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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

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

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