7 ms·

Venture Capital's Massive, Terrible Idea For The Future Of College

21 points by ctoth 14y ago

te_chris 14y ago
A very well reasoned piece. It reminds me of this piece from Hamilton Nolan: http://gawker.com/5968116/hubris-high-socks-and-other-habits-of-the-most-powerful-people-in-the-world http://gawker.com/5968116/hubris-high-socks-and-other-habits... Personally I find the whole techno-libertarian/utopian side of valley culture quite scary - I guess it's the part where some people decide they want to "fix" everything, without really making any effort to understand what (if anything) is broken to begin with.
- tptacek 14y ago
  I'm skeeved out by technolibertarianism too, but I disagree that this is a well-reasoned piece. It's a guilt- by- ideological- association hit piece that at one point has its cake and smears it all over its own face by linking Coursera/Udacity to Michelle Rhee and the scandals of low quality classroom education. It's quick to toss in references to "Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists" or throw Khan Academy under one or more imagined busses, but did you notice that in its attempt at a takedown on an "overview of US history" video at Khan, it didn't even ask the question of how coherently secondary school courseware handled the same subject? I feel like the reviews I've read from subject matter experts on Coursera courses have been positive. I don't feel like individual problem courses on Udacity damn the whole medium. I can understand how people who thoroughly enjoyed their years at college would feel threatened by alternative paths to the same goal, but it's the goal that matters, not the college life experience.
  - spamizbad 14y ago
    > but did you notice that in its attempt at a takedown on an "overview of US history" video at Khan, it didn't even ask the question of how coherently secondary school courseware handled the same subject? My theory: that would probably be an article unto itself. A good friend of mine, who's a 7th grade social studies teacher, shares the author's disdain for Khan's handling of history. He cited disjointed events, without any explaination of how they were connected, stating it was very "this happened, then this happened, then later THIS happened probably because of this which happened between this and this..." -- no coherent historical narrative, and ultimately more difficult to understand. It's easier to remember events when you understand their causes and purpose, rather than just their place on a timeline. After watching Khan's Intro to CS videos, I'm inclined to trust my friend's assessment. As far as Rhee is concerned: The crux of the argument is, ambition non-educators who try to "fix" education have a tendancy to make it worse. Rhee and the VCs fall into the same category. It's also worth noting Education reform movement has started to turn its sights on higher education as well- We got a taste of that from Bill Gates, which his thoughts on college rankings (Which probably need to be fixed, but not in the way Gates, and reformers, are proposing).
    - scotty79 14y ago
      History is just facts. Narratives are usually made up by someone investigating those facts. Narratives differ between historians depending on their sympathies. I think innovative education should stay away from history. Most of it is history of politics. Only some percentage of it is actual knowledge and none of it is of any use to almost anyone.
      - MrMan 14y ago
        You should elaborate on this idea. If we can understand better why the study of history is largely useless, then we might be able to use that knowledge to reason about why other subjects held dear by traditional academics are also harmful. I think literature is even worse than history. What they are studying are not even facts! Just make believe stories. There is no ROI on make believe nonsense, right?
        scotty79 14y ago
        I'm not saying that history is harmful, only that it's mostly useless. I have nothing against literature. I like fiction and discussing fiction. I think people educated in literature might contribute to culture by inventing interesting stories themselves by reusing and remixing concepts found in respected literature. I don't really like the prominence given to history of politics as it's currently taught because for me it's just uninteresting fiction that only strong point is that something similar perhaps sort of happened.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      I have a son in 8th grade and a daughter in 6th in a pretty good school system and I do not assume the social studies curricula is doing a better job at this material than Khan is. The kids in these classes are getting series of disjointed factual units punctuated by enrichment exercises that, while more engaging than Khan Academy, are still merely forestalling the point where the kids actually learn history, by reading books that seriously engage multiple perspectives on what happened. The point then is that it's awfully silly to single out a very basic Khan US history overview, and disingenuous to do so without putting Khan into context; Khan is not supplanting genuinely meaningful middle school history curricula. Equally importantly: nobody currently uses just Khan academy for junior high history lessons. Khan is not part of a plot to eliminate teachers. I don't know where you're going with this Rhee stuff. Rhee may or may not have made education worse in the District, because she ran the school system. But Udacity and Coursera do not run K-12 school systems; they have nothing whatsoever to do with Rhee.
bzalasky 14y ago
Udacity and other online courses are great for people that already know how to learn. These sorts of programs won't help people that don't know how to learn on their own. However, I will say I can count the classes in college that couldn't have been replicated in an online format on two hands. All of theses classes still could have benefited from putting lectures online. The thing that is lacking in online courses is in-depth, in-person discussion in settings of about 30 people. Forums like this are great for teaching critical thinking. My favorite class in college was an undergraduate anthropology class that focused on a different topic each week. There were two different perspectives (in journal articles) and you'd be assigned one to defend in the next class. I think this kind of thing is hard to replicate in digital settings. Thoughts?
- marknutter 14y ago
  30 people is a completely arbitrary number, arrived at not because it was the optimal class size, but because of resource constraints.
  - bzalasky 14y ago
    It's absolutely arbitrary, but it's a small enough number that everyone has a chance to contribute to the discussion. With this particular class it had nothing to do with resource constraints... maybe more to do with how many students were interested. I didn't have a single anthropology class after 101 that had more than 35 people in it (and this was at a large state school).
- droithomme 14y ago
  > I think this kind of thing is hard to replicate in digital settings. I think we are a group of people discussing a topic in a digital forum right now. Coursera, Udacity, and the others all have forums as well where there are extended discussions on various topics between students, TAs and faculty.
  - bzalasky 14y ago
    It's not the same thing. Thinking critically and speaking in front of a group of people is different than participating in a discussion online.
greenranger 14y ago
The reason the online education movement is getting so much attention is because it is targeting a huge need of society that's been neglected for decades, if not centuries -- the needs of the adult learner. Some say the college "experience" can't be replicated online and they're probably right, but of what use is that to the person who can't afford the luxury of going to office hours or throwing around the football in the quad between classes because he has a full time job and a family to feed. I think both systems can co-exist quite well.
JumpCrisscross 14y ago
"Wouldn't it make more sense to just fund education to the levels we had back when it was working?" In good times investing in innovation is a luxury. In bad times it is a necessity. The returns on the present education model are not covering the costs in many cases.
- barry-cotter 14y ago
  When was education working and who was it working for? As a means of social control, a method of inuring people to being ranked, judged and told what to do it works wonderfully[0]. It is not about learning or it would not start so early, at least not for teenagers[1], nor would there be so much homework[2]. Doing lots of work that you dislike because you have been told to do it is good training for the world of work for most though. Every large school system is lineally or organisationationally descended from one designed to produce good soldiers[3]. The school system works just fine for childcare, for socialising people to accept random authority figures telling them what to do and for reducing creativity. It does what it's meant to, even if no one who's in charge will acknowledge that's what it's function is. [0] http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html [1] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/07/sleepy-kids-learn-less.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/07/sleepy-kids-learn-less... [2] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/06/only-do-math-homework.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/06/only-do-math-homework.... [3] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/05/schools-are-for-war.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/05/schools-are-for-war.ht...
  - 001sky 14y ago
    I agree with the substance of this. Passing on wisdom is not the first, second, or even 3rd point of "education" anymore. Its basically a state-sanctioned childcare/socialization programme. Its cleverly mandated under the legal authority for education, but one should make no mistake as to its purpose, and this is one of the many great trojan-horse examples of government-gone-wild in the name of "compassion". All those kids at failing inner-city schools are just being soul-destroyed for a life of minimum-subsistence-wage menial labour.
eriksank 14y ago
"Wouldn't it make more sense to just fund education to the levels we had back when it was working?" Short answer: NO.
- marknutter 14y ago
  Agreed. That was a truly bizarre statement. People who continue to claim that our education problems will all be magically solved by throwing more money at the problem bewilder me unless they're the ones directly benefiting from that money, that is. Tuition rates have been rising out of control for decades, but education is a big problem right now. More money did not solve the problem.
danso 14y ago
While I agree that we're still a far way from replacing the classic university model with online courses, I feel that pointing out the flaws of any individual lesson video is a limited and weak argument in this debate. Not because it's wrong to point those flaws out. But because classic educational courses don't expose themselves to such transparency. I can think of a good number of classes I sat through that if they were put on YouTube for the convenience of critics to rewatch and nitpick, they would be as mock-worthy as the examples the OP uses
duaneb 14y ago
I really don't get things like Coursera et. al. Textbooks have been available for purchase far before the modern university existed, but the only thing stopping people from teaching themselves and making a career out of it is the degree. I would far prefer a site that just made certifying knowledge of a given subject easier, replacing the BA, so you can cover e.g. Multivariable Calculus over three weeks instead of three months. As it stands, these online "schools" don't offer anything that you couldn't get before, and in fact are perhaps worse because they offer the illusion of having proof of knowledge (when people would be far better served just proving that they know something outright with personal projects). Furthermore, there are vast areas of education that require small student:teacher ratios, if only for grading papers. Peer reviews can only go so far, and they are really only good for the center two quartiles of the class: who the hell grades the top person? How does she improve? And don't even mention the performance and studio arts. I think we (and the founders of these places) have a somewhat warped perception of how effective these courses are because our subject areas (math-heavy) are extremely easy to test and quantify progress, but the other subjects are just as critical to society's well-being. And let's not forget the other side of school: learning work ethic, forging an identity, and how to function in society. Physical colleges are worth far more than the sum of their parts (though probably not what they are charging). I would love to be proven wrong! EDIT: I think we would get a much, much, much larger return on the investment by improving the quality of our community colleges, reducing the stigma of attending them & other state schools, and encouraging more people to attend vocational schools instead of a degree that won't get them a job.
- marknutter 14y ago
  > Physical colleges are worth far more than the sum of their parts I hear this and variants of this argument often but it always seems to be taken completely on faith.
  - duaneb 14y ago
    > I hear this and variants of this argument often but it always seems to be taken completely on faith. Current college student; I've dropped out of college and returned. So, for me, college has been, is, and will probably continue to be the worth more than just what I am paying for (though I am probably overpaying for those parts). This certainly does not apply to everyone, but I think it does apply to many people.
marknutter 14y ago
This is an attack piece, and a bad one at that. It's the same, weak attack anti-MOOC people always make which involves a few anecdotal smears on a few of Salman Khan's lectures, a completely false claim that MOOCs are trying to do no more than drive empty facts into students' heads, and an anecdotal filled, rose-tinted, hand-waving defense of the value of a traditional college education. I hear the same weak arguments raised against remote working. People love to extol the virtues of face-to-face communication and intangible experiences, all in the defense of stale traditions and broken, out of date models, but they rarely have any practical solutions for bringing education to the masses that doesn't involve spending an ever increasing amount of money. We live in a time where information is more abundant and accessible than ever, yet the old guard are doing everything they can to keep it locked up in ivory towers to be doled out bit by bit, in person, for a hefty fee, to anyone willing to rack up tens of thousands of dollars of debt. After all, that money is the only thing keeping the old guard afloat. It's always fascinating to hear the swan song disrupted industries. First they laugh at you. Then they attack you. Then, they fade away.
- aphyr 14y ago
  Mass distribution of learning material has been around for a few centuries and has yet to replace the process of guided learning. The problem is simple: while it's possible to amass facts and skills from reading and listening, it's much more difficult to produce complex works of value without feedback on the process. Doing mathematics isn't just applying rules and techniques. It's about knowing how to reason, and writing a proof in a way which communicates your reasoning clearly to others. You can get started by following along with proofs from a lecture, but in order to really ingrain the techniques in your brain, you have to write proofs of things you've never encountered before. Someone has to read those proofs, and give feedback on where your reasoning was unclear, incomplete, or flawed. They can suggest a different notation, or a shorter path to the same solution. Good teachers will leave notes: "this is a cool idea you've developed here, and it points towards this area of complex analysis we haven't talked about yet." In psychology it's not enough to memorize a summary text and a smattering of papers. You need to be asked questions. "There's a critical flaw in this paper's sampling methodology. Can you find it? How would you improve it?" "What kind of systematic bias can we expect in these results?" If nobody asks those questions, and helps you hone in on the answers, you'll miss out on half the text. You'll be unprepared to evaluate the quality of others research--or to design experiments of your own. This process can't be automated yet. Human beings have to read and respond to your work, preferably at interactive latencies.
droithomme 14y ago
Most of the classes I've taken have been great. They are certainly comparable to in-person college courses and have delivered incredible value to people world wide at a very small cost per student. It's all advantages with no disadvantages. This disruptive model of course is an absolute terror to the large number of poor teachers and colleges providing substandard classes while saddling their students with debt. It's no wonder that on a weekly and sometimes daily basis, a ridiculous and contrived hit piece is published by those from the dinosaur set who are in the process of being obsoleted because they can't keep up with progress and are unwilling to retool.
jval 14y ago
I disagree with the whole idea that lower quality is such an awful thing. I feel like the entire article is written through a well-educated American lens that doesn't understand why this is so revolutionary. This has nothing to do with people who are already in universities, it has to do with all the other intelligent people, all around the world who have never had the benefit of a high quality education. And I suppose, the people in America who never had that opportunity either. To deny them that and force them to wait for some sort of 'high quality' education to come their way is ludicrous. These sites aren't perfect but they will get better and nobody is arguing that they are amazing or that one day they will come to replace the experience of being on campus, but they are a great substitute for people who can't afford that. Smartphones aren't exactly a replacement for mainframe computers but they're doing a great job at bringing computing to a huge number of people who are using it as a gateway to the web and all that offers. I think that's a good thing.
- pdonis 14y ago
  all the other intelligent people, all around the world who have never had the benefit of a high quality education But the article's whole point is that all those people will not be getting an education at all; what they'll be getting is something else that shouldn't even be called by that name. Your analogy with smartphones just reinforces that impression: most of the people who use smartphones or tablets aren't using them to do "computing", they're using them to do the same mindless things they did before smartphones and tablets came along, just more "efficiently".
  - smokeyj 14y ago
    > what they'll be getting is something else that shouldn't even be called by that name. Tell me you wore a monocle while typing that
- slykat 14y ago
  It's not even about being "lower quality". It's about building another medium for learning outside of highly expensive brick and mortar institutions. I'm a huge fan of MOOCs. It makes no sense that everyone in America should aspire to getting a 120K bachelor's degree - a university education isn't meant for every career or person or life stage. I think we have this false belief that every American should aspire to getting a university education when in reality, the ROI of a university education is not always net positive. I've seen so many colleagues struggle with huge debt from graduate programs that did did nothing for their career prospects. And it's not even that - learning shouldn't start or stop at a certain age. For example, I'm in my late 20s and wanted to learn how to build web apps. I like learning in structured environment, so Udacity worked perfectly for me. In 3 months I took an intro Python course and then a web app course led by a Reddit co-founder. Would I have learned better through an undergrad university course? Maybe. Could I? It'd be pretty much unfeasible, given I was working 50+ hours for a tech firm and commuting between SF and South Bay at the time. Anything that helps people learn is a good thing.
gwern 14y ago
That's some pretty loaded language and interesting choice of quotes there...
rjempson 14y ago
I did the original ai-class, plus a couple from coursera, and a couple from udacity. I also have a bachelor's degree. The quality of learning from these online courses totally trumped my in-person degree. For me, the ability to rewind certain parts of the lectures over and over was incredibly useful, and I was able to save time running certain parts at 2-5x speed. The use of pop-up quizzes every 5 minutes really forced me to learn the material. The fact that the content was produced for online presentation made a big difference compared to simply recording a traditional lecture.
christensen_emc 14y ago
There are many problems with the current crop of MOOCs, I'll be the first to admit that. In their current state they are not an alternative. That said, the argument advanced against them in this article and numerous times on this and other boards is elitist and out of touch. "These lectures do not compare to the ones I sat in at UC Berkeley/Stanford/MIT! people watching them are not getting a REAL education!" Not only is it a classic "no true Scotsman", it also neglects to note that increasingly all large courses at large state universities are adopting a model not unlike the MOOC model. Lectures are increasingly posted online, and coursework is now almost always a blackboard quiz. Projects are submitted online, no paper copies are ever even created. Office hours are available, true, but often they are with a TA who is only slightly more than a glorified Tutor. All of these are transparent time and money saving moves on the part of the departments and professors. Students rarely object as online classes give them more flexibility to work (something rarely mentioned in these kind of articles). Everyone wins on one level and loses on another. The quality of education drops as a consequence, but we're talking second and third tier schools here so it doesn't exactly make the news. All things considered, I might as well be taking MOOC at this point. I personally prefer Coursera to blackboard. More variety and no nagging advisors telling me I don't have the prereq. The tools and ui are better too! And its free!
ilaksh 14y ago
There is no reason that you can't have a teacher lecture students over the internet or lead a discussion over the internet, using voice, voice and audio, or just chat. There is no reason why students can't do interactive labs with help from teachers online. So I think that in most cases, there really doesn't have to be any qualitative difference between online and in person learning. But there are lots of advantages, starting with the increased ability for students to work at their own pace. And for computer assisted learning, i.e. interactive learning activities on a computer, possibly graded automatically by a computer. Also the ability to communicate online can be a big advantage over having to physically walk to an office hours or library. And of course the obvious one is the ease of distributing electronic textbooks and other learning materials online. Or for example delivering a live or recorded lecture online to an audience of 10,000 students from all over the world rather than to an audience of 100 students at some expensive university. This is just one of many areas were social institutions are lagging far behind technological progress. The arguments against using technology are not rationally motivated.
venomsnake 14y ago
We live in a different world. Currently the most important things are the ability to get, filter and process information and not the ability to store it. Most of the courses I have taken by coursera and edx were a blast. But I have experience and good math background. We as a society should refocus the primary education on "rapid obtainable literacy" in any given topic. The student must be able to obtain the critical mass of knowledge that will help him to navigate on its own in the MOOC, and then we will be able to leverage the new educational startups.
confluence 14y ago
I'm a top 10% student that goes to a top 30 engineering school. I haven't gone to a lecture or bought a textbook in over 2 years. My grades haven't suffered - they're mostly a function of time spent doing homework and going through the lecture slides. For undergraduate students - a physical college is now mostly unnecessary (excluding some lab work). Research students - not so much. Another thing. Arguments against any new technology saying "Oh, but you can't replace that!" are always going to die. Lowering the cost of something by a factor of 100x changes everything.
spikels 14y ago
I regret wasting my time reading this long and rambling mess... The author apparently didn't even bother to take a single MOOC class. Instead only acknowledging watching 9 minutes of a single 18 minute video (the class has 13 in total) for Kahn Acadamy's US History class. Strange considering we are talking about college and this Kahn class targets middle or high school students. The author is also apparently unfamiliar with many of the basic features, such as discussion forums, or major advantages, such as timing flexibility (learn when you can for as long as you can) of MOOCs. Or that many of the students are not even in the US. However there is a link to an interesting blog post previously posted to HN "Napster, Udacity, and the Academy" which makes the software is eating the world argument for education. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4773857 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4773857
r4w8173 14y ago
can go in this list: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2873 http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2873

21 points by ctoth 14y ago

A very well reasoned piece. It reminds me of this piece from Hamilton Nolan: http://gawker.com/5968116/hubris-high-socks-and-other-habits-of-the-most-powerful-people-in-the-world http://gawker.com/5968116/hubris-high-socks-and-other-habits... Personally I find the whole techno-libertarian/utopian side of valley culture quite scary - I guess it's the part where some people decide they want to "fix" everything, without really making any effort to understand what (if anything) is broken to begin with.

tptacek 14y ago
I'm skeeved out by technolibertarianism too, but I disagree that this is a well-reasoned piece. It's a guilt- by- ideological- association hit piece that at one point has its cake and smears it all over its own face by linking Coursera/Udacity to Michelle Rhee and the scandals of low quality classroom education. It's quick to toss in references to "Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists" or throw Khan Academy under one or more imagined busses, but did you notice that in its attempt at a takedown on an "overview of US history" video at Khan, it didn't even ask the question of how coherently secondary school courseware handled the same subject? I feel like the reviews I've read from subject matter experts on Coursera courses have been positive. I don't feel like individual problem courses on Udacity damn the whole medium. I can understand how people who thoroughly enjoyed their years at college would feel threatened by alternative paths to the same goal, but it's the goal that matters, not the college life experience.
- spamizbad 14y ago
  > but did you notice that in its attempt at a takedown on an "overview of US history" video at Khan, it didn't even ask the question of how coherently secondary school courseware handled the same subject? My theory: that would probably be an article unto itself. A good friend of mine, who's a 7th grade social studies teacher, shares the author's disdain for Khan's handling of history. He cited disjointed events, without any explaination of how they were connected, stating it was very "this happened, then this happened, then later THIS happened probably because of this which happened between this and this..." -- no coherent historical narrative, and ultimately more difficult to understand. It's easier to remember events when you understand their causes and purpose, rather than just their place on a timeline. After watching Khan's Intro to CS videos, I'm inclined to trust my friend's assessment. As far as Rhee is concerned: The crux of the argument is, ambition non-educators who try to "fix" education have a tendancy to make it worse. Rhee and the VCs fall into the same category. It's also worth noting Education reform movement has started to turn its sights on higher education as well- We got a taste of that from Bill Gates, which his thoughts on college rankings (Which probably need to be fixed, but not in the way Gates, and reformers, are proposing).
  - scotty79 14y ago
    History is just facts. Narratives are usually made up by someone investigating those facts. Narratives differ between historians depending on their sympathies. I think innovative education should stay away from history. Most of it is history of politics. Only some percentage of it is actual knowledge and none of it is of any use to almost anyone.
    - MrMan 14y ago
      You should elaborate on this idea. If we can understand better why the study of history is largely useless, then we might be able to use that knowledge to reason about why other subjects held dear by traditional academics are also harmful. I think literature is even worse than history. What they are studying are not even facts! Just make believe stories. There is no ROI on make believe nonsense, right?
      - scotty79 14y ago
        I'm not saying that history is harmful, only that it's mostly useless. I have nothing against literature. I like fiction and discussing fiction. I think people educated in literature might contribute to culture by inventing interesting stories themselves by reusing and remixing concepts found in respected literature. I don't really like the prominence given to history of politics as it's currently taught because for me it's just uninteresting fiction that only strong point is that something similar perhaps sort of happened.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    I have a son in 8th grade and a daughter in 6th in a pretty good school system and I do not assume the social studies curricula is doing a better job at this material than Khan is. The kids in these classes are getting series of disjointed factual units punctuated by enrichment exercises that, while more engaging than Khan Academy, are still merely forestalling the point where the kids actually learn history, by reading books that seriously engage multiple perspectives on what happened. The point then is that it's awfully silly to single out a very basic Khan US history overview, and disingenuous to do so without putting Khan into context; Khan is not supplanting genuinely meaningful middle school history curricula. Equally importantly: nobody currently uses just Khan academy for junior high history lessons. Khan is not part of a plot to eliminate teachers. I don't know where you're going with this Rhee stuff. Rhee may or may not have made education worse in the District, because she ran the school system. But Udacity and Coursera do not run K-12 school systems; they have nothing whatsoever to do with Rhee.

bzalasky 14y ago

Udacity and other online courses are great for people that already know how to learn. These sorts of programs won't help people that don't know how to learn on their own. However, I will say I can count the classes in college that couldn't have been replicated in an online format on two hands. All of theses classes still could have benefited from putting lectures online. The thing that is lacking in online courses is in-depth, in-person discussion in settings of about 30 people. Forums like this are great for teaching critical thinking. My favorite class in college was an undergraduate anthropology class that focused on a different topic each week. There were two different perspectives (in journal articles) and you'd be assigned one to defend in the next class. I think this kind of thing is hard to replicate in digital settings. Thoughts?

marknutter 14y ago
30 people is a completely arbitrary number, arrived at not because it was the optimal class size, but because of resource constraints.
- bzalasky 14y ago
  It's absolutely arbitrary, but it's a small enough number that everyone has a chance to contribute to the discussion. With this particular class it had nothing to do with resource constraints... maybe more to do with how many students were interested. I didn't have a single anthropology class after 101 that had more than 35 people in it (and this was at a large state school).
droithomme 14y ago
> I think this kind of thing is hard to replicate in digital settings. I think we are a group of people discussing a topic in a digital forum right now. Coursera, Udacity, and the others all have forums as well where there are extended discussions on various topics between students, TAs and faculty.
- bzalasky 14y ago
  It's not the same thing. Thinking critically and speaking in front of a group of people is different than participating in a discussion online.

greenranger 14y ago

The reason the online education movement is getting so much attention is because it is targeting a huge need of society that's been neglected for decades, if not centuries -- the needs of the adult learner. Some say the college "experience" can't be replicated online and they're probably right, but of what use is that to the person who can't afford the luxury of going to office hours or throwing around the football in the quad between classes because he has a full time job and a family to feed. I think both systems can co-exist quite well.

JumpCrisscross 14y ago

"Wouldn't it make more sense to just fund education to the levels we had back when it was working?" In good times investing in innovation is a luxury. In bad times it is a necessity. The returns on the present education model are not covering the costs in many cases.

barry-cotter 14y ago
When was education working and who was it working for? As a means of social control, a method of inuring people to being ranked, judged and told what to do it works wonderfully[0]. It is not about learning or it would not start so early, at least not for teenagers[1], nor would there be so much homework[2]. Doing lots of work that you dislike because you have been told to do it is good training for the world of work for most though. Every large school system is lineally or organisationationally descended from one designed to produce good soldiers[3]. The school system works just fine for childcare, for socialising people to accept random authority figures telling them what to do and for reducing creativity. It does what it's meant to, even if no one who's in charge will acknowledge that's what it's function is. [0] http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html [1] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/07/sleepy-kids-learn-less.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/07/sleepy-kids-learn-less... [2] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/06/only-do-math-homework.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/06/only-do-math-homework.... [3] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/05/schools-are-for-war.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/05/schools-are-for-war.ht...
- 001sky 14y ago
  I agree with the substance of this. Passing on wisdom is not the first, second, or even 3rd point of "education" anymore. Its basically a state-sanctioned childcare/socialization programme. Its cleverly mandated under the legal authority for education, but one should make no mistake as to its purpose, and this is one of the many great trojan-horse examples of government-gone-wild in the name of "compassion". All those kids at failing inner-city schools are just being soul-destroyed for a life of minimum-subsistence-wage menial labour.

eriksank 14y ago

"Wouldn't it make more sense to just fund education to the levels we had back when it was working?" Short answer: NO.

marknutter 14y ago
Agreed. That was a truly bizarre statement. People who continue to claim that our education problems will all be magically solved by throwing more money at the problem bewilder me unless they're the ones directly benefiting from that money, that is. Tuition rates have been rising out of control for decades, but education is a big problem right now. More money did not solve the problem.

danso 14y ago

While I agree that we're still a far way from replacing the classic university model with online courses, I feel that pointing out the flaws of any individual lesson video is a limited and weak argument in this debate. Not because it's wrong to point those flaws out. But because classic educational courses don't expose themselves to such transparency. I can think of a good number of classes I sat through that if they were put on YouTube for the convenience of critics to rewatch and nitpick, they would be as mock-worthy as the examples the OP uses

duaneb 14y ago

I really don't get things like Coursera et. al. Textbooks have been available for purchase far before the modern university existed, but the only thing stopping people from teaching themselves and making a career out of it is the degree. I would far prefer a site that just made certifying knowledge of a given subject easier, replacing the BA, so you can cover e.g. Multivariable Calculus over three weeks instead of three months. As it stands, these online "schools" don't offer anything that you couldn't get before, and in fact are perhaps worse because they offer the illusion of having proof of knowledge (when people would be far better served just proving that they know something outright with personal projects). Furthermore, there are vast areas of education that require small student:teacher ratios, if only for grading papers. Peer reviews can only go so far, and they are really only good for the center two quartiles of the class: who the hell grades the top person? How does she improve? And don't even mention the performance and studio arts. I think we (and the founders of these places) have a somewhat warped perception of how effective these courses are because our subject areas (math-heavy) are extremely easy to test and quantify progress, but the other subjects are just as critical to society's well-being. And let's not forget the other side of school: learning work ethic, forging an identity, and how to function in society. Physical colleges are worth far more than the sum of their parts (though probably not what they are charging). I would love to be proven wrong! EDIT: I think we would get a much, much, much larger return on the investment by improving the quality of our community colleges, reducing the stigma of attending them & other state schools, and encouraging more people to attend vocational schools instead of a degree that won't get them a job.

marknutter 14y ago
> Physical colleges are worth far more than the sum of their parts I hear this and variants of this argument often but it always seems to be taken completely on faith.
- duaneb 14y ago
  > I hear this and variants of this argument often but it always seems to be taken completely on faith. Current college student; I've dropped out of college and returned. So, for me, college has been, is, and will probably continue to be the worth more than just what I am paying for (though I am probably overpaying for those parts). This certainly does not apply to everyone, but I think it does apply to many people.

marknutter 14y ago

This is an attack piece, and a bad one at that. It's the same, weak attack anti-MOOC people always make which involves a few anecdotal smears on a few of Salman Khan's lectures, a completely false claim that MOOCs are trying to do no more than drive empty facts into students' heads, and an anecdotal filled, rose-tinted, hand-waving defense of the value of a traditional college education. I hear the same weak arguments raised against remote working. People love to extol the virtues of face-to-face communication and intangible experiences, all in the defense of stale traditions and broken, out of date models, but they rarely have any practical solutions for bringing education to the masses that doesn't involve spending an ever increasing amount of money. We live in a time where information is more abundant and accessible than ever, yet the old guard are doing everything they can to keep it locked up in ivory towers to be doled out bit by bit, in person, for a hefty fee, to anyone willing to rack up tens of thousands of dollars of debt. After all, that money is the only thing keeping the old guard afloat. It's always fascinating to hear the swan song disrupted industries. First they laugh at you. Then they attack you. Then, they fade away.

aphyr 14y ago
Mass distribution of learning material has been around for a few centuries and has yet to replace the process of guided learning. The problem is simple: while it's possible to amass facts and skills from reading and listening, it's much more difficult to produce complex works of value without feedback on the process. Doing mathematics isn't just applying rules and techniques. It's about knowing how to reason, and writing a proof in a way which communicates your reasoning clearly to others. You can get started by following along with proofs from a lecture, but in order to really ingrain the techniques in your brain, you have to write proofs of things you've never encountered before. Someone has to read those proofs, and give feedback on where your reasoning was unclear, incomplete, or flawed. They can suggest a different notation, or a shorter path to the same solution. Good teachers will leave notes: "this is a cool idea you've developed here, and it points towards this area of complex analysis we haven't talked about yet." In psychology it's not enough to memorize a summary text and a smattering of papers. You need to be asked questions. "There's a critical flaw in this paper's sampling methodology. Can you find it? How would you improve it?" "What kind of systematic bias can we expect in these results?" If nobody asks those questions, and helps you hone in on the answers, you'll miss out on half the text. You'll be unprepared to evaluate the quality of others research--or to design experiments of your own. This process can't be automated yet. Human beings have to read and respond to your work, preferably at interactive latencies.

droithomme 14y ago

Most of the classes I've taken have been great. They are certainly comparable to in-person college courses and have delivered incredible value to people world wide at a very small cost per student. It's all advantages with no disadvantages. This disruptive model of course is an absolute terror to the large number of poor teachers and colleges providing substandard classes while saddling their students with debt. It's no wonder that on a weekly and sometimes daily basis, a ridiculous and contrived hit piece is published by those from the dinosaur set who are in the process of being obsoleted because they can't keep up with progress and are unwilling to retool.

jval 14y ago

I disagree with the whole idea that lower quality is such an awful thing. I feel like the entire article is written through a well-educated American lens that doesn't understand why this is so revolutionary. This has nothing to do with people who are already in universities, it has to do with all the other intelligent people, all around the world who have never had the benefit of a high quality education. And I suppose, the people in America who never had that opportunity either. To deny them that and force them to wait for some sort of 'high quality' education to come their way is ludicrous. These sites aren't perfect but they will get better and nobody is arguing that they are amazing or that one day they will come to replace the experience of being on campus, but they are a great substitute for people who can't afford that. Smartphones aren't exactly a replacement for mainframe computers but they're doing a great job at bringing computing to a huge number of people who are using it as a gateway to the web and all that offers. I think that's a good thing.

pdonis 14y ago
all the other intelligent people, all around the world who have never had the benefit of a high quality education But the article's whole point is that all those people will not be getting an education at all; what they'll be getting is something else that shouldn't even be called by that name. Your analogy with smartphones just reinforces that impression: most of the people who use smartphones or tablets aren't using them to do "computing", they're using them to do the same mindless things they did before smartphones and tablets came along, just more "efficiently".
- smokeyj 14y ago
  > what they'll be getting is something else that shouldn't even be called by that name. Tell me you wore a monocle while typing that
slykat 14y ago
It's not even about being "lower quality". It's about building another medium for learning outside of highly expensive brick and mortar institutions. I'm a huge fan of MOOCs. It makes no sense that everyone in America should aspire to getting a 120K bachelor's degree - a university education isn't meant for every career or person or life stage. I think we have this false belief that every American should aspire to getting a university education when in reality, the ROI of a university education is not always net positive. I've seen so many colleagues struggle with huge debt from graduate programs that did did nothing for their career prospects. And it's not even that - learning shouldn't start or stop at a certain age. For example, I'm in my late 20s and wanted to learn how to build web apps. I like learning in structured environment, so Udacity worked perfectly for me. In 3 months I took an intro Python course and then a web app course led by a Reddit co-founder. Would I have learned better through an undergrad university course? Maybe. Could I? It'd be pretty much unfeasible, given I was working 50+ hours for a tech firm and commuting between SF and South Bay at the time. Anything that helps people learn is a good thing.

gwern 14y ago

That's some pretty loaded language and interesting choice of quotes there...

rjempson 14y ago

I did the original ai-class, plus a couple from coursera, and a couple from udacity. I also have a bachelor's degree. The quality of learning from these online courses totally trumped my in-person degree. For me, the ability to rewind certain parts of the lectures over and over was incredibly useful, and I was able to save time running certain parts at 2-5x speed. The use of pop-up quizzes every 5 minutes really forced me to learn the material. The fact that the content was produced for online presentation made a big difference compared to simply recording a traditional lecture.

christensen_emc 14y ago

There are many problems with the current crop of MOOCs, I'll be the first to admit that. In their current state they are not an alternative. That said, the argument advanced against them in this article and numerous times on this and other boards is elitist and out of touch. "These lectures do not compare to the ones I sat in at UC Berkeley/Stanford/MIT! people watching them are not getting a REAL education!" Not only is it a classic "no true Scotsman", it also neglects to note that increasingly all large courses at large state universities are adopting a model not unlike the MOOC model. Lectures are increasingly posted online, and coursework is now almost always a blackboard quiz. Projects are submitted online, no paper copies are ever even created. Office hours are available, true, but often they are with a TA who is only slightly more than a glorified Tutor. All of these are transparent time and money saving moves on the part of the departments and professors. Students rarely object as online classes give them more flexibility to work (something rarely mentioned in these kind of articles). Everyone wins on one level and loses on another. The quality of education drops as a consequence, but we're talking second and third tier schools here so it doesn't exactly make the news. All things considered, I might as well be taking MOOC at this point. I personally prefer Coursera to blackboard. More variety and no nagging advisors telling me I don't have the prereq. The tools and ui are better too! And its free!

ilaksh 14y ago

There is no reason that you can't have a teacher lecture students over the internet or lead a discussion over the internet, using voice, voice and audio, or just chat. There is no reason why students can't do interactive labs with help from teachers online. So I think that in most cases, there really doesn't have to be any qualitative difference between online and in person learning. But there are lots of advantages, starting with the increased ability for students to work at their own pace. And for computer assisted learning, i.e. interactive learning activities on a computer, possibly graded automatically by a computer. Also the ability to communicate online can be a big advantage over having to physically walk to an office hours or library. And of course the obvious one is the ease of distributing electronic textbooks and other learning materials online. Or for example delivering a live or recorded lecture online to an audience of 10,000 students from all over the world rather than to an audience of 100 students at some expensive university. This is just one of many areas were social institutions are lagging far behind technological progress. The arguments against using technology are not rationally motivated.

venomsnake 14y ago

We live in a different world. Currently the most important things are the ability to get, filter and process information and not the ability to store it. Most of the courses I have taken by coursera and edx were a blast. But I have experience and good math background. We as a society should refocus the primary education on "rapid obtainable literacy" in any given topic. The student must be able to obtain the critical mass of knowledge that will help him to navigate on its own in the MOOC, and then we will be able to leverage the new educational startups.

confluence 14y ago

I'm a top 10% student that goes to a top 30 engineering school. I haven't gone to a lecture or bought a textbook in over 2 years. My grades haven't suffered - they're mostly a function of time spent doing homework and going through the lecture slides. For undergraduate students - a physical college is now mostly unnecessary (excluding some lab work). Research students - not so much. Another thing. Arguments against any new technology saying "Oh, but you can't replace that!" are always going to die. Lowering the cost of something by a factor of 100x changes everything.

spikels 14y ago

I regret wasting my time reading this long and rambling mess... The author apparently didn't even bother to take a single MOOC class. Instead only acknowledging watching 9 minutes of a single 18 minute video (the class has 13 in total) for Kahn Acadamy's US History class. Strange considering we are talking about college and this Kahn class targets middle or high school students. The author is also apparently unfamiliar with many of the basic features, such as discussion forums, or major advantages, such as timing flexibility (learn when you can for as long as you can) of MOOCs. Or that many of the students are not even in the US. However there is a link to an interesting blog post previously posted to HN "Napster, Udacity, and the Academy" which makes the software is eating the world argument for education. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4773857 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4773857

r4w8173 14y ago

can go in this list: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2873 http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2873