

Venture Capital's Massive, Terrible Idea For The Future Of College - ctoth
http://www.theawl.com/2013/01/venture-capitals-massive-terrible-idea-for-the-future-of-college?src=longreads

======
jval
I disagree with the whole idea that lower quality is such an awful thing. I
feel like the entire article is written through a well-educated American lens
that doesn't understand why this is so revolutionary.

This has nothing to do with people who are already in universities, it has to
do with all the other intelligent people, all around the world who have never
had the benefit of a high quality education. And I suppose, the people in
America who never had that opportunity either. To deny them that and force
them to wait for some sort of 'high quality' education to come their way is
ludicrous.

These sites aren't perfect but they will get better and nobody is arguing that
they are amazing or that one day they will come to replace the experience of
being on campus, but they are a great substitute for people who can't afford
that.

Smartphones aren't exactly a replacement for mainframe computers but they're
doing a great job at bringing computing to a huge number of people who are
using it as a gateway to the web and all that offers. I think that's a good
thing.

~~~
slykat
It's not even about being "lower quality". It's about building another medium
for learning outside of highly expensive brick and mortar institutions.

I'm a huge fan of MOOCs. It makes no sense that everyone in America should
aspire to getting a 120K bachelor's degree - a university education isn't
meant for every career or person or life stage. I think we have this false
belief that every American should aspire to getting a university education
when in reality, the ROI of a university education is not always net positive.
I've seen so many colleagues struggle with huge debt from graduate programs
that did did nothing for their career prospects.

And it's not even that - learning shouldn't start or stop at a certain age.
For example, I'm in my late 20s and wanted to learn how to build web apps. I
like learning in structured environment, so Udacity worked perfectly for me.
In 3 months I took an intro Python course and then a web app course led by a
Reddit co-founder.

Would I have learned better through an undergrad university course? Maybe.
Could I? It'd be pretty much unfeasible, given I was working 50+ hours for a
tech firm and commuting between SF and South Bay at the time.

Anything that helps people learn is a good thing.

~~~
krickle
Yes. I took some Coursera classes and it was better than reading the relevant
Wikipedia articles in terms of how much I learned and retained. Net win for
education IMO.

------
marknutter
This is an attack piece, and a bad one at that. It's the same, weak attack
anti-MOOC people always make which involves a few anecdotal smears on a few of
Salman Khan's lectures, a completely false claim that MOOCs are trying to do
no more than drive empty facts into students' heads, and an anecdotal filled,
rose-tinted, hand-waving defense of the value of a traditional college
education. I hear the same weak arguments raised against remote working.
People love to extol the virtues of face-to-face communication and intangible
experiences, all in the defense of stale traditions and broken, out of date
models, but they rarely have any practical solutions for bringing education to
the masses that doesn't involve spending an ever increasing amount of money.

We live in a time where information is more abundant and accessible than ever,
yet the old guard are doing everything they can to keep it locked up in ivory
towers to be doled out bit by bit, in person, for a hefty fee, to anyone
willing to rack up tens of thousands of dollars of debt. After all, that money
is the only thing keeping the old guard afloat. It's always fascinating to
hear the swan song disrupted industries. First they laugh at you. Then they
attack you. Then, they fade away.

~~~
aphyr
Mass distribution of learning material has been around for a few centuries and
has yet to replace the process of _guided learning_. The problem is simple:
while it's possible to amass facts and skills from reading and listening, it's
much more difficult to produce complex works of value without feedback on the
process.

Doing mathematics isn't just applying rules and techniques. It's about knowing
how to reason, and writing a proof in a way which communicates your reasoning
clearly to others. You can get started by following along with proofs from a
lecture, but in order to really ingrain the techniques in your brain, you have
to write proofs of things you've never encountered before. Someone has to
_read_ those proofs, and give feedback on where your reasoning was unclear,
incomplete, or flawed. They can suggest a different notation, or a shorter
path to the same solution. Good teachers will leave notes: "this is a cool
idea you've developed here, and it points towards this area of complex
analysis we haven't talked about yet."

In psychology it's not enough to memorize a summary text and a smattering of
papers. You need to be asked questions. "There's a critical flaw in this
paper's sampling methodology. Can you find it? How would you improve it?"
"What kind of systematic bias can we expect in these results?" If nobody asks
those questions, and helps you hone in on the answers, you'll miss out on half
the text. You'll be unprepared to evaluate the quality of others research--or
to design experiments of your own.

This process can't be automated yet. Human beings have to read and respond to
your work, preferably at interactive latencies.

~~~
marknutter
There absolutely can be a feedback loop. Look no further than the many self
taught programmers that frequent HN. Effective learning can and does happen
without high paid PHD level professors, large marble floored auditoriums, and
football stadiums.

~~~
CJefferson
This is nothing new, through history there has been a large range of people
who have self taught from books. However, and I agree with the basic point,
many people have failed to self-educate through books, and it is not clear to
me these people will suddenly do much better with MOOC.

~~~
marknutter
MOOCs are much more directed than just picking up a book.

------
duaneb
I really don't get things like Coursera et. al. Textbooks have been available
for purchase far before the modern university existed, but the only thing
stopping people from teaching themselves and making a career out of it is the
degree. I would far prefer a site that just made certifying knowledge of a
given subject easier, replacing the BA, so you can cover e.g. Multivariable
Calculus over three weeks instead of three months. As it stands, these online
"schools" don't offer anything that you couldn't get before, and in fact are
perhaps worse because they offer the illusion of having proof of knowledge
(when people would be far better served just proving that they know something
outright with personal projects).

Furthermore, there are vast areas of education that require small
student:teacher ratios, if only for grading papers. Peer reviews can only go
so far, and they are really only good for the center two quartiles of the
class: who the hell grades the top person? How does she improve? And don't
even mention the performance and studio arts.

I think we (and the founders of these places) have a somewhat warped
perception of how effective these courses are because our subject areas (math-
heavy) are extremely easy to test and quantify progress, but the other
subjects are just as critical to society's well-being.

And let's not forget the other side of school: learning work ethic, forging an
identity, and how to function in society. Physical colleges are worth far more
than the sum of their parts (though probably not what they are charging).

I would love to be proven wrong!

EDIT: I think we would get a much, much, much larger return on the investment
by improving the quality of our community colleges, reducing the stigma of
attending them & other state schools, and encouraging more people to attend
vocational schools instead of a degree that won't get them a job.

~~~
redschell
I agree with some parts of your post, such as the challenges of evaluating
students in more qualitative disciplines through a virtual medium, and
disagree with others, such as the notion that the college experience, if I'm
reading this right, is the optimal way to forge an identity, function in
society etc. etc.

But I think the edit is the most important point here. I really think
community colleges, vocational training, and a focus on helping young people
evaluate their ambitions in life should be a goal of our society in the coming
years. Too many people clog up universities studying things like business and
psychology because they've been told it's "the next step."

I believe most people would be happier and less indebted if they were given a
cheaper, and arguably more valuable vocational education, job training, and a
career, which would enable them to buy stuff, raise children, and stay out of
debt, which is enough for a lot of people to be happy.

Furthermore, I think this would spell the end for a lot of colleges and
universities I feel serve no purpose except to employ educators and swindle
students. I mean, do we really need UC Merced and Cal State Stanislaus? What
do these institutions accomplish? I'm sorry if this is an offensive or glib
point, I readily admit I'm a bit inebriated at the moment, but I'm just not
sure why we have these "in between" schools. Are these guys better off than
the people at the CCs? I just don't think so.

~~~
duaneb
> is the optimal way to forge an identity, function in society etc. etc.

Well, pretty close. I'm against saying one thing is optimal for everyone, but
I think that it is better for many people than going straight into the work
force. I'm 100% positive it could be replaced by something else, non-academic,
but I'm not sure what it is. The person who does is probably a genius.

------
te_chris
A very well reasoned piece. It reminds me of this piece from Hamilton Nolan:
[http://gawker.com/5968116/hubris-high-socks-and-other-
habits...](http://gawker.com/5968116/hubris-high-socks-and-other-habits-of-
the-most-powerful-people-in-the-world)

Personally I find the whole techno-libertarian/utopian side of valley culture
quite scary - I guess it's the part where some people decide they want to
"fix" everything, without really making any effort to understand what (if
anything) is broken to begin with.

~~~
tptacek
I'm skeeved out by technolibertarianism too, but I disagree that this is a
well-reasoned piece. It's a guilt- by- ideological- association hit piece that
at one point has its cake and smears it all over its own face by linking
Coursera/Udacity to Michelle Rhee and the scandals of low quality _classroom_
education. It's quick to toss in references to "Silicon Valley Venture
Capitalists" or throw Khan Academy under one or more imagined busses, but did
you notice that in its attempt at a takedown on an "overview of US history"
video at Khan, it didn't even ask the question of how coherently secondary
school courseware handled the same subject?

I feel like the reviews I've read from subject matter experts on Coursera
courses have been positive. I don't feel like individual problem courses on
Udacity damn the whole medium. I can understand how people who thoroughly
enjoyed their years at college would feel threatened by alternative paths to
the same goal, but it's the goal that matters, not the college life
experience.

~~~
spamizbad
> but did you notice that in its attempt at a takedown on an "overview of US
> history" video at Khan, it didn't even ask the question of how coherently
> secondary school courseware handled the same subject?

My theory: that would probably be an article unto itself. A good friend of
mine, who's a 7th grade social studies teacher, shares the author's disdain
for Khan's handling of history. He cited disjointed events, without any
explaination of how they were connected, stating it was very "this happened,
then this happened, then later THIS happened probably because of this which
happened between this and this..." -- no coherent historical narrative, and
ultimately more difficult to understand. It's easier to remember events when
you understand their causes and purpose, rather than just their place on a
timeline.

After watching Khan's Intro to CS videos, I'm inclined to trust my friend's
assessment.

As far as Rhee is concerned: The crux of the argument is, ambition non-
educators who try to "fix" education have a tendancy to make it worse. Rhee
and the VCs fall into the same category. It's also worth noting Education
reform movement has started to turn its sights on higher education as well- We
got a taste of that from Bill Gates, which his thoughts on college rankings
(Which probably need to be fixed, but not in the way Gates, and reformers, are
proposing).

~~~
scotty79
History is just facts. Narratives are usually made up by someone investigating
those facts. Narratives differ between historians depending on their
sympathies.

I think innovative education should stay away from history. Most of it is
history of politics. Only some percentage of it is actual knowledge and none
of it is of any use to almost anyone.

~~~
MrMan
You should elaborate on this idea. If we can understand better why the study
of history is largely useless, then we might be able to use that knowledge to
reason about why other subjects held dear by traditional academics are also
harmful. I think literature is even worse than history. What they are studying
are not even facts! Just make believe stories. There is no ROI on make believe
nonsense, right?

~~~
scotty79
I'm not saying that history is harmful, only that it's mostly useless. I have
nothing against literature. I like fiction and discussing fiction. I think
people educated in literature might contribute to culture by inventing
interesting stories themselves by reusing and remixing concepts found in
respected literature.

I don't really like the prominence given to history of politics as it's
currently taught because for me it's just uninteresting fiction that only
strong point is that something similar perhaps sort of happened.

------
droithomme
Most of the classes I've taken have been great. They are certainly comparable
to in-person college courses and have delivered incredible value to people
world wide at a very small cost per student.

It's all advantages with no disadvantages.

This disruptive model of course is an absolute terror to the large number of
poor teachers and colleges providing substandard classes while saddling their
students with debt.

It's no wonder that on a weekly and sometimes daily basis, a ridiculous and
contrived hit piece is published by those from the dinosaur set who are in the
process of being obsoleted because they can't keep up with progress and are
unwilling to retool.

------
rjempson
I did the original ai-class, plus a couple from coursera, and a couple from
udacity. I also have a bachelor's degree.

The quality of learning from these online courses totally trumped my in-person
degree. For me, the ability to rewind certain parts of the lectures over and
over was incredibly useful, and I was able to save time running certain parts
at 2-5x speed. The use of pop-up quizzes every 5 minutes really forced me to
learn the material. The fact that the content was produced for online
presentation made a big difference compared to simply recording a traditional
lecture.

------
bzalasky
Udacity and other online courses are great for people that already know how to
learn. These sorts of programs won't help people that don't know how to learn
on their own. However, I will say I can count the classes in college that
couldn't have been replicated in an online format on two hands. All of theses
classes still could have benefited from putting lectures online. The thing
that is lacking in online courses is in-depth, in-person discussion in
settings of about 30 people. Forums like this are great for teaching critical
thinking. My favorite class in college was an undergraduate anthropology class
that focused on a different topic each week. There were two different
perspectives (in journal articles) and you'd be assigned one to defend in the
next class. I think this kind of thing is hard to replicate in digital
settings. Thoughts?

~~~
marknutter
30 people is a completely arbitrary number, arrived at not because it was the
optimal class size, but because of resource constraints.

~~~
bzalasky
It's absolutely arbitrary, but it's a small enough number that everyone has a
chance to contribute to the discussion. With this particular class it had
nothing to do with resource constraints... maybe more to do with how many
students were interested. I didn't have a single anthropology class after 101
that had more than 35 people in it (and this was at a large state school).

------
christensen_emc
There are many problems with the current crop of MOOCs, I'll be the first to
admit that. In their current state they are not an alternative.

That said, the argument advanced against them in this article and numerous
times on this and other boards is elitist and out of touch. "These lectures do
not compare to the ones I sat in at UC Berkeley/Stanford/MIT! people watching
them are not getting a REAL education!" Not only is it a classic "no true
Scotsman", it also neglects to note that increasingly all large courses at
large state universities are adopting a model not unlike the MOOC model.
Lectures are increasingly posted online, and coursework is now almost always a
blackboard quiz. Projects are submitted online, no paper copies are ever even
created. Office hours are available, true, but often they are with a TA who is
only slightly more than a glorified Tutor. All of these are transparent time
and money saving moves on the part of the departments and professors.

Students rarely object as online classes give them more flexibility to work
(something rarely mentioned in these kind of articles). Everyone wins on one
level and loses on another. The quality of education drops as a consequence,
but we're talking second and third tier schools here so it doesn't exactly
make the news. All things considered, I might as well be taking MOOC at this
point. I personally prefer Coursera to blackboard. More variety and no nagging
advisors telling me I don't have the prereq. The tools and ui are better too!
And its free!

------
venomsnake
We live in a different world. Currently the most important things are the
ability to get, filter and process information and not the ability to store
it.

Most of the courses I have taken by coursera and edx were a blast. But I have
experience and good math background.

We as a society should refocus the primary education on "rapid obtainable
literacy" in any given topic. The student must be able to obtain the critical
mass of knowledge that will help him to navigate on its own in the MOOC, and
then we will be able to leverage the new educational startups.

------
ilaksh
There is no reason that you can't have a teacher lecture students over the
internet or lead a discussion over the internet, using voice, voice and audio,
or just chat. There is no reason why students can't do interactive labs with
help from teachers online.

So I think that in most cases, there really doesn't have to be any qualitative
difference between online and in person learning.

But there are lots of advantages, starting with the increased ability for
students to work at their own pace. And for computer assisted learning, i.e.
interactive learning activities on a computer, possibly graded automatically
by a computer. Also the ability to communicate online can be a big advantage
over having to physically walk to an office hours or library. And of course
the obvious one is the ease of distributing electronic textbooks and other
learning materials online. Or for example delivering a live or recorded
lecture online to an audience of 10,000 students from all over the world
rather than to an audience of 100 students at some expensive university.

This is just one of many areas were social institutions are lagging far behind
technological progress. The arguments against using technology are not
rationally motivated.

------
spikels
I regret wasting my time reading this long and rambling mess...

The author apparently didn't even bother to take a single MOOC class. Instead
only acknowledging watching 9 minutes of a single 18 minute video (the class
has 13 in total) for Kahn Acadamy's US History class. Strange considering we
are talking about college and this Kahn class targets middle or high school
students.

The author is also apparently unfamiliar with many of the basic features, such
as discussion forums, or major advantages, such as timing flexibility (learn
when you can for as long as you can) of MOOCs. Or that many of the students
are not even in the US.

However there is a link to an interesting blog post previously posted to HN
"Napster, Udacity, and the Academy" which makes the software is eating the
world argument for education.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4773857>

------
JumpCrisscross
" _Wouldn't it make more sense to just fund education to the levels we had
back when it was working?_ "

In good times investing in innovation is a luxury. In bad times it is a
necessity. The returns on the present education model are not covering the
costs in many cases.

~~~
barry-cotter
When was education working and who was it working for?

As a means of social control, a method of inuring people to being ranked,
judged and told what to do it works wonderfully[0]. It is not about learning
or it would not start so early, at least not for teenagers[1], nor would there
be so much homework[2]. Doing lots of work that you dislike because you have
been told to do it is good training for the world of work for most though.
Every large school system is lineally or organisationationally descended from
one designed to produce good soldiers[3].

The school system works just fine for childcare, for socialising people to
accept random authority figures telling them what to do and for reducing
creativity. It does what it's meant to, even if no one who's in charge will
acknowledge that's what it's function is.

[0] <http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html>

[1] [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/07/sleepy-kids-learn-
less...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/07/sleepy-kids-learn-less.html)

[2] [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/06/only-do-math-
homework....](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/06/only-do-math-
homework.html)

[3] [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/05/schools-are-for-
war.ht...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/05/schools-are-for-war.html)

~~~
001sky
I agree with the substance of this. Passing on wisdom is not the first,
second, or even 3rd point of "education" anymore. Its basically a state-
sanctioned childcare/socialization programme. Its cleverly mandated under the
legal authority for education, but one should make no mistake as to its
purpose, and this is one of the many great trojan-horse examples of
government-gone-wild in the name of "compassion". All those kids at failing
inner-city schools are just being soul-destroyed for a life of minimum-
subsistence-wage menial labour.

~~~
barry-cotter
"I agree with the substance of this. Passing on wisdom is not the first,
second, or even 3rd point of "education" _anymore_."

Emphasis added

At no point, ever, has there been a state education _system_ where passing on
wisdom or knowledge was the first, second or third point.

 _All those kids at failing inner-city schools are just being soul-destroyed
for a life of minimum-subsistence-wage menial labour._

Actually most of them don't end up working, and they sure as hell don't end
living at a subsistence level. The bottom 5% of US income has a great standard
of living by global standards. And any soul destroying that's going on is
pretty much universal, not confined to members of the underclasses.

------
danso
While I agree that we're still a far way from replacing the classic university
model with online courses, I feel that pointing out the flaws of any
individual lesson video is a limited and weak argument in this debate.

Not because it's wrong to point those flaws out. But because classic
educational courses don't expose themselves to such transparency. I can think
of a good number of classes I sat through that if they were put on YouTube for
the convenience of critics to rewatch and nitpick, they would be as mock-
worthy as the examples the OP uses

------
gwern
That's some pretty loaded language and interesting choice of quotes there...

------
r4w8173
can go in this list: [http://www.smbc-
comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2873](http://www.smbc-
comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2873)

------
confluence
I'm a top 10% student that goes to a top 30 engineering school. I haven't gone
to a lecture or bought a textbook in over 2 years. My grades haven't suffered
- they're mostly a function of time spent doing homework and going through the
lecture slides.

For undergraduate students - a physical college is now mostly unnecessary
(excluding some lab work). Research students - not so much.

Another thing. Arguments against any new technology saying "Oh, but you can't
replace that!" are always going to die. Lowering the cost of something by a
factor of 100x changes everything.

------
eriksank
"Wouldn't it make more sense to just fund education to the levels we had back
when it was working?" Short answer: NO.

~~~
marknutter
Agreed. That was a truly bizarre statement. People who continue to claim that
our education problems will all be magically solved by throwing more money at
the problem bewilder me unless they're the ones directly benefiting from that
money, that is. Tuition rates have been rising out of control for decades, but
education is a big problem right now. More money did _not_ solve the problem.

