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I feel like this conversation is sidestepping the fact that "cheap online education" is synonymous with "we'll take a bunch of your money under unique loan cond

by jbooth 13y ago

I feel like this conversation is sidestepping the fact that "cheap online education" is synonymous with "we'll take a bunch of your money under unique loan conditions and operate as a paper mill". Not to say anything else about the political economy, I'm a believer in capitalism as the 'least bad system', but in the education sector, those 'cheap online schools' are actually a point in favor of the exploitation narrative.

tptacek 13y ago
The "paper mill" refers to credentials, which refers to the wealth-enhancing effect of education. But this subthread stipulates that the rich will keep getting richer. Are the non-rich getting drastically worse access to teaching and learning resources? If you had to plot a line representing this (admittedly abstract) concept starting in 1950 and running to 2020, what would that line look like? It needs to capture the Internet, Wikipedia, the digitization of books, citeseer and scholar.google.com, open source software, Khan Academy, MIT OpenCourseware, and Coursera.
- jbooth 13y ago
  > Are the non-rich getting drastically worse access to teaching and learning resources? Yeah, that's what I'm arguing if you're going to point to online certificate programs that get advertised on the subway as evidence for equal opportunity. You could make a better case for online self-directed research, probably, but I don't think there's a substitute for 19yos being exposed to great minds with tough expectations -- that only happens at good/decent universities [1]. And that's without even getting into the whole 'learning starts really young' thing with good school districts compared to lousy ones, etc. [1] If you want to take that point and argue for investment in good state universities, I'm entirely with you, but the current power structures seem to disagree[2] as evidenced by funding decisions. [2] I realize it's silly to term an emergent outcome as 'disagreement'
  - tptacek 13y ago
    I don't know. My 19 year old self went to a decent state research university. The lectures I sat through were much less effective than watching Gilbert Strang on Youtube at 3x speed with arrow keys to get him to repeat himself when I miss something and a pause button so I can work out problems after he writes them on the board but before he explains them. There was 1-on-1 time at "real" school, but it was with TAs and a room full of 19 year olds. I feel like the Internet addresses that use case better as well. (Fair warning: I've been pretty successful in my career, but I dropped out of school after a single semester).
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - jbooth 13y ago
      Well, you're an outlier. Deleted the rest of my post since I'm on my way to bed and didn't want to steal the last word. You can probably guess most of it.
      - BWStearns 13y ago
        Not necessarily an outlier. I was dumber than him and sat out the whole four years. I spent a year doing something I hated because that's what my degree got me. I now have a job I love that has literally zero to do with what I studied. If I had focused on the acquisition of knowledge when I realized I wanted to program for a living I could have saved a lot of time, money, and opportunity cost. I know more than a handful like me.
    - quaunaut 13y ago
      However you also have the luck of having a computer, being interested in computers, and being able to further than interest. Do you think you would've fared nearly as well, if your interest instead was in cars? Clothing design? Social work? Us tech workers are fairly lucky that in all honesty, the things we tend to like seem to be problems that can be solved with one another. I'd also argue, that while the billionaire's life is not a million times better than the thousandaire, that this never was the case, and that is thinking of the best of times. However, look at the worst of times. You get a serious illness- say, a cancer. For one, as a wealthy person you likely could have it detected much earlier from regular doctor visits and various signs. The poor never get this opportunity. When time comes for treatment, the best medicine, procedures, and rehabilitative therapy are available- and for the poor, they might be able to get the procedures, but the medicine will often be second-rate and there likely will be very little, or perhaps even no rehabilitation. Similar states repeat for smaller life disasters. You get in a car wreck; The rich man likely has a newer car, and can much easier afford to use the insurance to get a worthwhile vehicle again without being out very much. The poor was probably driving a car worth less than $1500, with numerous problems already, but at least it was paid off. The wreck might leave them with only enough money to get another car, but now they must make payments and still only get another 2-3 years out of it, if they're able to at all thanks to an insurance plan with less coverage. There is a huge quality of life gap here. Being poor today isn't at its worst when everything is going well- overall, things are pretty great there, and are a good reason why even lower middle class people rarely fall into absolute poverty. But the inability to pull oneself out of a hole is a much, much more pervasive problem.

by jbooth 13y ago

tptacek 13y ago

The "paper mill" refers to credentials, which refers to the wealth-enhancing effect of education. But this subthread stipulates that the rich will keep getting richer. Are the non-rich getting drastically worse access to teaching and learning resources? If you had to plot a line representing this (admittedly abstract) concept starting in 1950 and running to 2020, what would that line look like? It needs to capture the Internet, Wikipedia, the digitization of books, citeseer and scholar.google.com, open source software, Khan Academy, MIT OpenCourseware, and Coursera.

jbooth 13y ago
> Are the non-rich getting drastically worse access to teaching and learning resources? Yeah, that's what I'm arguing if you're going to point to online certificate programs that get advertised on the subway as evidence for equal opportunity. You could make a better case for online self-directed research, probably, but I don't think there's a substitute for 19yos being exposed to great minds with tough expectations -- that only happens at good/decent universities [1]. And that's without even getting into the whole 'learning starts really young' thing with good school districts compared to lousy ones, etc. [1] If you want to take that point and argue for investment in good state universities, I'm entirely with you, but the current power structures seem to disagree[2] as evidenced by funding decisions. [2] I realize it's silly to term an emergent outcome as 'disagreement'
- tptacek 13y ago
  I don't know. My 19 year old self went to a decent state research university. The lectures I sat through were much less effective than watching Gilbert Strang on Youtube at 3x speed with arrow keys to get him to repeat himself when I miss something and a pause button so I can work out problems after he writes them on the board but before he explains them. There was 1-on-1 time at "real" school, but it was with TAs and a room full of 19 year olds. I feel like the Internet addresses that use case better as well. (Fair warning: I've been pretty successful in my career, but I dropped out of school after a single semester).
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - jbooth 13y ago
    Well, you're an outlier. Deleted the rest of my post since I'm on my way to bed and didn't want to steal the last word. You can probably guess most of it.
    - BWStearns 13y ago
      Not necessarily an outlier. I was dumber than him and sat out the whole four years. I spent a year doing something I hated because that's what my degree got me. I now have a job I love that has literally zero to do with what I studied. If I had focused on the acquisition of knowledge when I realized I wanted to program for a living I could have saved a lot of time, money, and opportunity cost. I know more than a handful like me.
  - quaunaut 13y ago
    However you also have the luck of having a computer, being interested in computers, and being able to further than interest. Do you think you would've fared nearly as well, if your interest instead was in cars? Clothing design? Social work? Us tech workers are fairly lucky that in all honesty, the things we tend to like seem to be problems that can be solved with one another. I'd also argue, that while the billionaire's life is not a million times better than the thousandaire, that this never was the case, and that is thinking of the best of times. However, look at the worst of times. You get a serious illness- say, a cancer. For one, as a wealthy person you likely could have it detected much earlier from regular doctor visits and various signs. The poor never get this opportunity. When time comes for treatment, the best medicine, procedures, and rehabilitative therapy are available- and for the poor, they might be able to get the procedures, but the medicine will often be second-rate and there likely will be very little, or perhaps even no rehabilitation. Similar states repeat for smaller life disasters. You get in a car wreck; The rich man likely has a newer car, and can much easier afford to use the insurance to get a worthwhile vehicle again without being out very much. The poor was probably driving a car worth less than $1500, with numerous problems already, but at least it was paid off. The wreck might leave them with only enough money to get another car, but now they must make payments and still only get another 2-3 years out of it, if they're able to at all thanks to an insurance plan with less coverage. There is a huge quality of life gap here. Being poor today isn't at its worst when everything is going well- overall, things are pretty great there, and are a good reason why even lower middle class people rarely fall into absolute poverty. But the inability to pull oneself out of a hole is a much, much more pervasive problem.