
"DIY U": The End of University Prestige - dwynings
http://www.salon.com/print.html?URL=/books/feature/2010/03/28/anya_kamenetz_diyu_interview
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Lewisham
The problem with this approach is the belief that the university is a place to
train undergraduates. Having worked as a staff member, and then jumped to
graduate studies, I realized that actually, the modern university is a place
of research. The undergraduate bit is simply to pay the bills. The university
system's mission to disseminate information to the populace is almost entirely
from the research, not the undergraduate teaching. It's not surprising they
are inflexible.

The reason the UK has more entry methods is because there are far fewer
universities than in the US. Having moved to California from the UK when I was
24, CA has far more "universities" that specialize in teaching. The State
school and Community College system doesn't exist in the UK... that's why
there are all the internships.

Finally, the author seems to assign all value in a university from what you
learned in lectures. That's a flawed premise: the lectures are there to spur
you on to learn outside of contact time. Developing all those skills, meeting
all those like minded people, having an ecosystem where you can work on the
student newspaper to get more skills... those are things that distributed
learning doesn't offer.

University != undergraduate lectures.

~~~
nzmsv
_University != undergraduate lectures._

And that's exactly the problem. Why pay to attend an institution that does not
care about your studies?

There are a few profs who really care about the students. The rest just watch
for the select few that can succeed in spite of the system, and pick them for
grad school.

~~~
endtime
>Why pay to attend an institution that does not care about your studies?

Because you're paying for environment, education, peer group, opportunity, and
credibility...not hugs.

------
metamemetics
Prestigious universities were never about quality of education: if you're
smart enough to get in, you're smart enough to teach yourself anything.

Rather, they are about the peers you go to school with. You learn and grow
from the type of people you surround yourself with, and at elite universities
you surround yourself with extraordinarily smart people.

~~~
hga
This has _never_ been true of MIT (although I'll double check that WRT to the
very beginning, which I'm studying now), and to this day _every_ course is
taught by a professor (I know of one exception to this rule, an EECS grad
student who walked on water and who everyone in the department thought was the
very best person to teach one particular course).

MIT is deadly serious about undergraduate education, to the point where if a
professor violates certain rules (e.g. no homework of X sort N days before
final exams), a committee charged with this sort of thing will take the course
away from the professor.

I was also once an employee who's office happened to be in the complex that
included the EECS undergraduate HQ. One term a very good professor
inexplicably did a _horrible_ job of teaching 6.002 (or maybe 3, but I think
it was 2). I read every one of the student course evaluations and with one
special case exception they were uniformly negative with plenty of
specificity. Then, due to the open office nature of that complex, I got to
listen to the department head force the professor to read every single one of
them, and then be told he'd _never, ever_ be allowed to teach that course
again (which he took very hard, since this is an area the professor really
cares about).

In all my personal experiences of taking courses, the professors were
seriously dedicated to teaching, although obviously their ability to teach
varied. But they _tried_ , and some also would devote a little time to telling
us about their research, how it excited them and they tried to give us a
little facility in what it was all about. Generally the latter failed, but
they seldom failed to get across how something as dry as say physical
chemistry might be very interesting.

~~~
metamemetics
They take education seriously sure, but a school that is 10x more competitive
and 10x as expensive as a state school has at most 1.5x better teaching. It
doesn't scale. The real asset is the student body. The department is good
because it's competitive more so than it's competitive because it's good.

~~~
hga
Please define "competitive".

E.g. MIT does not grade on the curve; that would be insane, instead they grade
on mastery of material. I've e.g. _never_ heard of someone sabotaging another
work to improve their own grade, we're all in it together and tend to help
each other out.

As for costs, about 5 minutes with Google suggests a 5x difference compared to
average state school tuition costs. Based on my experience, the difference in
teaching quality is a _LOT_ more than 1.5x, but I wouldn't be able to pin it
down.

I'd say the real asset is not the student body per se, but the whole community
and the ingrained meritocratic attitudes. It's assumed by default that
_everyone_ at MIT is serious about what they're doing (which of course is not
100% academics, not that we've ever managed to top CalTech's Rose Bowl hack
:-), and there's a tremendous amount of respect all around.

It's said that undergraduates are treated like grad students (and that
includes serious cutting edge research (e.g. through UROP; in both my
experiences there, the problems had not been solved, period)) and grad
students like junior facility, and on up for faculity (except, I will add,
_everyone_ in the Math Department is treated like shit, but it's not entirely
horrible (my first job was maintaining a computer system in that department)).

And in the end, if you're trying to get into a good grad school, which is the
better foundation? If you care about how your resume impresses people and
opens doors, which school would you rather have on it (note that in lower
quality tech areas MIT envy doesn't make this entirely a good thing, but then
again it acts as a filtering function).

~~~
metamemetics
competitive=admissions acceptance rate\exclusivity. I completely agree that
schools like Stanford (7.6% acceptance rate) and MIT (9.7% acceptance rate)
are an amazing foundation.

My argument is: As competitiveness\exclusivity of a university increases, the
quality of the student body increases at a much faster rate than the quality
of instruction.

I once took a single semester at a local state school in the middle of my
college career solely to get cheap credits for a new university\department I
was transferring to. The professors were still very bright, had PhDs, and
repeatedly encouraged students to come into their office (the vast majority
didn't). They were however ALL foreign, from India, eastern europe, or china.
In addition, the one programming class I took was taught by someone who had
spent more time in industry than research. Also, they had to teach at a MUCH
slower rate than they were capable of to cater to the student body. The
limiting factor was the students.

~~~
hga
Yes, I see your point, and it's a significant and important one (but I'm not
in position to comment well on it, knowing only MIT and Harvard students, the
latter through various friends of mine from Up Chuck River :-).

It's significant based on what I've heard of India's famed IITs. They don't
have top of the line equipment, their professors aren't always the best; it's
their student bodies that make them more than anything else. When you get the
very best (in their areas) out of 1 billion people....

As for MIT numbers, you might find these interesting/useful: current yearly
applications are something like 13,000, a bit more than 3,000 are judged as
being able to do the work (that's the number one thing that's important to
MIT; while mistakes are inevitable, it accepts _no one_ who they don't fully
believe can make it).

10% of those are "obvious admits" and the admissions staff, augmented by
anyone on the staff with a clue who volunteers (especially to make absolutely
sure _every_ application gets at least two readings) then agonize over who
amongst the rest to offer a slot to. (It's hard and not really fun; I have a
very good friend who does this on a time available basis and I helped her a
bit one year when I was on the staff.)

MIT shoots for a yield of around 1080 the last time I checked (that figure is
old, but is tightly constrained by available student housing, all freshman
must spend their first year in it; one year the the admissions office made a
big enough mistake they had to turn a graduate dorm's basement into makeshift
housing, which perhaps not surprisingly worked out very well (they bonded into
a tight and self-supporting group)).

The self-selection in applications is _tremendous_. Nobody attends MIT who
doesn't think they wanted to (that can of course change once they arrive ^_^,
but I didn't see much of that in the '80s).

Thanks for the intelligent discussion and observations.

------
greenlblue
Meh, there was a lot of vague stuff about improvement and empowering the
learner but very little in the way of implementation. Currently the
accreditation bodies are the biggest hurdles to overcome because anyone that
wants to do anything innovative in education either has to be attached to a
big name university or has to face the problem of overcoming a lot of red
tape. Most accreditation bodies serve the interests of big name universities
so anything that deviates from that model is met with suspicion and disdain.

Speaking from personal experience I wouldn't have missed anything if I had
skipped the entire high school and college experience because I learned
absolutely nothing in classes. All of my current knowledge was gained by
either working closely with a mentor or spending time at the library.

~~~
evanrmurphy
_Currently the accreditation bodies are the biggest hurdles to overcome
because anyone that wants to do anything innovative in education either has to
be attached to a big name university or has to face the problem of overcoming
a lot of red tape. Most accreditation bodies serve the interests of big name
universities so anything that deviates from that model is met with suspicion
and disdain._

I think it will be market-driven.

As the value of credentials relative to demonstrable skill continues to
decrease, people will reconsider the proposition of taking on huge debt for a
college degree. They'll look for alternative ways to acquire skills, and
universities will have to compete by lowering tuition rates and rethinking
education. Otherwise they won't attract enough tuition-paying students to
cover operation costs. When it comes to the bottom line _then_ administrations
will mobilize.

I predict that some universities will make interesting changes (eventually)
and many will fail. Just hoping none are "too big to fail".

~~~
greenlblue
This has been happening for at least the past 10 years and there has been very
little change. There is a lot of pressure and monetary incentive in keeping
things the way they are. I'll give you an example. Many lower division math
classes are offered by the math department because they are service classes
with hefty per unit price tags and ridiculous book prices, i.e. other
departments use those classes as a screening procedure and the math department
gets a whole bunch of money to invite speakers and support incoming graduate
students and the book store gets proceeds from old book resale.

So as long as there is at least one department out there that is not feeling
the crunch the math department will not do anything differently and there is
always at least one technical department that does well no matter how good or
bad the economy is. So from the other department's perspective it is a good
idea to offload as much of the screening of students to the math department as
possible since who really wants to spend time with undergrads when there are
multimillion dollar grant proposals to submit to bring in money. From the math
department's perspective it is a good idea to offer as many variations of the
same course adapted to different departments as possible and from the book
store's perspective it is a good idea to keep reselling old books at high
prices. You tell me which one is going to innovate and get the others to go
along with them. Each will cling to their old ways for as long as possible
because honestly there is no real competition. The only way to get a piece of
paper with B.S. and your name on it is to go to a big name accredited
university.

Long reply because I've been thinking about this problem for a long time now
and I don't see any real way to force research oriented universities to
innovate. There is no real incentive for innovation.

~~~
evanrmurphy
_The only way to get a piece of paper with B.S. and your name on it is to go
to a big name accredited university._

But having the piece of paper is starting to matter less [1]. Most people want
a degree so they can get a better job, but who would you rather hire as a
developer: someone who spent 4 years getting decent grades and a CS degree, or
someone who spent 4 years contributing to open source projects and teaching
themselves to hack? Of course some employers would choose the former, but a
smart one would at least strongly consider the latter.

What does this mean for families? Many will undoubtedly continue supporting
the institutions, but others may question the merit of spending years saving
for and paying off debt from college when there are alternatives available.
It's easy to imagine cheaper ways to work with mentors and spend time at the
library, after all. :)

[1] Trends would suggest that the paper actually matters more now than ever,
due to degree inflation, but I think this will prove itself to be a bubble.

~~~
yardie
According to Spolsky, he'd take the CS degree. Since he is an internet
celebrity, people will use him as a credible source to justify their hiring
reasons. Also, the HR filters don't really care what open source you've done
in your spare time. They won't have much knowledge on it. They will understand
what a Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Yale graduate can bring to the table. But your
contribution to Apache won't mean much to the filterer.

Now, having personal contact and a network throws all of this out the window.
I don't have a CS degree, I've never gotten a job offer without someone having
personally reviewed my application. A friend in HR says they use software that
looks for competitors (aka work experience), degrees, languages in that order.

~~~
evanrmurphy
_They will understand what a Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Yale graduate can bring
to the table._

How about people attending less prestigious schools?

 _Now, having personal contact and a network throws all of this out the
window._

Exactly, and this is part of what makes open source exciting. Want an
internship at Google? Becoming a key contributor to Chromium OS is arguably a
better strategy than going back to school, because if you're good you can get
a Google employee to notice you.

~~~
yardie
>How about people attending less prestigious schools?

Nothing wrong with less prestigious schools, but most are specialized in a few
focused areas. My own school is not a prestigious school, but it is in
engineering and biomed.

------
silversmith
I find the whole trend of online studying quite disturbing. From what I've
seen, it defines studying as sitting in awe and trying to soak up the
knowledge flowing from professors, and strives to replace it with possibly
more efficient channels and call it the next best thing. All the while
completely ignoring the second, in my opinion equally important, part of
studying - peer to peer socialization.

For me, the people I got to know during studies, and cemented the relationship
during various activities not directly related to my field of studies, have
proved to be of more value than the lectures attended. Aside from few basic
courses that lay the groundwork, my CS studies have been repeated exercise in
rapidly getting to know a field enough not to appear incompetent and pass the
tests. Granted, this has helped me to the point where I can quickly find solid
ground to stand on when thrown in a new technological field, but still, in the
last year of my studies, I am working with technologies that have been at best
mentioned in couple slides in somewhat related lectures, following methodology
that has had been only passingly referenced. The field moves so fast, that by
the time someone has developed a _good_ course material on something, it's
already yesterdays news. Technologies come and go, but the dude you that woke
you the next day after a wild party because a test would be starting in half
hour, he will last. And you can't replace that experience with Facebook or
Second Life.

~~~
evanrmurphy
_I find the whole trend of online studying quite disturbing. From what I've
seen, it defines studying as sitting in awe and trying to soak up the
knowledge flowing from professors, and strives to replace it with possibly
more efficient channels and call it the next best thing. All the while
completely ignoring the second, in my opinion equally important, part of
studying - peer to peer socialization._

It's just an immature paradigm still. Obviously the web has proven itself to
be an outstanding medium for peer-to-peer socialization, and it's only a
matter of time before online education taps into this.

------
rflrob
I haven't seen any evidence that Big Name universities are going to lose their
prestige any time soon (a point which is actually not addressed much in the
article). When I tell people what Top-Ranked college I went to, the immediate
response 4 times out of 5 is something like, "wow, you must be really smart!"

However, I think if the average "intelligence" (however you want to define
that) is higher than the population at large, it's more that the lower ~30-50%
of the intelligence spectrum is severely underrepresented, and the upper 1% is
maybe twice as common as you'd expect. There's still plenty of people with
normal talents.

All of which is to say that the prestige of my undergraduate education far
outweighs what it might actually be worth. While there might be a significant
cultural shift, I frankly think that the cultural bias is too ingrained to
change radically any time soon. What I think is likely to happen is that self-
designed courses of study are more likely to become perfectly acceptable
alternatives, rather than something stigmatized as weird.

------
balding_n_tired
I wonder. It would be interesting to see the undergraduate degrees of all the
Salon staff. I

