4 ms·

Heh, I'm a computer science major to my core. Spoken like a CS major at a liberal arts school, I suppose. I suspect we agree. If you could universally define "

by benesch 12y ago

Heh, I'm a computer science major to my core. Spoken like a CS major at a liberal arts school, I suppose. I suspect we agree. If you could universally define "better life," you could quantify it. But you can't. We're also bad--really bad--at analyzing ourselves. Right now, I'd love to be spending 60 hrs/week programming and less time writing papers. But I bet I'll feel differently in a decade. > And no. College is not optimizing its graduates for a better life. College, since its inception, has assumed that you came in with one. I'm not sure what you mean. Higher education has become increasingly accessible to the economically disadvantaged, not less. Also, here's Harvard College's mission statement: > Harvard College adheres to the purposes for which the Charter of 1650 was granted: “The advancement of all good literature, arts, and sciences; the advancement and education of youth in all manner of good literature, arts, and sciences; and all other necessary provisions that may conduce to the education of the … youth of this country….” In brief: Harvard strives to create knowledge, to open the minds of students to that knowledge, and to enable students to take best advantage of their educational opportunities. To these ends, the College encourages students to respect ideas and their free expression, and to rejoice in discovery and in critical thought; to pursue excellence in a spirit of productive cooperation; and to assume responsibility for the consequences of personal actions. Harvard seeks to identify and to remove restraints on students’ full participation, so that individuals may explore their capabilities and interests and may develop their full intellectual and human potential. Education at Harvard should liberate students to explore, to create, to challenge, and to lead. The support the College provides to students is a foundation upon which self-reliance and habits of lifelong learning are built: Harvard expects that the scholarship and collegiality it fosters in its students will lead them in their later lives to advance knowledge, to promote understanding, and to serve society. That's pretty damn well summarized as "we empower our students to lead better lives." We can argue over whether college comes close to achieving that goal, but I'm comforted by the fact that the stated mission at least aligns with my personal reasons for attending school.

sophacles 12y ago
Tangential, but I wanted to respond to this part of your statement: Right now, I'd love to be spending 60 hrs/week programming and less time writing papers. But I bet I'll feel differently in a decade. I found that writing in college, for classes, was not fun. It was boring, there was a lot of "write about this thing" that I really didn't know all that well. Further the topics weren't something that interested me deeply. Even worse, on the rare occasions that I did get to choose really interesting topics, the situation was depressing, I just didn't know enough to be able to make a good argument, didn't have enough perspective to understand how to find the structure of the problem and argument, and didn't really nave the background to position my statements. It was an exercise in just noting what other sources said, and putting lots of footnotes - extremely dry crap. However, 5-6 years after college, I found myself working with a research group at a university (as a staff support programmer), and I did get to spend all my time figuring things out, coding and generally doing cool stuff (basically your 60hrs/week programming). When the time came to make a final report on my first research project, and write up an academic paper about it, was annoyed at having to do another paper. It turned out that academic papers tend to have page counts too, and I'd need to be even more careful about footnoting ideas etc. Something surprising happened with that though - the page count turned out to be a big problem, but in a completely unexpected way: I had to cut and rewrite several times, just to make solid statement and argument small enough to fit in 8 pages! Amazingly I had gone from "how do I fill 8 pages?" to "crap, I only have 8 pages to say this!". I think the big difference was the depth of knowledge I had, combined with my genuine interest to describe work I found interesting and satisfying. The college writing course taught me how to footnote, how to present an argument, how to build a reasonable conclusion, but had missed the part about writing being fun when one knows the material well. I went on to also enjoy some other types of writing - grants (convincing someone you have a good idea and getting them to fund it) and position papers (aka white papers, on ideas that our group thought would be good directions for further research. I'm mentioning this because even if you don't like the writing now, I'd suggest not letting it poison your future views of it - the experience can be rewarding under the right circumstances. Hopefully it will inspire you a bit to get through your current papers a bit easier :)
saraid216 12y ago
> Higher education has become increasingly accessible to the economically disadvantaged, not less. The FAFSA is not a college-led program. Colleges have had to adapt to it and other grants and loans, but the accessibility is not at all what college has been optimizing for. Indeed, the question of optimization you posed was not about accessibility, either. It was about outcome. Read up on the Occupy protests if you haven't heard about them; the one in Hong Kong only just dispersed.

by benesch 12y ago

sophacles 12y ago

Tangential, but I wanted to respond to this part of your statement: Right now, I'd love to be spending 60 hrs/week programming and less time writing papers. But I bet I'll feel differently in a decade. I found that writing in college, for classes, was not fun. It was boring, there was a lot of "write about this thing" that I really didn't know all that well. Further the topics weren't something that interested me deeply. Even worse, on the rare occasions that I did get to choose really interesting topics, the situation was depressing, I just didn't know enough to be able to make a good argument, didn't have enough perspective to understand how to find the structure of the problem and argument, and didn't really nave the background to position my statements. It was an exercise in just noting what other sources said, and putting lots of footnotes - extremely dry crap. However, 5-6 years after college, I found myself working with a research group at a university (as a staff support programmer), and I did get to spend all my time figuring things out, coding and generally doing cool stuff (basically your 60hrs/week programming). When the time came to make a final report on my first research project, and write up an academic paper about it, was annoyed at having to do another paper. It turned out that academic papers tend to have page counts too, and I'd need to be even more careful about footnoting ideas etc. Something surprising happened with that though - the page count turned out to be a big problem, but in a completely unexpected way: I had to cut and rewrite several times, just to make solid statement and argument small enough to fit in 8 pages! Amazingly I had gone from "how do I fill 8 pages?" to "crap, I only have 8 pages to say this!". I think the big difference was the depth of knowledge I had, combined with my genuine interest to describe work I found interesting and satisfying. The college writing course taught me how to footnote, how to present an argument, how to build a reasonable conclusion, but had missed the part about writing being fun when one knows the material well. I went on to also enjoy some other types of writing - grants (convincing someone you have a good idea and getting them to fund it) and position papers (aka white papers, on ideas that our group thought would be good directions for further research. I'm mentioning this because even if you don't like the writing now, I'd suggest not letting it poison your future views of it - the experience can be rewarding under the right circumstances. Hopefully it will inspire you a bit to get through your current papers a bit easier :)

saraid216 12y ago

> Higher education has become increasingly accessible to the economically disadvantaged, not less. The FAFSA is not a college-led program. Colleges have had to adapt to it and other grants and loans, but the accessibility is not at all what college has been optimizing for. Indeed, the question of optimization you posed was not about accessibility, either. It was about outcome. Read up on the Occupy protests if you haven't heard about them; the one in Hong Kong only just dispersed.