
Peter Thiel Is Wrong About Higher Education (It’s Worse Than A Bubble) - jlangenauer
http://robinoula.com/institutions/peter-thiel-is-wrong-about-higher-education-its-a-lot-worse-than-a-bubble/
======
hugh3
What is it about this subject that encourages such hyperbole and
overgeneralization?

For what it's worth, I looked it up (thanks linkedin) and the author of this
piece spent four years at some place called Linfield College in McMinville,
Oregon, getting a BA in History, Philosophy, French and German. It's possible
that her personal experiences may not generalize.

~~~
entangld
Are you attempting to attack her credibility or can you address her point?

Steve Jobs never graduated college. I would still take his opinion on
education. This is an argument that can be logically debated without having to
go to credentials.

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his
intelligence; he is just using his memory. -- Leonardo da Vinci

~~~
hugh3
Well shit, all I can say on the subject is exactly what an originality-
challenged dean would say to his class of incoming freshmen (if deans actually
addressed classes of incoming freshmen): what you get out of it depends on
what you put into it.

Want to take advantage of being able to spend four years learning from some of
the best minds in every field of human endeavour? Four years set free on
hundreds of possible courses, millions of available books, and hundreds of
professors willing to answer (well-posed) questions about their work? It's
easy to go into a Bachelor's and come out knowing a _lot_ of great stuff.

On the other hand, if you want to put the minimum of energy into getting your
Bachelor's degree by picking the easiest subjects and doing the minimum of
work to get through them then, yeah, you can come out of the university
without knowing much at all. That's partly the university's fault (they really
don't flunk nearly enough students nowadays) but mostly your own.

"But", you say, "couldn't I just spend four years in the library and learn all
that stuff anyway for slightly less (once opportunity costs are taken into
account) money?" And the answer is: probably not. Books + lectures +
professors will teach you much better than books alone. The big enemy when
learning from books is not the stuff that you don't know, it's the stuff you
_think_ you know that's wrong, because you misunderstood something the first
time (it happens to all of us, sometimes books are unclear) and never got
corrected on it. (This is why you'll find that the internet is full of self-
taught physicists who are disproving relativity or thermodynamics because
they've misunderstood some aspect of it).

It's telling that many of the folks who are pushing the "we don't need no
education" meme are programmers by trade, since programming is one of the
_very_ few skills that you can learn effectively on your own by reading books.
Why? Because it's easy to know when you're wrong: it'll result in your code
not having the desired effect.

~~~
xiaoma
_It's telling that many of the folks who are pushing the "we don't need no
education" meme are programmers by trade, since programming is one of the very
few skills that you can learn effectively on your own by reading books._

I would say that programming is one of the few high-paying professions that
many can break into without certification. There are a lot of skills that can
be learned via self-study if one is willing to go beyond books, but the
problem is one of certification.

Living in Beijing, I regularly meet people studying Chinese on their own as
well as those with 4 year degrees in Chinese, often from prestigious schools.
Most of the best speakers I've known have been hobbyists who are interested,
rather than people who simply followed an academic track at an institution.
However, with no certification, it's a bit tough for some fully bilingual
self-taught people to get the nice translation jobs. I won't name any names,
but I've seen some high profile work done very poorly by a PHD who had
credentials to get it.

Other than foreign languages, writing in one's own tongue is also not largely
linked to an expensive 4 year university. Neither are business, popular music
or theater. I would also say that math is largely vulnerable to self-study.
I've made considerable progress in the visual arts just from my own efforts
and youtube.

Other than extremely expensive research sciences what else requires a
university to learn effectively?

~~~
rhizome
I have an acquaintance who makes a very good case for most people learning all
they need by 8th grade for what they wind up doing.

------
Tycho
I was thinking about this today. I remember I used to think 'well, if you do a
degree, at least you'll be an expert in _something_ , even if you can't find a
good job with it.' When I think of it now, the notion is almost laughable.

University students don't become experts in anything. For a non-technical
subject, the knowledge gained isn't really going to beat a normal member of
the public with an interest in the subject. English literature students, for
example, just leave with some long essays under their belts, they don't
graduate as well-read authorities on different epochs of literature. For
technical subjects, I suspect most the skills learnt are forgotten afterwards.

It's just too easy for people to coast by, or cheat. The astonishingly low
pass marks in some courses have the added effect that the bright students
don't need to _really_ get on top of their game to get a good grade. So most
people who graduate are far from experts on what they were learning about. As
in, if a member of the public needed any of those skills/knowledge to do their
job, they could acquire them privately without much difficulty.

~~~
WalterBright
I've seen very, very few people able to learn calculus outside of a school
system. Most will just go to elaborate lengths to avoid using calculus and
justify why they don't need to learn it.

~~~
Tycho
Fair enough. What examples did you have in mind of people trying to avoid the
use of calculus (where it would be the best solution)?

~~~
bartonfink
I don't know that people are avoiding the use of calculus where it's
appropriate. Rather, they believe that they will never encounter a situation
where calculus is the appropriate tool and thus claim that they don't need to
learn it.

It's a shame, because understanding differentiation and integration has had a
tremendous impact on the way I think. It literally was a gamechanger for me,
and it's worth it even though I only use it in thought exercises now.

------
msluyter
In answer to her question ("what does it mean to be educated"), Robin Hanson,
an economist/blogger, suggests:

 _The claim I’m most confident of: school is mostly not about the material
taught in classes. I’m less sure to what extent it is about learning-to-learn,
coming-to-obey, bonding with other kids, and signaling these features as well
as intelligence and conscientiousness. I’m pretty sure signaling of various
sorts is at least 30% of the average private value of school, and it could go
as high as 80%._

More interesting discussion can be found here:

[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/08/functions-of-
school.ht...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/08/functions-of-school.html)

<http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/04/kling-on-school.html>

Also, an interesting post by economist Bryan Caplan:

[http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/08/bill_dickens_ve....](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/08/bill_dickens_ve.html)

------
DanielBMarkham
Without acceptance criteria -- some neutrally-given test that yields a yes or
no -- you can't really measure the function of something. Education has been
notorious for refusing to create or abide by acceptance criteria.

So it becomes a brand-name game. You pay for the brand, you spend some time
getting indoctrinated (most likely to how important this particular brand is)
and you get your piece of paper.

Somebody said once that the purpose of education is to create new habits. So,
for instance, if you are an English speaker and develop a habit of reading a
good Russian novel once a year, that might be an excellent habit to have. Or
if you develop a habit of reading a dozen computer books a year, or perhaps
you develop a habit of cross-checking politically-slanted stories you agree
with. And so on.

Lots of great habits that you can form. Some subset of these constitute what
we call "critical thinking," which everybody seems to think is important.
There are a bunch of entrepreneurial habits that I'd love to make sure folks
had. If you want a job after college, developing great people, marketing, and
networking habits would be awesome.

But I don't think anybody wants to seriously start talking about what habits
college graduates should mostly exhibit. To do that would cause controversy.
Colleges are very much dependent on public dollars (at least in the states)
and I don't think they are ready for the political firestorm that would occur
once you start actually trying to define the thing that we're all paying for.

It's not a bubble, except for the part about more and more money goes for less
and less return. The problem is that there is no "thing" that is being
returned. There's no bad guys here, but it's much more like a con: you pay
increasing amounts of money for this intangible thing where there's no real
way to determine if what you got was what you wanted. You don't really know if
it's worth what you spent, because the seller is purposely keeping you in the
dark about the value, continuing to assure you that this type of purchase at
these rates is absolutely necessary. In fact, as time goes on they get more
and more insistent that this thing is absolutely necessary -- at any price.

That kind of building up of expectations, then jacking the price, then
delivery of something that could roughly be considered what was needed but
isn't enough, repeat-and-rinse, is much more indicative of a con (Disclaimer:
I don't mean to imply intent here, and I also don't mean to imply outright
fraud. Just trying to find the best metaphor. I also realize that I am making
a large generalization, and all generalizations are false. Caveat Emptor.)

~~~
maqr
You had me up to here:

> You don't really know if it's worth what you spent, because the seller is
> purposely keeping you in the dark about the value, continuing to assure you
> that this type of purchase at these rates is absolutely necessary.

This isn't like buying a car or a house. My degree has _no_ monetary value, as
far as I can tell. I'd love to sell it to the highest bidder, but it's non-
transferable. I essentially purchased a license from my university. This
license (read: degree) entitles me to say that I completed a program there.

The seller isn't keeping me in the dark. I got exactly what I was promised:
the license to say that I completed sufficient coursework for the school to
confer a degree upon me.

The license does _not_ explicitly certify that I have any knowledge. It simply
does not make that claim.

At the end of the day, the degree is simply a license to add another line to
my resume. What's that worth to me? I guess it's up to society to decide, but
so far it's not been worth very much for me.

Personally, I think that I would have been better served using the money in
almost any other way.

In my opinion, there's already a term for all this debate around the education
'bubble': "Buyer's remorse".

~~~
hugh3
_In my opinion, there's already a term for all this debate around the
education 'bubble': "Buyer's remorse"._

Half of it is buyers' remorse, the other half is sour grapes. There are three
types of people in the world: those who went to university and are glad, those
who went to university and regret it, and those who didn't go to university
and want to be reassured that they didn't miss anything important. Only folks
in the latter two categories are writing articles on this subject. (Oh, and
the occasional embittered professor who thinks things aren't nearly as good as
they were in _his_ day.)

~~~
DanielBMarkham
_the other half is sour grapes_

I think this is a vast overstatement. As a potential employer, it's in my best
interests to have colleges create the best applicants possible, regardless of
my personal college status. As a parent, it's in my interest to have any sort
of college investment I might make to pay off. As a taxpayer, it's in my best
interests to get the best return for our government investment.

To put this entire debate in terms of whether the person speaking has attended
college or not is really stretching logic a bit too far. Lots of other reasons
to evaluate a college education one way or another.

I think you're walking a fine line here. Especially with this sour grapes
remark, it almost seems as if you're saying "these folks didn't get/enjoy
college. This is the reason they say what they do. Therefore their opinion is
biased and you needn't listen to them."

Sticking somebody in a bucket and then explaining away everything they might
say because of the bucket they're in? Sounds to me like one of those logical
fallacies everybody loves to quote so much.

~~~
ecuzzillo
He isn't just sticking you in a bucket randomly. Your language on the subject
has an emotional edge that goes beyond dispassionate observation that college
education may be overvalued. It actively pushes the reader toward the
conclusion that you actually do have a dog in the fight, and the college
system has somehow wronged you.

I don't know if it has, but based on said language, I'd be surprised if it
hadn't.

My perspective: Having gone to CMU CS, which on the one hand doesn't have
particular brand recognition outside CS, but on the other hand is fairly good
at CS as undergrad programs go, I believe I can say that I probably did get
100k and possibly even 200k of value out of the education, quite aside from
the piece of paper. A lot of the teachers I had were really seriously
excellent (and I don't say that lightly), and I wouldn't have been able to
learn from teachers that good in that array of subjects (field theory,
abstract algebra, robotics, cryptography, etc) as well in any other situation.
Yes, I could have read wikipedia and the lkml and so on, but, having done
both, classes from really really good teachers work better.

On the other hand, I think I got lucky not only in terms of the ratio of
program strength to brand recognition, but also in which teachers I got within
the university; if I had taken different classes in different semesters, I
believe I could have done a lot worse. Not remotely all the teachers were good
or even passable. And, I could easily imagine getting very little value out of
the experience, and I bet a lot of people, particularly ones at big-brand
institutions, do overpay for the education they get.

The point is, it's a complicated question. There clearly is some value in some
undergrad programs, and there also clearly is a problem with rising prices.
Comparing it to a con scheme is not really doing it justice.

~~~
kwis
I'd bet that the net present value of your CMU CS experience is quite a bit
higher than you estimate.

As a credential, it's very well known in tech-heavy industries and will help
open doors there. Further, it's a good enough school that it will help open
doors if you decide to pursue a graduate degree in the future.

As an experience, you got the opportunity to work with top professors and it
sounds like you actively sought them out to get those experiences. Further,
you almost certainly got to know a lot of students and if you were smart,
reliable and hard-working, likely created a situation that could open
professional opportunities in the future.

I'll concede that the correlation between a conferred degree and the value
captured by the student is not perfect, and that a degree is not the only
opportunity to capture value between the ages of 18 and 22. But I largely
believe the "debate" consists largely of overblown, hyperbolic rhetoric and
oversimplification.

------
davidhollander
Flip the system and make the classwork homework and the homework classwork.

Instead of a lecturer being the 5000th person trying to teach the subject with
a varying degrees of preparedness, you just get the single best and most
enthusiastic lecture of all time, everytime, as a video. Then in class
teachers, TAs, and students can have normal humans conversations with each
other to work through problems and peer interaction to motivate learning.
Instead of this being relegated to additional office hours\recitations\labs.

~~~
kenjackson
It's called the Khan Academy.

~~~
rooshdi
Khan Academy is definitely a good step in the right direction but still lacks
the one on one interaction with a knowledgeable mentor some students need in
order to ask varying questions and receive the personal answers suited to
their rationalizations. I think a great next step for Khan Academy would be to
try to create partnerships with willing schools and universities to
accommodate their current learning material and structure.

~~~
kenjackson
Have you watched the TED video on their webpage? Watch that.

Here's a blog from Los Altos which is using Khan Academy for some 5th (and 7th
I believe) classes:

<http://lasdandkhanacademy.edublogs.org/>

------
sardonicbryan
Posts like this -- without any actual data/standards -- annoy me. I suspect
that she perceives the quality of college education to be worse because she
perceives the quality of college graduates to be worse. This may even be true.

However, if this is the case, I don't think it's realistic to expect the
standard of college graduates to be on par with what they were a generation
ago or whenever she went to college, simply because there are so many more of
them now, and college students are no longer mostly people who have self
selected as unusually interested in learning/furthering their education and,
for the most part, affluent.

~~~
blahblahblah
I agree. She's way off base. If you search for worldwide rankings of
universities, although answers vary depending on the source, higher education
in the United States is universally well-regarded and the only other country
that can really be considered to be a competitor for the #1 slot in overall
quality of higher education is the United Kingdom. If we're "failing to
educate" then the rest of the world is also failing.

"The U.S. gets a lot of bad press for the failures of its education system,
and some of the supporting data is frightening. A study by the Department of
Education found that 30 million adults in the U.S. are functionally
illiterate. Another Department of Ed report ranks the U.S. at 35 out of 57
countries for mathematics literacy among 15-year-olds.

But when it comes to higher education, no one on Earth does better than the
U.S., according to a new study by Times Higher Education (THE), a London
magazine that tracks the higher ed market. Its 2010-'11 annual World
University Rankings is dominated by U.S. schools. They hold 72 places among
the world's top 200, including all the top five. Great Britain is a distant
second, with 29 universities making the cut." (from Forbes
[http://www.forbes.com/2010/09/16/world-best-universities-
ran...](http://www.forbes.com/2010/09/16/world-best-universities-ranking-
leadership-careers-education.html))

~~~
foamdino
I suspect (and I've heard tell, but I have no data to support this), that the
UK universities cannot afford the same salaries as their US counterparts.

If your a prof and you have two offers (let's stay technical as it's HN):

 _1 Cambridge - £90,000/year (~$160,000) and you can go and watch the boat
race (yay)

_ 2 MIT (or caltech, berkley, princeton etc etc) - $400,000/year and you can
live somewhere where it doesn't rain for 10 months of the year

Now which would you choose?

NB - figures pulled out of my ass, but I suspect that the ratio is probably
accurate enough (ie US unis can afford to pay 2* UK).

One of my professors talked about the day he hoped the UK system would allow
universities to become private institutions (they're quasi-private now in that
'foreign' students are charged a _lot_ more than 'home/EU' students where the
fees are capped)

------
vannevar
Can we please stop abusing the term "bubble" in the context of higher
education? Not every economic adjustment is the result of a bubble. When
Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy, it wasn't because there was a bubble in the
DVD market. If higher education is overpriced, people will stop buying. When
they do, _none of the people who did buy in will be any worse off than they
were before_. It's a completely different situation than the mortgage crisis,
where the bursting of the bubble put everyone in a worse economic position.

~~~
nickpinkston
It's more correct to say that this is an economic bubble (look at academic
cost inflation), within a larger societal change (the form of education is
going to be massively disrupted).

It's not like the classic investment bubble since the investment in completely
illiquid outside of purchase - making it a one way market. Also, education's
affect on the majority of the people wasn't as beneficial as they were led to
believe - therefore the "collapse" of this bubble won't kill those who've
invested. Instead, it's going to hurt those who are directly/indirect selling
assets into this one-way market: school, publishers, etc. when the population
decreases demand.

In the mortgage crisis there was a sell-off bubble, but here this isn't
relevant since there was never the possibility of liquidity except by extra
"rents" generated by getting better jobs.

------
shii
These kinds of posts always pop up in a row, like a volley of arrows.
Bemoaning education as failing students, falling in value, rising in cost, etc
etc etc.

What actual concrete alternatives are there for alarmed students (such as
myself) that read these types of posts, jump through all the hoops, and still
face a massive bill from Podunk U to get a BS or BA?

Most of you all here have already gone through the rites and work at cushy
tech or office jobs, and a few rebels with their own startups.

What do you say to an incoming college freshman who isn't sure if he sees the
light at the end of the tunnel or a $40K+ train barreling at him?

It's nice to say work hard, network, go to a cheap state school, go to a 2
year community college first then transfer, etc...but this all seems to point
a really broken system with little to no solutions in sight for those actively
under the guillotine of crushing debt.

Instead of pontificating, does anyone have actionable tips or advice?

~~~
arohner
The current system is completely broken for people who don't get useful
degrees, but only annoying for people who do get useful degrees.

1) Have a plan. Go into college with a measurable goal. Say "I'm going to get
a degree in X, because that will help me get into my desired profession".
Don't say "I'm going to go to become a well rounded person".

2) Get a useful degree. Generally, a useful degree is something that is
technical, pays well after school, and doesn't require a masters / pHD. Things
like Engineering, CS, Physics. Law and Medicine used to be good career paths,
but I wouldn't recommend them anymore.

3) Don't assume the school will teach you everything you need to know.
Instead, treat it as one source of knowledge among many. Learn about your
major outside of school. Build things on your own. Get internships. Test out
of easy classes. Intentionally take harder classes, or classes that would be
harder to learn on your own after you've graduated.

~~~
foamdino
First define useful? I have an undergrad technical degree and yes it was
useful to me. I do however have an appreciation of the arts and, if time and
funds permitted, would gladly study multiple undergrad and masters courses in
philosophy, economics (art or science, depends on where you go), history and
linguistics.

There is a technical snobbery that demeans all 'art' as useless and elevates
all technical degrees to, IMO, an unworthy height.

Your definition of useful seems to be 'produces economic value to the
graduate'. Another person could have a very different definition of useful.

Taking the point back on-topic, if your view of education is something that
allows you to earn more during your working life, then I can understand some
people questioning it.

I enjoy learning for its own sake, not for some bauble held out in front of me
- maybe that's because I'm wealthy enough (relatively speaking) to have been
able to study what I like without worrying about practical issues.

I live in a country where people see education (typically business degrees and
technical subjects) as a means to an end - quite rightly as often their
families have sold everything they own to be able to afford to send one child
to get a 'good education' and then expect that child to be able to support the
family in the future.

I teach undergrad IT, so I do have a dog in this particular 'education isn't
worth it' fight. /rant off

~~~
arohner
In no way did I imply all art is useless.

What I did strongly imply is that spending $50-100k and four years of your
life is a big decision.

Please, get a degree in whatever you like, but realize that you are probably
in the minority for being able to receive education "for fun". Most people do
it for an improvement in their earnings.

The issue isn't "my" view of education, but the mainstream view, pushed by the
US gov't and all universities. I'm sick of the lie that a degree in Russian
Lit or Communications will somehow prepare you for the workplace, or provide
skills that will help you earn more. I'm sick of people being told to get a
degree in whatever strikes their fancy, while strongly implying that any
degree is good for them.

------
stdbrouw
I appreciated Peter Thiel's thoughts from a while back because he talked a
little bit about the economics behind higher education, and why in _some_
cases it doesn't make sense for _some_ bright young kids to go to college.
Couldn't agree more.

This post, on the other hand, smells more like baseless weltschmerz. It's the
kind of stuff I used to hear all day long while I was getting my education in
liberal arts, from both students and professors: universities aren't what they
used to be, we should get all the stupid people out, it's gotten so easy I
could do this in my sleep (after which those same students proceed to get
barely passing degrees, "because why would I bother going for more in an
environment like this"), universities have become slave to the industry, and
so on and so on.

I like a bit of random pessimism and carping as much as the next guy, but I
kind of thought most people were smart enough to realize that the whole
"universities have lost their soul" thing was just a fun shtick rather than
the actual state of things. Apparently not.

------
rivalis
On the subject of evidence for "failing to educate": there is statistical
evidence (with a decent sample size and population) that a large percentage of
students (36-ish) do not show improvement on the CLA
(<http://www.collegiatelearningassessment.org/>) after four years of college,
a test meant to measure the sorts of higher-order literacy skills that almost
everyone agrees college students should learn.

------
rdtsc
> they only look like a bubble because we’ve learned to treat education as a
> market-driven commodity rather than a social good

how can you not treat it as a market-driven commodity when a 4 year college
degree can cost $120K ?

~~~
kjksf
In the U.S. That is not the case in every country in the world (many have free
college education) so it's not an inherent property of higher ed to be
"marked-driven commodity". Therefore it's valid to criticize the U.S.
implementation for being that given that it doesn't have to be.

~~~
hugh3
It's notable, however, that on any ranking of the world's top universities
you'll find the US absolutely dominant, holding over half of the top one
hundred, two hundred, whatever... spots. This suggests there must be something
going right.

And having spent time at various universities in various different countries I
gotta tell you that the existence of a lot more money floating around the
average US university certainly helps a lot.

------
nbashaw
One explanation of the possible higher education crisis could be that we
simply have higher expectations. The world is moving faster and our education
system hasn't caught up. Our grandparents typically stayed with the same
company for decades, but we change jobs every couple years. Not only are we
changing companies, we're changing skill sets. New competencies emerge and
vanish in the course of years, not centuries. This is a very new development.

Were universities always a mediocre way to get an education? By today's
standards - yes. The thing is, "mediocre" is a relative term.

------
jseliger
One big problem: professors don't have a lot of incentives to educate. They
have incentives to publish, which helps explain grade inflation:
[http://jseliger.com/2011/04/02/grade-inflation-what-grade-
in...](http://jseliger.com/2011/04/02/grade-inflation-what-grade-inflation).
The current higher education system hasn't really designed around the needs of
undergraduates, which a lot of people don't understand.

This is part of the reason I wrote How Universities Work, or: What I Wish I’d
Known Freshman Year: A Guide to American University Life for the Uninitiated
-- [http://jseliger.com/2010/09/26/how-universities-work-or-
what...](http://jseliger.com/2010/09/26/how-universities-work-or-what-i-
wish-i%E2%80%99d-known-freshman-year-a-guide-to-american-university-life-for-
the-uninitiated) , which I give to my freshmen every semester.

------
jnhnum1
This seems highly over-dramatized: "The stakes are high, higher even than most
of us realize. Our answer to this question holds the very roots of our
salvation… and our demise."

From my own experience (I'm a sophomore studying computer science, physics,
and math at MIT), nobody assumes that their brand-name degree will
automatically get them a job. The most lucrative jobs for CS involve
interviews that grill you relentlessly regardless of what your educational
background is. For the most part, people are here to learn about science and
engineering that interests them, while at the same time hoping to get a job
with what they've learned.

MIT helps a lot with this by being very flexible about what classes you can
take. Prerequisites are all soft, and there is no credit limit. A lot of this
may not generalize, but for a motivated student I think college is absolutely
not a waste of time.

------
alphaoverlord
Although it can be argued that current higher education is being commoditized,
the OP is making an unrealistic comparison to some idealized past where
education meant more and people were more educated simply because they went to
college. Looking at the recent links on HN about the entrance exam to Harvard
et al. in 1900s, I would be very skeptical that the students then learned
greater or more applicable skills. Memorizing the philosophies of esoteric
18th century Frenchmen and the intricacies of "noble society" has equally
negligible impact on real-life skills.

It is true that education is more commoditized - more people go to college and
there is greater opportunity to obtain education - but commoditization by
itself does not mean a decrease in quality. Because it is now a commodity,
brand name means much more.

------
dlaw
I agree that the cost of a college education is increasing, perhaps
disproportionately, because demand is so high. However, I would not call
higher education a bubble: as an undergrad, I have found that my education
does not lack rigor or intensity. I have learned an incredible amount in a
very short time, and for me, the personal value of a college education
(disregarding the value perceived by society) far exceeds the cost. (I'm
studying at MIT, so perhaps my college experience is different from the norm.)

Many people at MIT drop out to start companies or work at startups. I don't
know how common this is at other schools, but at MIT, "so-and-so dropped out
to work full-time at his startup" is not an unusual thing to hear. It seems to
me that students value their degrees less than society does.

------
hammock
It's not just higher education that's been commoditized- take a look at US
public schooling in general (or worldwide). There is this perception that
"education solves social problems," but there is good education and bad
education; you can't just put more people in schools and expect results.

------
marknutter
Of course it's a bubble. Just like the housing crisis, there's been a huge
amount of speculation when it comes to higher education. The belief is that if
we give out cheap and easy loans to as many students as we can they will not
only be able to easily pay those loans back but also become much more valuable
in the long term, just like all the McMansions in the housing market. The
Universities respond to all this easy cash by raising their prices to try to
distinguish themselves from other Universities and the students respond to
this by accepting an ever increasing debt load because of their undying faith
that they will land a high paying job when they graduate.

The Universities aren't on the hook for these loans, which makes it even worse
than the housing crisis. The students are on the hook, but they won't be able
to pay them back, which means it will fall on the US taxpayer's shoulders to
bail everybody out. The solution would be to stop issuing these cheap loans to
all but the most qualified students entering into the most useful fields
(science/engineering and not art-history/sports medicine). Once the money
party stops, Universities will be forced to lower their prices, and cheaper
education will become more prevalent as smaller institutions scramble to fill
the huge increase in demand for cheap, effective education.

But no, we have a "right to education." Sigh.

------
fecklessyouth
After reading HN comments, I've come to the conclusion that, education bubble
aside, you all went to really shitty schools. I can tell because of the
emphasis on the degree and technical skills, one of which is useless and the
other of which can be gained from other sources. I've learned very few
technical, "useful" skills in my schoolwork, outside of external
clubs/networking/training I've done through my school. And I would have
dropped out first semester if my education's biggest reward was a diploma--my
school is basically unknown outside my state.

By these criteria, my education sucks. But it's been the best decision I ever
made. I think that in these reoccurring debates, HN is overlooking a broad,
challenging, great books-based liberal arts education like the one I'm in. By
refusing to teach "technical" skills that are better learned on the job
anyway, and instead actually building the strength of the mind, for the sole
sake of, as John Newman said, the sake of it, liberal arts places itself in
the unique position of external to current industry trends. They'll teach you
to learn, and leave the technical training to you once you graduate.

------
omouse
Wow, I like this article a lot. It's anti-capitalist and anti-turning
everything into some profit-motivated enterprise, but it stops short of using
communist/socialist/anarchist/revolutionary terminology!

What an excellent read. The challenge is to see if the system can be reformed
at all (most likely not) and to concentrate on building up alternatives that
are more meaningful.

------
aba_sababa
I'm not sure that commoditization is a bad thing. I'd argue that education
hasn't been commoditized enough. Imagine if all universities started running
themselves like honest-to-god businesses by pleasing the consumer and creating
great products. There would be competition, prices would go down, and the
quality of the product would go up. Unfortunately, higher education is one
product that paradoxically doesn't need to please its users.

------
praeclarum
College is an opportunity to learn. Better colleges are better opportunities.
It's on the kids' backs whether they actually take the time to learn or slide
through the system. If you didn't learn, it's most likely your fault, not the
college's.

------
weegy
Realizing that college wasn't suited for me I dropped out.

------
georgieporgie
I have a sneaking suspicion that people overestimate their own intelligence
and the rigor of their education. I'm skeptical that education has truly
gotten worse, and suspect that people like this lady have forgotten how dumb
they used to be.

~~~
crikli
That's symptomatic of being a fresh college grad (which this gal is...she's
only four years out of school). You're still under the influence of being told
you're smart because you got an A in whatever class.

Take somebody like me, who's been out of school for 15 years. I know how dumb
I am; it's a measured quantity and unfortunately has an observable and
accelerating rate of growth.

------
GaryOlson
Start by killing all the lawyers. Grade quality, cheating, and instructional
quality have all been degraded by litigious students and parents. Caught
cheating? Bad grade? Don’t like the faculty? Can’t collaborate with your
project group? Universities are under constant assault by undisciplined,
immature, lazy students who attack the University system in order to obtain a
degree. In the end, the colleges find it easier to pass the cost of failures
onto society than fight. I can’t say I blame them.

------
NY_USA_Hacker
Okay, we are debating the value of education in college and beyond.

My qualifications: I hold a Ph.D. in some topics in applied math from a world
class research university. Before the Ph.D. I taught math in one university
and computer science in another. After my Ph.D. I was a professor in an MBA
program at a Big Ten university and a research scientist in an industrial
computer science lab. Now I'm an entrepreneur.

There are two collections of 'knowledge' that are dangerous:

First, there is the knowledge you don't know but you should and should
consider using.

Second, is the knowledge you do know but shouldn't and should never use.

Of these two dangers, in practice by far the worst is the second.

My view is that the most important lesson in college is to learn to detect and
reject the second of these two dangers.

Next most important is to give you the background and practice in learning so
that you can acquire knowledge to get around the first danger.

Next, broadly, there is a big, huge challenge in the world, life, careers,
etc. -- doing well with things that are new.

Here is a bold, blunt, fact of life that illustrates the challenge and
importance of doing well with things that are new:

A 'career' usually has to last from a person's 20s to their 60s. We may raise
that to a person's 70s. So, that's over 40 years of working and maybe 50
years, half a century.

It might be nice to get an education for a 'good job', get such a 'job' in a
'good organization', and hold that good job for one's entire career. But a
blunt fact is that so far the number of such jobs, that is, that will last
over 40 years, have been only a very tiny fraction of the total number of
jobs. None of IBM, GE, GM, AT&T have been able to provide many such jobs. It's
not at all clear that Microsoft, Cisco, Google, Facebook, or Twitter will
either.

So, during those 40+ years, there will be a lot of changes, and nearly
everyone will have to keep up with the changes, with the things that are new.
This is important but a challenge.

So, there is essentially no way college or anything else can get you ready for
'a good job' that will last 40+ years if only because such jobs are so rare.
So, instead, college can try to get you ready to keep up with things that are
new for 40+ years.

Some years ago on TV was an ad for an electronics trade school. They showed a
happy graduate standing behind a box of electronics and saying, "Learn to play
one of these babies, and you are fixed for life.". What was the box? Sure: It
was a computer disk drive with a removable stack of disks, 14" in diameter,
with total capacity about 14 million bytes. What a laugh.

So, in simple terms, first, college should teach you not what you need for a
'job' but how to keep up with things that are new for several jobs over 40+
years.

Second college might also teach you how to be a leader in things that are new,
that is, be one who gets a lot of benefit from things that are new.

So, in working with things that are new, we come back to the two dangers,
knowing things that are bad you should not use and not knowing things that are
good you should use. So college should teach you how to separate these two
and, for the second, how to learn. And, college might also teach you how to
create good, new things you should use.

For how to separate, it is good to have some practice in some solid fields
where we can separate relatively easily. Of course the crowning jewel of such
fields is math with its theorems and proofs. Likely next is mathematical
physics and then other physical sciences, engineering, etc. So, these fields
can teach 'intellectual discipline', that is, some examples in at least those
fields how to separate the wheat from the chaff.

All this is not very new but goes back to an old saying, "You can always tell
a Harvard man, but you can't tell him much.". That is, he has obtained some
good means for separating the wheat from the chaff and already knows a lot of
the wheat and maybe how to create more.

Is Harvard the only source of such education? Not nearly! There are hundreds
of colleges in the US where a good student can get a good education -- maybe
the outline here will help them know what to look for and pursue. And there
are a few dozen US research universities that can provide world class guidance
in creating powerful, new knowledge.

~~~
colomon
You might want to try a Google search on the phrase "You can always tell a
bigot"...

~~~
NY_USA_Hacker
"Bigot"?

How about idiot?

You might try to wipe your ass with your left hand and then stare at your
fingers and try to find some meaningful direction in your life.

~~~
colomon
Okay, first hit: "Dad always said that you can always tell an idiot... but you
can't tell him much." Works for my point just as well as "bigot", I suppose.

Hint: "You can always tell a XXXXX, but you can't tell him much" is a stock
construction. It most certainly is _not_ used to indicate that XXXXX has
superior powers of reasoning.

~~~
NY_USA_Hacker
I was going the other direction, and that is somewhat meaningful. That is, a
well educated person, e.g., from Harvard, is skeptical.

