8 ms·

Our Universities: The Outrageous Reality

87 points by g8oz 11y ago

akrolsmir 11y ago
I wonder if there'd be room for a true alternative to an elite college. I've always felt that the value of such institutions was that it is the premier place to meet and befriend other smart students, not in the facilities or instructors who make up the bulk of the cost. Imagine: thousands of applicants from around the world vie for a spot in Nollege, a new kind of edtech startup. Admitted students are flown to the "campus", an exotic site, rotating yearly and chosen for its cheap room and board. Instruction that can be automated a la Khan Academy, is; more experienced students also tutor newcomers as needed. Students spend half their time on work-study/internship programs, which cover all costs of attendance. They're encouraged to leave whenever they feel ready, be it one semester or 10; no arbitrary rules about which courses to take. When they do, they emerge with the same bonds of friendship and learned knowledge as their college-attending peers, but are years ahead in working experience and also debt free. Perhaps this would be most feasible for cs, where the only materials needed are a laptop and WiFi, but I could see it working for English, art, mathematics, and many other disciplines.
- npkarnik 11y ago
  There are probably more efficient ways to build useful skills and learn material than paying for an elite education. Prestige is much harder to manufacture. YC is 10 years old (i think?) and has managed to do this, impressively.
  - akrolsmir 11y ago
    It seems to me that prestige is a combination of fame and selectivity; a school is prestigious if everyone has heard of it, but few get in. A long history is certainly helpful (a ranking of UC schools by age would probably correspond to a ranking by prestige), but I think that a genuinely good product and clever marketing should be able to bridge the gap.
    - aswanson 11y ago
      prestige is a combination of fame and selectivity I recall a debate on the value of college( Peter Thiel vs some college admins) and Thiel asking his opponent (a university administrator) if Harvard is providing such a great value to the world why are they making it so hard to obtain for people? Good question.
      - majormajor 11y ago
        Wouldn't the answer be the same reason not everyone is accepted into YC, or why Thiel doesn't personally fund everyone under the sun?
        aswanson 11y ago
        No.
        thaumasiotes 11y ago
        Nobody is pretending that receiving money from Peter Thiel makes you better at whatever it is you do. But a lot of people, such as Harvard admissions, do pretend that attending Harvard has such benefits. In contrast, no one at Harvard is pretending that they couldn't afford to enroll ten times as many students. Put another way, Thiel fundamentally doesn't fund most people because most people are bad investments. Harvard admissions isn't claiming that it won't admit you because you're a bad investment and would devalue their brand. They're claiming that, if you were admitted, the experience of attending Harvard would increase your personal quality, but they nevertheless won't admit you for undisclosed reasons.
- noondip 11y ago
  I'm onboard with your utopian ideas, especially enabling students to be apprenticed to a future employer. A lot of what you describe is already being done at The Recurse Center (https://www.recurse.com/ https://www.recurse.com/, formerly Hacker School).
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  That sounds like a wonderful job-training program, if very exploitative since it treats "students" as explicit work-doing profit centers but markets itself as educational rather than an apprenticeship. Problem is, that's not actually giving a university-level education in the core academic material of a real field. You're not going to learn abstract algebra from an employer!
- cbd1984 11y ago
  That's a more high-flown version of what used to be called a "Java school": Pure job training, no theory, no concept of advancing the field. Also no concept of teaching people things which will be useful when the specific skills they learned are out of date, let alone skills which might transfer to other fields or have a non-obvious application in the CS field. English (as in "analysis of texts") comes to mind. I'm not opposed to such schools, I just think they should advertise themselves honestly, and not try to compete with four-year schools for the same reason McDonald's doesn't try to compete with a steak house.
- mjklin 11y ago
  What you're describing sounds a lot like Antioch College used to be (not sure if it still is). They had requirements for students to spend semesters on work experience, while campus life was pretty loose. They closed for a few years but then reopened... Not sure how they are now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antioch_College https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antioch_College
apsec112 11y ago
I find it amazing that someone can write so much about the cost of college, and yet treat tuition bills as if they were handed down on stone tablets at Mt. Sinai, rather than something colleges themselves might have any responsibility for. Colleges have become giant money-sucking machines, similar to Scientology. In fact, they're so similar that I made a handy comparison chart (http://rationalconspiracy.com/2015/06/15/universities-vs-scientology/ http://rationalconspiracy.com/2015/06/15/universities-vs-sci...). The author here insinuates that the increased cost comes from paying for teaching and research. But this is wrong for at least five reasons: 1. Research is not a cost center for colleges. It is a profit center. Usually, research is not funded by the college itself; rather, professors get grants from outside agencies, which the college then takes a large, juicy cut of for itself. (Ask any professor.) 2. At most colleges, the number of faculty members per student has remained stagnant for the last thirty years. The author waves their hands about "new areas of knowledge", but these new areas aren't leading to more hiring. 3. Wages for tenured faculty have also remained stagnant, adjusted for inflation. 4. Colleges are rapidly replacing their tenured faculty with adjuncts, who are given heavy courseloads, and paid peanuts even compared to tenured faculty (barely minimum wage, in a lot of cases). 5. Most of the actual work of research and teaching is done by grad students, of whom there are far more than tenured faculty. Grad students are, again, a profit center rather than a cost center, since the university gets to charge them "tuition" (despite most of them taking few or no classes). This "tuition" is either paid by an outside research agency, or "generously" waived in exchange for the grad student doing teaching and grading, again at very low wages.
- drjesusphd 11y ago
  So who is getting all that money?
  - guelo 11y ago
    I find that a lot of budget arguments in general, not just of Universities but all kinds of government and private institutions, suffer badly from the lack of having two budgets to compare side by side. Say a budget from 1990 and a budget from today, side by side line by line. But clean data is almost impossible to come by. So people just argue in ideological generalities. Which is absurd when it's a numbers question. Can we see the numbers please? No.
DiaaAttia 11y ago
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DiaaAttia 11y ago
Hello, if you are a native speaker, whatever your language is, you can earn extra money while working part-time from home as a personal tutor through http://preply.com/en http://preply.com/en

87 points by g8oz 11y ago

I wonder if there'd be room for a true alternative to an elite college. I've always felt that the value of such institutions was that it is the premier place to meet and befriend other smart students, not in the facilities or instructors who make up the bulk of the cost. Imagine: thousands of applicants from around the world vie for a spot in Nollege, a new kind of edtech startup. Admitted students are flown to the "campus", an exotic site, rotating yearly and chosen for its cheap room and board. Instruction that can be automated a la Khan Academy, is; more experienced students also tutor newcomers as needed. Students spend half their time on work-study/internship programs, which cover all costs of attendance. They're encouraged to leave whenever they feel ready, be it one semester or 10; no arbitrary rules about which courses to take. When they do, they emerge with the same bonds of friendship and learned knowledge as their college-attending peers, but are years ahead in working experience and also debt free. Perhaps this would be most feasible for cs, where the only materials needed are a laptop and WiFi, but I could see it working for English, art, mathematics, and many other disciplines.

npkarnik 11y ago
There are probably more efficient ways to build useful skills and learn material than paying for an elite education. Prestige is much harder to manufacture. YC is 10 years old (i think?) and has managed to do this, impressively.
- akrolsmir 11y ago
  It seems to me that prestige is a combination of fame and selectivity; a school is prestigious if everyone has heard of it, but few get in. A long history is certainly helpful (a ranking of UC schools by age would probably correspond to a ranking by prestige), but I think that a genuinely good product and clever marketing should be able to bridge the gap.
  - aswanson 11y ago
    prestige is a combination of fame and selectivity I recall a debate on the value of college( Peter Thiel vs some college admins) and Thiel asking his opponent (a university administrator) if Harvard is providing such a great value to the world why are they making it so hard to obtain for people? Good question.
    - majormajor 11y ago
      Wouldn't the answer be the same reason not everyone is accepted into YC, or why Thiel doesn't personally fund everyone under the sun?
      - aswanson 11y ago
        No.
      - thaumasiotes 11y ago
        Nobody is pretending that receiving money from Peter Thiel makes you better at whatever it is you do. But a lot of people, such as Harvard admissions, do pretend that attending Harvard has such benefits. In contrast, no one at Harvard is pretending that they couldn't afford to enroll ten times as many students. Put another way, Thiel fundamentally doesn't fund most people because most people are bad investments. Harvard admissions isn't claiming that it won't admit you because you're a bad investment and would devalue their brand. They're claiming that, if you were admitted, the experience of attending Harvard would increase your personal quality, but they nevertheless won't admit you for undisclosed reasons.
noondip 11y ago
I'm onboard with your utopian ideas, especially enabling students to be apprenticed to a future employer. A lot of what you describe is already being done at The Recurse Center (https://www.recurse.com/ https://www.recurse.com/, formerly Hacker School).
eli_gottlieb 11y ago
That sounds like a wonderful job-training program, if very exploitative since it treats "students" as explicit work-doing profit centers but markets itself as educational rather than an apprenticeship. Problem is, that's not actually giving a university-level education in the core academic material of a real field. You're not going to learn abstract algebra from an employer!
cbd1984 11y ago
That's a more high-flown version of what used to be called a "Java school": Pure job training, no theory, no concept of advancing the field. Also no concept of teaching people things which will be useful when the specific skills they learned are out of date, let alone skills which might transfer to other fields or have a non-obvious application in the CS field. English (as in "analysis of texts") comes to mind. I'm not opposed to such schools, I just think they should advertise themselves honestly, and not try to compete with four-year schools for the same reason McDonald's doesn't try to compete with a steak house.
mjklin 11y ago
What you're describing sounds a lot like Antioch College used to be (not sure if it still is). They had requirements for students to spend semesters on work experience, while campus life was pretty loose. They closed for a few years but then reopened... Not sure how they are now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antioch_College https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antioch_College

apsec112 11y ago

I find it amazing that someone can write so much about the cost of college, and yet treat tuition bills as if they were handed down on stone tablets at Mt. Sinai, rather than something colleges themselves might have any responsibility for. Colleges have become giant money-sucking machines, similar to Scientology. In fact, they're so similar that I made a handy comparison chart (http://rationalconspiracy.com/2015/06/15/universities-vs-scientology/ http://rationalconspiracy.com/2015/06/15/universities-vs-sci...). The author here insinuates that the increased cost comes from paying for teaching and research. But this is wrong for at least five reasons: 1. Research is not a cost center for colleges. It is a profit center. Usually, research is not funded by the college itself; rather, professors get grants from outside agencies, which the college then takes a large, juicy cut of for itself. (Ask any professor.) 2. At most colleges, the number of faculty members per student has remained stagnant for the last thirty years. The author waves their hands about "new areas of knowledge", but these new areas aren't leading to more hiring. 3. Wages for tenured faculty have also remained stagnant, adjusted for inflation. 4. Colleges are rapidly replacing their tenured faculty with adjuncts, who are given heavy courseloads, and paid peanuts even compared to tenured faculty (barely minimum wage, in a lot of cases). 5. Most of the actual work of research and teaching is done by grad students, of whom there are far more than tenured faculty. Grad students are, again, a profit center rather than a cost center, since the university gets to charge them "tuition" (despite most of them taking few or no classes). This "tuition" is either paid by an outside research agency, or "generously" waived in exchange for the grad student doing teaching and grading, again at very low wages.

drjesusphd 11y ago
So who is getting all that money?
- guelo 11y ago
  I find that a lot of budget arguments in general, not just of Universities but all kinds of government and private institutions, suffer badly from the lack of having two budgets to compare side by side. Say a budget from 1990 and a budget from today, side by side line by line. But clean data is almost impossible to come by. So people just argue in ideological generalities. Which is absurd when it's a numbers question. Can we see the numbers please? No.

DiaaAttia 11y ago

Hello, if you are a native speaker, whatever your language is, you can earn extra money while working part-time from home as a personal tutor through http://preply.com/en http://preply.com/en

DiaaAttia 11y ago

Hello, if you are a native speaker, whatever your language is, you can earn extra money while working part-time from home as a personal tutor through http://preply.com/en http://preply.com/en