10 ms·

Universities can’t fulfil the myth, but can’t become vocational schools either

146 points by whyenot 12y ago

hyperion2010 12y ago
Might be worth bringing up that fact that a significant portion of kids who do go to college don't go to learn, they go because it is the next step in life, often the first step where they are away from their parents. This is a societal problem with goal setting and inspiring the next generation to be motivated by something other than the nebulous idea of 'success' (read: money for most people). Also worth recalling that the Oxford riots of 1355 started because the local townspeople were pissed off with the Seminary students for chasing women (among other things). Some things never change.
- jrs235 12y ago
  Yup. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7814120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7814120 Luckily for me my aptitude made college easy. The majority of my uni experience was about the first time freedom and responsibility of living on my own.
  - marincounty 12y ago
    Yea--I had a friend who used to say the same thing, but he went to UC Santa Cruz and did too many drugs. He would come home on breaks, and the damage was very noticeable. He's fine now, actually a programmer I think, but I miss the dude he left in Santa Cruz. (I think he did too much acid? I'm pro drugs, but thought I would pass this along as a cautionary tale.)
    - tormeh 12y ago
      Prohibition solves nothing, as we can all see. I wonder what other mechanism might instead prevent this kind of thing from happening. Education? Psychologists? I wonder if we spent all the money used in law enforcement of drug laws on therapists instead, how would that turn out?
      - pedrosorio 12y ago
        Wonder no more: http://www.businessinsider.com/portugal-drug-policy-decriminalization-works-2012-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/portugal-drug-policy-decrimin...
    - eruditely 12y ago
      This statement is just vague enough for prejudice, but not concrete enough for evidence. Mental illness that was merely latent and could not be seen at the care of home, onset disabilities, many mentally ill people find drugs in reverse, not the other way around. Sigh.
      - DanBC 12y ago
        Because drugs are illegal it is hard to do research but most peoe are pretty clear that drugs can have a causal effect on mental health problems, even for people who would not have exhibted and mental illness without drug use. I am strongly in favour of legalising drugs. Warning people about the risks of mental health problems is a calm, sensible, evidence based bit of advice and is not anti-drug propaganda. It is disappointing to see so many advocates for better drug laws ignore or even argue against this advice. They are harming the campaign for better drug laws and they are ignoring the risks that people face.
        mercer 12y ago
        > Because drugs are illegal it is hard to do research but most peoe are pretty clear that drugs can have a causal effect on mental health problems, even for people who would not have exhibited and mental illness without drug use. From both personal experience and from observing various kinds of drug users close to me , I get the distinct impression that the danger of drugs is often not inherent to the drug itself (as in, 'drug has irreversible effect X'), but rather more to do with the fact that if you are a regular drug user, you're essentially wresting control away from your 'natural' functions, and taking matters into your own hand. This is just my experience and observation; I'm perfectly happy to be told that I'm completely wrong. Regardless of whether you are mentally 'fit' to begin with or not, taking control of things that normally are managed more, eh, organically carries specific kinds of risks. Especially if it is not entirely clear what these particular 'things' or bodily functions are. I think this applies to drugs in the broadest sense. Take, for example, someone using sleep medication to fall asleep. If this person gets used to this medication, the first problem is that his body might 'forget' how to naturally fall asleep. Even worse, this person might get used to eating a huge meal or drinking a coffee every evening. While 'naturally' this kind of habit can disrupt sleep, the 'managed sleep', through medication, removed this problem. When the person stops using this medication, his first challenge is to give the body time to learn how to fall asleep by itself again. But the bigger challenge is to learn (or even just realize) that he should not eat a big meal or drink coffee late at night. Now with sleep medication you at least have a decent idea of the effects. But if your medication is weed or alcohol (for example), the effects are more varied and unpredictable. I think legalization doesn't necessarily 'solve' the problems that a substance can present, as alcohol is arguably one of the worst drugs one can use. Cigarettes aren't that great either. But being able to reason about a substance is crucial. Talking about smoking or drinking, and associated dangers, was a part of my upbringing. Talking about other drugs (MDMA being a popular one over here currently) just didn't happen, in large part because they're illegal to begin with. If things are illegal, why have a reasonable conversation about it with your kids/students/peers/etc.?
jseliger 12y ago
I have no complaints about the modern standard of education Here's the thing, which I've written about before (http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-elizabeth-armstrong-and-laura-hamilton http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-part... and http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/beer-and-circus-how-big-time-sports-is-crippling-undergraduate-education-%E2%80%94%C2%A0murray-sperber http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/beer-and-circus-how...): universities are actually bundles of very different things, especially in terms of major. People who do hard science, CS, or engineering have very different experiences and earnings outcomes from people who do some of the majors that have evolved for those who don't want or need to do much (think majors like tourism management, sociology, some of the weaker business schools), and even they have different experiences from people who major in the real liberal arts (history, philosophy, English—the ones Lee cites). Lumping all those "college" degrees together makes very little sense, since they're actually accomplishing very different purposes. I wish more articles on the subject would emphasize this point, and I wish I could explicitly tell every incoming college student this, instead of waiting for them to figure it out on their own. Universities have never met the ideal that we hold them to but, on balance, I think they are better than the alternatives What "we" really need is less stigma against vocational schools and related college alternatives. Not everyone likes sitting still at a desk and doing abstract symbol manipulation (http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/the-problem-with-justifying-college-involves-cost/ http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/the-problem-with-ju...). And that's okay! Right now we don't have very good systems for those people, and vocational schools are stigmatized.
- bane 12y ago
  I'd almost actually argue that we need to put better weight on certificates and audited courses for people who aren't necessarily chasing a degree program, but who are taking advantage of the numerous and cost effective educational opportunities available through the community college systems in the U.S. A resume with a huge number of course hours for somebody basically didacting their way through their interest areas doesn't get anywhere near the weight of somebody with a degree that's composed of many fewer study hours, but the degree holding person will likely get the hiring advantage.
- 12y ago
leorocky 12y ago
The title is misspelled, it's "fulfill" but it's wrong on the original post too.
- chime 12y ago
  It's the correct British spelling - http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/fulfil?q=fulfil http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/fulfil?... The author lives in Netherlands so he uses the UK spelling 'fulfil' instead of US 'fulfill'.
- aninhumer 12y ago
  Both are valid. "fulfil" is the UK spelling: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fulfil http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fulfil
- dang 12y ago
  As a long, sad trail of people have learned the hard way: never slight British spelling on HN. :)
bindley 12y ago
As things constantly change, especially in post secondary education, I think it's important to look at the landscape objectively. If you know what direction your want to take your life and career, a university isn't always the right answer, and it shouldn't be the default.
DanielBMarkham 12y ago
I'm going to upvote this, but it was a muddled bit of rambling. In parts I could almost feel the author pull his punches in a sad effort to try to make as many people happy as possible. The key problem is this: whatever a university is, it's too expensive for the ability of the average student to pay back. That means it's a bad deal for both the student and society. Paying for more of it is just going to continue the spiral. I have a different question. We know that training for future jobs is a requirement of some post-secondary institution. That's just a given for many fields with the complexities of modern life. So what about a good, solid, liberal arts education? The one thing that universities were supposed to be masters of for centuries? The one thing that allows each of us to participate in and enjoy life to its fullest? Where does society go for that? We can't go to the universities, because we'll end up in a long, pointless argument about what the purpose of universities are. And, frankly, there's a lot of jumping on the bandwagon going on at most institutions, just google silly college courses. Can we offload that to local tutors? Teach online? Is there some delivery mechanism for a liberal arts background that we haven't considered yet?
- notahacker 12y ago
  >So what about a good, solid, liberal arts education? The one thing that universities were supposed to be masters of for centuries? The one thing that allows each of us to participate in and enjoy life to its fullest? Where does society go for that? Europe. Reduce your university fees by an order of magnitude or two, study for longer with less emphasis on grades, and enjoy a bit of culture on the side. I'm only half-joking.
- pekk 12y ago
  > So what about a good, solid, liberal arts education? The one thing that universities were supposed to be masters of for centuries? The one thing that allows each of us to participate in and enjoy life to its fullest? Where does society go for that? Any liberal arts college?
- analog31 12y ago
  >>> Is there some delivery mechanism for a liberal arts background that we haven't considered yet? The printing press? I don't mean to be snarky, but it does occur to me that the heyday of the liberal arts education was also a time when traveling to the university was necessary in order to have physical access to the sources of knowledge.
doc_holliday 12y ago
Basically > 90% of my year at school in the UK went on to university. A lot of these people IMO were never really of the inquisitive mind or drive that I thought would be the type to go to university. However for one reason or another it was pushed by my school that pretty much everyone in the final year should go to uni. Most were of middle class and I think, at least within the UK, it is the done thing to do if you are middle class or above to go on to uni. We don't really encourage or present alternatives. My own experience with university has been a mixed bag. I've loved the lecturers who have challenged my ideas and not just presented solutions. However others I feel encouraged wrote learning through the way they presented courses and a lot of exams are question guessing to gear up to pass. However on the whole I think I have come out of it with more logical basis and reasoning for things, it's definitely been at least beneficial intellectually and I love that. I think that part is wasted on quite a lot of people though who go to uni merely as the done thing.
Tycho 12y ago
This was my impression of undergraduate university: cognitive dissonance. Why? a) why do we have this ridiculously inefficient model of pedagogy, and b) why are all these people here who don't express/display any real interest in their subject. You have been through primary and secondary school, where the function is pretty clear: you are children, so you need to be somewhere supervised by adults; you need to learn to socialise with other children; and you need to learn basic skills like arithmetic, reading, composing essays, studying, punctuality. Then you go off to university which doesn't seem to make any sense. I think it depends on your course - it will be much better if you already have a strong, realistic idea of what you want your career to be, and find yourself among like-minded students.
dnautics 12y ago
In short, any student who emerges from university with good critical thinking skills has achieved that by accident, not by the university's design. I would also argue that the courses that come closest to achieving the ideal are history, English, and philosophy. How about abstract mathematics? I would argue that these days those might be the only courses where you learn those skills.
- pjmorris 12y ago
  I suspect the author would argue that training in abstract mathematics is comparable to the other sciences in the sense of 'data analysis within a framework', subject to the problem of under-training in the ability to recognize the limitations of the framework. I suspect s/he chose History, English and Philosophy because they are fuzzier than the sciences, including mathematics, and so they require understanding how to choose - or define - a set ground rules to apply in a given situation.
  - tikhonj 12y ago
    > understanding how to choose - or define - a set ground rules to apply in a given situation. Which, of course, perfectly describes abstract mathematics... just not the sort that non-majors ever get to. Many of the interesting parts of mathematics (and, I should add, computer science!) are all about coming up with the mental framework and abstractions needed to look at a problem, give you a new perspective and ultimately come up with a solution. Choosing or coming up with the logic to treat a situation is exactly what you'd be doing. It's also particularly good at illuminating the underlying structure of different domains and giving you tools to recognize similarities between them that may not be readily apparent. This goes well beyond what most non-mathematicians regard as "mathematically accessible": just look at all the various modal logics[1] both for the breadth of their applications (belief, knowledge, time...) and their internal similarities. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_logic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_logic Moreover, I would argue that mathematics goes further than most fields in talking about and working with its own limitations. Metamathematics and logic as fields are all about this—with greater clarity than the fuzzier subjects, in the usual mathematical style. Mathematics is also great for consistently and rationally accounting for uncertainty and limitations of other systems, fundamental to probability and any sane treatment of risk. Mathematics, as practiced by mathematicians, also teaches another really important idea: having different levels of rigor, as appropriate. Often, an argument only needs to be convincing, and many of the important details can be left out. However, in math, this is always done with the understanding that those details can be filled in, and the understanding that you should be able to fill them in given enough time. I figure the focus on clarity, thorough introspection and different levels of rigor, abstractions and logic all make mathematics qua mathematics one of the ultimate "humanities". The problem is that classes for non-majors (and, perhaps, many undergraduate classes for majors) often don't teach mathematics for itself; instead, they teach mathematics as a tool for engineering or solving specific problems or getting a specific result. And that, certainly, could be fairly described as "data analysis within a framework". But mathematics in general? Much deeper!
analog31 12y ago
Speaking as a parent of kids who are headed towards being college age, you can imagine that I've got mixed thoughts about college education. It's going to be expensive. An outcome is not guaranteed. There are a lot of problems with higher education. On the other hand, there's an anti-college "movement" that itself could just be a fad, or even fueled by a political "wing" that has always relentlessly attacked public education and higher education. The skill area that's often mentioned as accommodating of people with alternative training (Internet programming) may very well be a major bubble right now. Edit: Removed gratuitous snark. So while I'm willing to give lip service to experiments in alternative education for 18-22 year olds, I'll probably hedge my bets and advise my own kids to attend college while offering them a dose of realism about what they're getting into.
nether 12y ago
One approach I've heard is to create more "engineering technology" degrees with a focus on practical, industry engineering. These would lack the coverage of theory of traditional degrees but would be cheaper and better suited for engineering in the real world. The purpose of traditional engineering degrees would be to prepare future professors and researchers to advance fundamental theory.
- slavik81 12y ago
  How would those be different from existing engineering technologist degrees? They sound the same.
unclebucknasty 12y ago
It's always seemed odd to me that we send kids through 12 or 13 years of school, then say that it's university where they're expected to get their critical thinking skills, exposure to new ideas, and other "mind-expanding" experiences. It's kind of silly, really. For one, it seems an awful waste to not take advantage of 12 or 13 years of opportunity to expose kids to these elements. Secondly, compressing such important experiences into only 4 years seems insufficient, especially given that they are supposed to also be preparing for a vocation during this time and not just "mind expansion". Finally, it's a very expensive time in a kid's educational career. Why wait until then to impart these "soft skills"? Economically (i.e. from an "ROI" perspective), it makes more sense for such an expensive education to focus solely on the skills that would make them viable in the labor market.
- TheSpiceIsLife 12y ago
  I'm all in with this. Is there something about year 9-12 students that makes them unable to understand university level education? I left school in after year 10 because I was having a terrible time of it and went back to studying when I was 23, but there were plenty of other students who were doing really well, or well enough, to go way beyond the meagre intellectual offerings of high school.
SushiMon 12y ago
The timing of this post is impeccable. A very exhaustive new study came out showing that the value of a college degree is higher than ever. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/upshot/is-college-worth-it-clearly-new-data-say.html?action=click&contentCollection=N.Y.%20%2F%20Region&module=MostEmailed&version=Full&region=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/upshot/is-college-worth-it... Basically, you go to college in America or you risk being poor for the rest of the your life. Sure, some coders / entrepreneurs can do it without college. And maybe college is the selection process for these success traits. But with this size of differential on a very large sample size, I think its pretty hard to say, at least in earnings power, universities are not fulfilling the myth.
- VLM 12y ago
  On a stats blog I just saw that article cited as a classic example of mean vs median propaganda. The average is ridiculously high because a very small percentage of people get most of the income in our society, and all of them do higher ed and send their kids to higher ed. So all the Doctors, lawyers, MBA exec types, pro (post college) athletes, engineers... WRT the median, its a lottery ticket purchase. It turns out that the lifetime financial value of a PHD Divinity degree is negative in the pool of potential seminary students, and its not a terribly high number for most students in general. If you (or your parents) win the lottery ticket of life, you probably went to university, but the vast majority of people not only aren't going to win, but are going to take on enormous debt. This is probably not a wise long term societal policy. The point is there exists a pro football player who earned $100M thus the average "value of a degree" for him and 99 philosophy grads is $1M on average, but that doesn't mean a philosophy degree is automatically a ticket to unlock uncountable piles of gold coins. It merely means rich people (and this is almost certainly not going to be you) did get a degree. Necessary but not sufficient.
guard-of-terra 12y ago
It is interesting that continental european higher education IS mostly vocational schools. You go there to earn a grade in specific skillset. I imagine this is most pronounced in central and eastern europe (including of course Germany). Yet somehow US and UK universities seem to beat continental schools by most metrics and ratings. They don't set on teaching skills and science but that they also do successfully.
colemorrison 12y ago
People that go to college likely put more value on their degree to in order to defend the fact that they haven't wasted their time. People that didn't go to college likely put more value on not going to college in order to defend the fact that they don't have a degree. Anecdotal of course. But college will increase your chances of success due to the connections you make. It will not, however, by any chance in freezing hell, guarantee it.
graycat 12y ago
While his history of higher education in old England is interesting, my view of current college education in the US is quite different from his: In short, my view, from my experience as a student, is that the best teacher is essentially always the best researcher. Why? Because he (she) knows the most about the subject, thus, has the best judgment about what's important in the subject, has the deepest and most mature view of the subject, likely knows where the subject is headed for the next 5-10 years, and is likely one of the brightest and hardest working guys around. For his ability at 'teaching', I learned not to care: It's just not very important for the learning. That is, I didn't really need the polished, practiced, proven, trained, highly developed 'pedagogical techniques'; instead, what the best researcher brings is much more important and, really, enough for 'pedagogy'. Sorry 'bout that. Next, the universities are the source of crucial parts of essentially all important research in our civilization, and research has a long history, back at least to Newton, of being by a wide margin the most valuable activity for civilization, the economy, standards of living, return on investment, etc. So, for anyone who wants to learn, apply, or add to such research, start at a good college and get for teachers the best researchers can get. I've seen 'teachers' who were good with pedagogy, and I've seen good researchers; the mere teachers far too often just didn't know the subject well enough, and hands down the researchers were the much better deal. Or, it's (A) high quality pedagogy of low quality content or (B) high quality content from someone who really understands the subject and is a good teacher because of that understanding; I've seen both, and I'll take (B) any time. Or, to heck with the pedagogy; instead, I'll just study some of the best texts and papers; in that, a good researcher can help me pick the texts and papers and help me find the most important points, and a mere teacher just can't, especially for material close to the leading edge of research.

146 points by whyenot 12y ago

hyperion2010 12y ago

Might be worth bringing up that fact that a significant portion of kids who do go to college don't go to learn, they go because it is the next step in life, often the first step where they are away from their parents. This is a societal problem with goal setting and inspiring the next generation to be motivated by something other than the nebulous idea of 'success' (read: money for most people). Also worth recalling that the Oxford riots of 1355 started because the local townspeople were pissed off with the Seminary students for chasing women (among other things). Some things never change.

jrs235 12y ago
Yup. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7814120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7814120 Luckily for me my aptitude made college easy. The majority of my uni experience was about the first time freedom and responsibility of living on my own.
- marincounty 12y ago
  Yea--I had a friend who used to say the same thing, but he went to UC Santa Cruz and did too many drugs. He would come home on breaks, and the damage was very noticeable. He's fine now, actually a programmer I think, but I miss the dude he left in Santa Cruz. (I think he did too much acid? I'm pro drugs, but thought I would pass this along as a cautionary tale.)
  - tormeh 12y ago
    Prohibition solves nothing, as we can all see. I wonder what other mechanism might instead prevent this kind of thing from happening. Education? Psychologists? I wonder if we spent all the money used in law enforcement of drug laws on therapists instead, how would that turn out?
    - pedrosorio 12y ago
      Wonder no more: http://www.businessinsider.com/portugal-drug-policy-decriminalization-works-2012-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/portugal-drug-policy-decrimin...
  - eruditely 12y ago
    This statement is just vague enough for prejudice, but not concrete enough for evidence. Mental illness that was merely latent and could not be seen at the care of home, onset disabilities, many mentally ill people find drugs in reverse, not the other way around. Sigh.
    - DanBC 12y ago
      Because drugs are illegal it is hard to do research but most peoe are pretty clear that drugs can have a causal effect on mental health problems, even for people who would not have exhibted and mental illness without drug use. I am strongly in favour of legalising drugs. Warning people about the risks of mental health problems is a calm, sensible, evidence based bit of advice and is not anti-drug propaganda. It is disappointing to see so many advocates for better drug laws ignore or even argue against this advice. They are harming the campaign for better drug laws and they are ignoring the risks that people face.
      - mercer 12y ago
        > Because drugs are illegal it is hard to do research but most peoe are pretty clear that drugs can have a causal effect on mental health problems, even for people who would not have exhibited and mental illness without drug use. From both personal experience and from observing various kinds of drug users close to me , I get the distinct impression that the danger of drugs is often not inherent to the drug itself (as in, 'drug has irreversible effect X'), but rather more to do with the fact that if you are a regular drug user, you're essentially wresting control away from your 'natural' functions, and taking matters into your own hand. This is just my experience and observation; I'm perfectly happy to be told that I'm completely wrong. Regardless of whether you are mentally 'fit' to begin with or not, taking control of things that normally are managed more, eh, organically carries specific kinds of risks. Especially if it is not entirely clear what these particular 'things' or bodily functions are. I think this applies to drugs in the broadest sense. Take, for example, someone using sleep medication to fall asleep. If this person gets used to this medication, the first problem is that his body might 'forget' how to naturally fall asleep. Even worse, this person might get used to eating a huge meal or drinking a coffee every evening. While 'naturally' this kind of habit can disrupt sleep, the 'managed sleep', through medication, removed this problem. When the person stops using this medication, his first challenge is to give the body time to learn how to fall asleep by itself again. But the bigger challenge is to learn (or even just realize) that he should not eat a big meal or drink coffee late at night. Now with sleep medication you at least have a decent idea of the effects. But if your medication is weed or alcohol (for example), the effects are more varied and unpredictable. I think legalization doesn't necessarily 'solve' the problems that a substance can present, as alcohol is arguably one of the worst drugs one can use. Cigarettes aren't that great either. But being able to reason about a substance is crucial. Talking about smoking or drinking, and associated dangers, was a part of my upbringing. Talking about other drugs (MDMA being a popular one over here currently) just didn't happen, in large part because they're illegal to begin with. If things are illegal, why have a reasonable conversation about it with your kids/students/peers/etc.?

jseliger 12y ago

I have no complaints about the modern standard of education Here's the thing, which I've written about before (http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-elizabeth-armstrong-and-laura-hamilton http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-part... and http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/beer-and-circus-how-big-time-sports-is-crippling-undergraduate-education-%E2%80%94%C2%A0murray-sperber http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/beer-and-circus-how...): universities are actually bundles of very different things, especially in terms of major. People who do hard science, CS, or engineering have very different experiences and earnings outcomes from people who do some of the majors that have evolved for those who don't want or need to do much (think majors like tourism management, sociology, some of the weaker business schools), and even they have different experiences from people who major in the real liberal arts (history, philosophy, English—the ones Lee cites). Lumping all those "college" degrees together makes very little sense, since they're actually accomplishing very different purposes. I wish more articles on the subject would emphasize this point, and I wish I could explicitly tell every incoming college student this, instead of waiting for them to figure it out on their own. Universities have never met the ideal that we hold them to but, on balance, I think they are better than the alternatives What "we" really need is less stigma against vocational schools and related college alternatives. Not everyone likes sitting still at a desk and doing abstract symbol manipulation (http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/the-problem-with-justifying-college-involves-cost/ http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/the-problem-with-ju...). And that's okay! Right now we don't have very good systems for those people, and vocational schools are stigmatized.

bane 12y ago
I'd almost actually argue that we need to put better weight on certificates and audited courses for people who aren't necessarily chasing a degree program, but who are taking advantage of the numerous and cost effective educational opportunities available through the community college systems in the U.S. A resume with a huge number of course hours for somebody basically didacting their way through their interest areas doesn't get anywhere near the weight of somebody with a degree that's composed of many fewer study hours, but the degree holding person will likely get the hiring advantage.
12y ago

leorocky 12y ago

The title is misspelled, it's "fulfill" but it's wrong on the original post too.

chime 12y ago
It's the correct British spelling - http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/fulfil?q=fulfil http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/fulfil?... The author lives in Netherlands so he uses the UK spelling 'fulfil' instead of US 'fulfill'.
aninhumer 12y ago
Both are valid. "fulfil" is the UK spelling: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fulfil http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fulfil
dang 12y ago
As a long, sad trail of people have learned the hard way: never slight British spelling on HN. :)

bindley 12y ago

As things constantly change, especially in post secondary education, I think it's important to look at the landscape objectively. If you know what direction your want to take your life and career, a university isn't always the right answer, and it shouldn't be the default.

DanielBMarkham 12y ago

I'm going to upvote this, but it was a muddled bit of rambling. In parts I could almost feel the author pull his punches in a sad effort to try to make as many people happy as possible. The key problem is this: whatever a university is, it's too expensive for the ability of the average student to pay back. That means it's a bad deal for both the student and society. Paying for more of it is just going to continue the spiral. I have a different question. We know that training for future jobs is a requirement of some post-secondary institution. That's just a given for many fields with the complexities of modern life. So what about a good, solid, liberal arts education? The one thing that universities were supposed to be masters of for centuries? The one thing that allows each of us to participate in and enjoy life to its fullest? Where does society go for that? We can't go to the universities, because we'll end up in a long, pointless argument about what the purpose of universities are. And, frankly, there's a lot of jumping on the bandwagon going on at most institutions, just google silly college courses. Can we offload that to local tutors? Teach online? Is there some delivery mechanism for a liberal arts background that we haven't considered yet?

notahacker 12y ago
>So what about a good, solid, liberal arts education? The one thing that universities were supposed to be masters of for centuries? The one thing that allows each of us to participate in and enjoy life to its fullest? Where does society go for that? Europe. Reduce your university fees by an order of magnitude or two, study for longer with less emphasis on grades, and enjoy a bit of culture on the side. I'm only half-joking.
pekk 12y ago
> So what about a good, solid, liberal arts education? The one thing that universities were supposed to be masters of for centuries? The one thing that allows each of us to participate in and enjoy life to its fullest? Where does society go for that? Any liberal arts college?
analog31 12y ago
>>> Is there some delivery mechanism for a liberal arts background that we haven't considered yet? The printing press? I don't mean to be snarky, but it does occur to me that the heyday of the liberal arts education was also a time when traveling to the university was necessary in order to have physical access to the sources of knowledge.

doc_holliday 12y ago

Basically > 90% of my year at school in the UK went on to university. A lot of these people IMO were never really of the inquisitive mind or drive that I thought would be the type to go to university. However for one reason or another it was pushed by my school that pretty much everyone in the final year should go to uni. Most were of middle class and I think, at least within the UK, it is the done thing to do if you are middle class or above to go on to uni. We don't really encourage or present alternatives. My own experience with university has been a mixed bag. I've loved the lecturers who have challenged my ideas and not just presented solutions. However others I feel encouraged wrote learning through the way they presented courses and a lot of exams are question guessing to gear up to pass. However on the whole I think I have come out of it with more logical basis and reasoning for things, it's definitely been at least beneficial intellectually and I love that. I think that part is wasted on quite a lot of people though who go to uni merely as the done thing.

Tycho 12y ago

This was my impression of undergraduate university: cognitive dissonance. Why? a) why do we have this ridiculously inefficient model of pedagogy, and b) why are all these people here who don't express/display any real interest in their subject. You have been through primary and secondary school, where the function is pretty clear: you are children, so you need to be somewhere supervised by adults; you need to learn to socialise with other children; and you need to learn basic skills like arithmetic, reading, composing essays, studying, punctuality. Then you go off to university which doesn't seem to make any sense. I think it depends on your course - it will be much better if you already have a strong, realistic idea of what you want your career to be, and find yourself among like-minded students.

dnautics 12y ago

In short, any student who emerges from university with good critical thinking skills has achieved that by accident, not by the university's design. I would also argue that the courses that come closest to achieving the ideal are history, English, and philosophy. How about abstract mathematics? I would argue that these days those might be the only courses where you learn those skills.

pjmorris 12y ago
I suspect the author would argue that training in abstract mathematics is comparable to the other sciences in the sense of 'data analysis within a framework', subject to the problem of under-training in the ability to recognize the limitations of the framework. I suspect s/he chose History, English and Philosophy because they are fuzzier than the sciences, including mathematics, and so they require understanding how to choose - or define - a set ground rules to apply in a given situation.
- tikhonj 12y ago
  > understanding how to choose - or define - a set ground rules to apply in a given situation. Which, of course, perfectly describes abstract mathematics... just not the sort that non-majors ever get to. Many of the interesting parts of mathematics (and, I should add, computer science!) are all about coming up with the mental framework and abstractions needed to look at a problem, give you a new perspective and ultimately come up with a solution. Choosing or coming up with the logic to treat a situation is exactly what you'd be doing. It's also particularly good at illuminating the underlying structure of different domains and giving you tools to recognize similarities between them that may not be readily apparent. This goes well beyond what most non-mathematicians regard as "mathematically accessible": just look at all the various modal logics[1] both for the breadth of their applications (belief, knowledge, time...) and their internal similarities. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_logic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_logic Moreover, I would argue that mathematics goes further than most fields in talking about and working with its own limitations. Metamathematics and logic as fields are all about this—with greater clarity than the fuzzier subjects, in the usual mathematical style. Mathematics is also great for consistently and rationally accounting for uncertainty and limitations of other systems, fundamental to probability and any sane treatment of risk. Mathematics, as practiced by mathematicians, also teaches another really important idea: having different levels of rigor, as appropriate. Often, an argument only needs to be convincing, and many of the important details can be left out. However, in math, this is always done with the understanding that those details can be filled in, and the understanding that you should be able to fill them in given enough time. I figure the focus on clarity, thorough introspection and different levels of rigor, abstractions and logic all make mathematics qua mathematics one of the ultimate "humanities". The problem is that classes for non-majors (and, perhaps, many undergraduate classes for majors) often don't teach mathematics for itself; instead, they teach mathematics as a tool for engineering or solving specific problems or getting a specific result. And that, certainly, could be fairly described as "data analysis within a framework". But mathematics in general? Much deeper!

analog31 12y ago

Speaking as a parent of kids who are headed towards being college age, you can imagine that I've got mixed thoughts about college education. It's going to be expensive. An outcome is not guaranteed. There are a lot of problems with higher education. On the other hand, there's an anti-college "movement" that itself could just be a fad, or even fueled by a political "wing" that has always relentlessly attacked public education and higher education. The skill area that's often mentioned as accommodating of people with alternative training (Internet programming) may very well be a major bubble right now. Edit: Removed gratuitous snark. So while I'm willing to give lip service to experiments in alternative education for 18-22 year olds, I'll probably hedge my bets and advise my own kids to attend college while offering them a dose of realism about what they're getting into.

nether 12y ago

One approach I've heard is to create more "engineering technology" degrees with a focus on practical, industry engineering. These would lack the coverage of theory of traditional degrees but would be cheaper and better suited for engineering in the real world. The purpose of traditional engineering degrees would be to prepare future professors and researchers to advance fundamental theory.

slavik81 12y ago
How would those be different from existing engineering technologist degrees? They sound the same.

unclebucknasty 12y ago

It's always seemed odd to me that we send kids through 12 or 13 years of school, then say that it's university where they're expected to get their critical thinking skills, exposure to new ideas, and other "mind-expanding" experiences. It's kind of silly, really. For one, it seems an awful waste to not take advantage of 12 or 13 years of opportunity to expose kids to these elements. Secondly, compressing such important experiences into only 4 years seems insufficient, especially given that they are supposed to also be preparing for a vocation during this time and not just "mind expansion". Finally, it's a very expensive time in a kid's educational career. Why wait until then to impart these "soft skills"? Economically (i.e. from an "ROI" perspective), it makes more sense for such an expensive education to focus solely on the skills that would make them viable in the labor market.

TheSpiceIsLife 12y ago
I'm all in with this. Is there something about year 9-12 students that makes them unable to understand university level education? I left school in after year 10 because I was having a terrible time of it and went back to studying when I was 23, but there were plenty of other students who were doing really well, or well enough, to go way beyond the meagre intellectual offerings of high school.

SushiMon 12y ago

The timing of this post is impeccable. A very exhaustive new study came out showing that the value of a college degree is higher than ever. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/upshot/is-college-worth-it-clearly-new-data-say.html?action=click&contentCollection=N.Y.%20%2F%20Region&module=MostEmailed&version=Full&region=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/upshot/is-college-worth-it... Basically, you go to college in America or you risk being poor for the rest of the your life. Sure, some coders / entrepreneurs can do it without college. And maybe college is the selection process for these success traits. But with this size of differential on a very large sample size, I think its pretty hard to say, at least in earnings power, universities are not fulfilling the myth.

VLM 12y ago
On a stats blog I just saw that article cited as a classic example of mean vs median propaganda. The average is ridiculously high because a very small percentage of people get most of the income in our society, and all of them do higher ed and send their kids to higher ed. So all the Doctors, lawyers, MBA exec types, pro (post college) athletes, engineers... WRT the median, its a lottery ticket purchase. It turns out that the lifetime financial value of a PHD Divinity degree is negative in the pool of potential seminary students, and its not a terribly high number for most students in general. If you (or your parents) win the lottery ticket of life, you probably went to university, but the vast majority of people not only aren't going to win, but are going to take on enormous debt. This is probably not a wise long term societal policy. The point is there exists a pro football player who earned $100M thus the average "value of a degree" for him and 99 philosophy grads is $1M on average, but that doesn't mean a philosophy degree is automatically a ticket to unlock uncountable piles of gold coins. It merely means rich people (and this is almost certainly not going to be you) did get a degree. Necessary but not sufficient.

guard-of-terra 12y ago

It is interesting that continental european higher education IS mostly vocational schools. You go there to earn a grade in specific skillset. I imagine this is most pronounced in central and eastern europe (including of course Germany). Yet somehow US and UK universities seem to beat continental schools by most metrics and ratings. They don't set on teaching skills and science but that they also do successfully.

colemorrison 12y ago

People that go to college likely put more value on their degree to in order to defend the fact that they haven't wasted their time. People that didn't go to college likely put more value on not going to college in order to defend the fact that they don't have a degree. Anecdotal of course. But college will increase your chances of success due to the connections you make. It will not, however, by any chance in freezing hell, guarantee it.

graycat 12y ago

While his history of higher education in old England is interesting, my view of current college education in the US is quite different from his: In short, my view, from my experience as a student, is that the best teacher is essentially always the best researcher. Why? Because he (she) knows the most about the subject, thus, has the best judgment about what's important in the subject, has the deepest and most mature view of the subject, likely knows where the subject is headed for the next 5-10 years, and is likely one of the brightest and hardest working guys around. For his ability at 'teaching', I learned not to care: It's just not very important for the learning. That is, I didn't really need the polished, practiced, proven, trained, highly developed 'pedagogical techniques'; instead, what the best researcher brings is much more important and, really, enough for 'pedagogy'. Sorry 'bout that. Next, the universities are the source of crucial parts of essentially all important research in our civilization, and research has a long history, back at least to Newton, of being by a wide margin the most valuable activity for civilization, the economy, standards of living, return on investment, etc. So, for anyone who wants to learn, apply, or add to such research, start at a good college and get for teachers the best researchers can get. I've seen 'teachers' who were good with pedagogy, and I've seen good researchers; the mere teachers far too often just didn't know the subject well enough, and hands down the researchers were the much better deal. Or, it's (A) high quality pedagogy of low quality content or (B) high quality content from someone who really understands the subject and is a good teacher because of that understanding; I've seen both, and I'll take (B) any time. Or, to heck with the pedagogy; instead, I'll just study some of the best texts and papers; in that, a good researcher can help me pick the texts and papers and help me find the most important points, and a mere teacher just can't, especially for material close to the leading edge of research.