This won’t solve the relation between getting a job and living - that’s a job for UBI and a comprehensive social security system.
  - piloto_ciego 4mo ago
    Or, maybe we get rid of them. Like maybe the idea of having grades is kind of silly in the first place?
    - eudamoniac 4mo ago
      Free education and no grades with no business purpose already exists; it's called learning about things that interest you on your own time. I don't see why the taxpayer needs to pay for someone to do this.
      - piloto_ciego 4mo ago
        Then you're missing the point of higher education.
        eudamoniac 4mo ago
        No, I understand the point of it, I just don't think it is worth the tens of thousands per person that it would cost to do it. I could accept a value argument for free university education in some form, but that form would not be for gradeless/credentialless unproductive studies. And it's not just that it would cost a lot, it's that it would cost a lot and a motivated person can already do a 90% job of it for free on their own.
        piloto_ciego 4mo ago
        who defines "unproductive?" You? That's the thing, like, there's not a whole hell of a lot I learned in Phil 201 that is directly applicable to my job, but, you know the class is valuable. I took art history in college. Turned into being one of the most important classes I ever took and I'm one of those stem major types. Productivity shouldn't be the point of education - you get productivity indirectly out of the education and search for knowledge, but if we want more data plumbers (which is largely what most of the programming I do for money on a regular basis is), I don't think we necessarily need to make certain that college is paying for them. I mean, think bigger - this new technology is going to be utterly transformative to our society and economic system. If we could actually approach some sort of reasonable post-scarcity world, what would we want it to be like? So, maybe there's grades, but it's "pass/fail" or something, but all of these metrics that we use to evaluate have become targets.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
bell-cot 4mo ago
Old geezer question: Are you thinking to make education free? Or to give everyone 4+ years at the upscale-lifestyle-resorts-with-classes which the US's major universities have evolved into over the past half century?
- piloto_ciego 4mo ago
  Middle aged geezer answer: I don’t think my university experience when I went to grad school several years ago was a “upscale lifestyle resort.” But maybe things are different on the east coast or whatever? But I’d say, yeah, if you’re young/poor you oughta be able to get room and board covered too?
  - bell-cot 4mo ago
    Fair enough. FWIW, I live near the Univ. of Michigan. I've talked to a well-to-do stockbroker, who graduated from U-M a couple decades ago - but can't believe just how opulent U-M's latest round of rebuilding their old undergraduate dorms was. Suffice to say that none of his own ample wealth is going to the U.

ItsMonkk 4mo ago

It's probably cleaner to directly couple those that want it, so that those that want to decouple can be left to the academic path. It's pretty normal to hear from people that when they entered the workforce they learned way more than what they learned at college. Let's incentivize this. Governments should directly subsidize education. Instead of getting student loans and going to college for 4 years where you don't accomplish much, companies should directly offer high school students 4 year full paid internships. At the end the student needs to go through a test from an expert in that field, possibly a professor lead examination, and to the degree that they pass the company and student share in a large prize. If they pass that test, they officially get the degree.

piloto_ciego 4mo ago
Doesn't this just kind of become kind of allow companies to direct the research towards their ends and the education be damned though? I wouldn't be opposed to this sort of thing intrinsically, but I worry about the incentives here.
- ItsMonkk 4mo ago
  This aligns the incentives. Education provides positive externalities that the market will not provide. > allow companies to direct the research towards their ends So long as they hit the requirements to reward the prize, I don't much care what else the students are driven to do. One might ask how does this differ from when a company hires a fresh graduate? In fact, I wouldn't mind also applying this system to those that have degrees, and are trying to advance in their careers. My only concern is that the students would then be able to be hire-able by other companies in their field. If that answer is mostly yes, the system is working as intended. If it's not, the requirements would be raised until they are.
  - piloto_ciego 4mo ago
    Meh, I don't think this is the right incentives we want to be pushing. Hire-ability shouldn't be what education is about...

csa 4mo ago

> can anyone here think of some better ways where we could decouple the education process from the work process? The excessive education requirements for jobs came about mainly to provide easy legal ways to cull a large pool of applicants. This credentialism trend has grown far beyond anything that is healthy. One possible and feasible solution is to encourage (via funding and guidance) more coop and internship programs and partnerships. This is especially true for local junior colleges, but is also useful for 4-year schools. That doesn’t really decouple education and work, but it would be something that could move the needle from the local level to the national level. If you want to decouple education and work, I will humbly suggest that the system already exists. It’s people using their personal networks. Many people seem to find this to be incredibly unfair (however one defines unfair), but it’s an absolute cheat code / life hack for decoupling education and work. Simple example: I graduated from a prestigious school (one that is known for feeding Wall Street) a year and change after a stock market collapse. Only half of the graduates from the previous year had jobs in their chosen career fields. My year was worse. When we saw who got Wall Street jobs, it was folks in the top 10% of the class, and about the same number randomly scattered amongst the rest. Some of these folks were very low ranked, and they were known for aggressively taking advantage of the “gentleman’s C” system. What was the common thread of all of the non-top 10%? It was almost always a personal connection, often a close one like a parent, being in a position of power at the employer. None of this was or is obvious in boom times, but in times of distress we were able to see who was swimming naked in terms of connections/nepotism.