
The unbundling of Harvard has begun - brettgoldstein3
https://socialstudies.substack.com/p/-the-unbundling-of-harvard-has-begun
======
roenxi
I'm not sure if this gentleman has a thesis but Harvard online education is
worth not much. The whole value proposition of Harvard is that you socialise
and bond with the sort of people who get in to Harvard. You probably have the
phone number of whoever runs Goldman Sachs [0] and you know the President of
Whereveristan's daughter because she was in your class. The little things in
life.

It is possible but unlikely that Harvard has Secret Math and Unknown Physics
that their undergrads are exposed to, but their literary and philosophical
studies are going to have access to the same books as everyone else. Online-
only Harvard has as much value as any top-10% university on the globe. There
is absolutely _no_ shortage of incredibly clever people who are willing to
explain things to a student. I think we had an article the other week pointing
out that hiring a private tutor is a better option if what matters is the
quality of education.

[0] Although I see the new CEO doesn't come from Harvard. Last bloke did
though.

~~~
impendia
> It is possible but unlikely that Harvard has Secret Math

Here is an entire undergraduate course in abstract algebra, taught by retired
Harvard professor Benedict Gross.

[http://matterhorn.dce.harvard.edu/engage/ui/index.html#/1999...](http://matterhorn.dce.harvard.edu/engage/ui/index.html#/1999/01/82345)

I know Gross personally, and have heard him lecture several times; although I
haven't watched these lectures in particular, I'm guessing that that they're
just about as good as it gets.

You can also find online lecture courses in a variety of subjects offered by
MIT, Yale, etc. It's telling that these universities feel confident in giving
away this material, to anyone, for free.

~~~
throwgeorge
lol i don't understand your point "harvard doesn't have secret math - the
proof is all of these publicly available math lectures from world renowned
mathematicians"

the value of harvard math profs isn't reaped by the undergrads, it's reaped by
the grad students that work closely/directly with these profs. i'm not 100%
sure of this but benedict gross probably isn't holding several hours of office
hours every week for his undergrad algebra classes (although he might for the
grad sections).

now the knock-on effect, obviously, is that the very good math phd students
that pursue and are admitted to harvard do provide a lot of value for the
undergrads (since they're TAing/holding office hours for those undergrads).
but those same harvard phd students then go get tenure track positions at
mediocre schools where office hours are held by profs. so it all evens out as
far as undergrads go :)

~~~
Kednicma
As somebody who's studied some advanced maths, I think that their point is
that abstract algebra _is_ effectively a sort of secret maths techniques,
sitting in plain sight but somehow sprayed with repellent or maybe equipped
with a Somebody Else's Problem field.

I have had more than one afternoon where I learned a concept wholly from this
sort of lecture. The ability to ask the professor questions can be useful, but
almost all of my questions are actually answered by being more careful about
listening to what they are saying the first time.

~~~
throwgeorge
>abstract algebra is effectively a sort of secret maths techniques

abstract algebra (rings, groups, fields) is taught in absolutely every
undergrad math program in the country (in the world?). there's nothing unique
to harvard in this aspect.

~~~
sukilot
Harvard teaches a lot more than the average undergrad program.

A Harvard undergrad degree covers a depth of knowledge that matches a master's
degree at an average program.

You can read the definitions of algebra in 1 day. That's not what a class is
about.

------
secondcoming
"I'm Brett... and Twitter power user"

I can't believe a grown adult considers this some sort of qualification.

As for "education-based communities on the backs of (social) media empires"...
what a horrible thought. Imagine getting your education from a Twitterati or
Fox News-backed organisation.

"Psychology is the most underrated major in tech."

Maybe for someone with a psychology degree who's looking for a "Silicon
Valley" job. I don't think I'd see psychology majors clamouring to get through
the doors of IBM or Capita.

~~~
HumblyTossed
Even worse:

"Twitter is where all the action happens in the tech industry"

~~~
eplanit
Yeah, I stopped reading at that one.

------
anonunivgrad
A big function that universities play is circumventing some arguably bad
interpretations of labor law. In the United States, it is essentially illegal
to hire based on the results of an intelligence test. This is the result of
various cases interpreting and applying the disparate impact doctrine. But no
one bats an eye when you send your recruiters to only the "elite" universities
or when your company is overwhelmingly staffed with top-20-university
graduates and won't even consider the applications of people from "lesser"
schools. That's despite the fact that which university you attend is largely a
function of your SAT score (and to a lesser degree, your grades), an
intelligence test.

No one looks at Harvard on your resume and thinks "they must have learned so
much at Harvard". The thought is laughably absurd. It's not that someone can't
learn something at Harvard, it's that everyone knows Harvard academic rigor is
a joke and you can just as easily party your way through 4 years and graduate
with a B+ average. They think "they got into Harvard, so they must be smart".
The most important department at Harvard is the admissions department.

This strange power is then abused for the sake of funding the institution,
pursuing its political goals, etc. Donor's children get preference.
Politically-favored groups get preference. Applicants who signal that they
share certain views get preference. I'm sure the motives are often quite
noble, but it is corrupting nonetheless I think. They are just counting on the
fact that it's still worth treating a Harvard degree as a proxy of
intelligence despite the fudging they do at the edges.

~~~
euix
That's how it works in China and other East Asian countries, if you ever read
the history of Korea, government offices were essentially monopolized by
Yangban in the late Joseon dynasty. Which was basically an aristocratic class
of test takers.

Meritocracy over a period of time warps into its own form of elitism.

------
typest
I celebrate efforts to educate and credential students that don't put them
into a lifetime of debt. But, a few points of order/grains of salt:

Even though going to college means you may take out more debt that you can pay
off in any reasonable amount of time, bailing on college to classes from
social media entrepreneurs or to start a company backed by Peter Thiel is a
risk-heavy strategy that will not pay off for most. Yes, autodidacts with a
safe family situation will likely do well.

But what about students from poor backgrounds, students without stable family
life, or just students who don't fall into the upper echelons of
industriousness? How many of these students are thriving right now in a world
of Zoom classes? Talking with friends who are teachers, many students are just
skipping their classes altogether. Why would we expect them to do well in this
new online world?

College, although way too expensive, works decently well for many of these
students. I don't think online influencer courses will substitute.

Yes, unbundle Harvard. But the harder and more impactful piece is providing
quality education to those who aren't in the tails of the distribution.

~~~
sukilot
Conflating Covid-19 pandemic with online school is ridiculous.

------
thehappypm
I always hear the argument that college/grad school is silly because you can
go read the textbooks yourself.

It requires an immense amount of motivation to grind away reading 80 pages of
a boring CS textbook every day. The structure and motivation provided by an
institution encourages people to go deeper, meet deadlines, and not just skim
the boring stuff. It isn't the only way to learn, but when I did a master's
degree I felt motivated even when the road was rough.

~~~
diarrhea
My master's degree was essentially thermodynamics, all the various aspects of
it, and I have never met anyone self-taught in that area. You just do not sit
down and just learn about the physics of energy (storage, conversion,
transmission, ...).

Part of the reason is that at least in mechanical engineering, the curricula
are more or less well-curated and grew over many decades, if not centuries.
You learn maths, electrical engineering, mechanics, fluids etc. all at the
same time, and they all intertwine. Sometimes one is the basis to learn about
the next (mechanics lays the foundation for fluids mechanics; maths is simply
the foundation of everything you do and learn). Other times you discover meta-
connections that elevate your understanding of everything in combination
(voltage, pressure and temperature as _potentials_ , current, mass flow and
heat flow as _flows_ resulting from that potential; each with their respective
resistances: ohm (or impedance), friction, heat transfer coefficient).

It all comes together beautifully and forms a new, elevated whole.

I am willing to bet I will go through life without ever meeting someone self-
taught, in my field. Computer science might be different, but people confuse
computer science and coding. Coding you can self-teach easily, computer
science not so much. That is more on the level of self-teaching maths, and I
have never met such a person, either.

~~~
thehappypm
Thank you, diarrhea.

------
eezurr
I couldn't finish reading this. While interesting, I sense a lot of hype, and
deliberate bending of meaning (e.g. federal government less strict about
requiring college degree -> all companies less strict)

Traditional college is not just about information scarcity either. People also
go to bond, network, participate in extracurricular groups, party, etc.

Traditional college isnt going to go anywhere.

Also, it's depressing to think of society sitting behind a screen all day. I
think most people feel the same way. We need to stop using technology to tear
apart the social fabric of society.

~~~
nootropicat
>Also, it's depressing to think of society sitting behind a screen all day. I
think most people feel the same way. We need to stop using technology to tear
apart the social fabric of society.

You are witnessing the mere beginning. Wait for despair before a typical job
consists of donning a vr gear with some controllers (possibly brain implants)
to control a humanoid robot far away. It's hard to think of a job that
couldn't be automated this way except for security, as cutting off the signal
would be a big failure point + laws that prevent civilians from using robots
for violence. The only other real limitation is latency, so Indians in India
probably won't cut grass in SF, just Mexicans (in Mexico).

In the longer run, this could kill cities or even states. People could live on
ships in international waters, under a flag of some tax haven, but near the
place they want to work to ensure low latency. Wages would equalize globally
very fast.

Last but not least, versatile enough humanoid robots also mean nearly perfect
sexbots - whether ai or remote controlled.

~~~
newen
Butlerian Jihad can't come soon enough.

------
rajekas
Any article that mentions unbundling, disruption, bubble and tipping point in
less then a thousand words deserves mention in the Malcolm Gladwell hall of
fame.

Here's the opposite argument: universities will eat bootcamps for lunch
because in the post-COVID era they will be hungry for the same dollar and I
would much prefer getting a Harvard Online degree than from Fullstack Camp TM.

There's no doubt that higher education will be transformed by the COVID19
crisis but it's extremely unlikely (in my view) that the shifts will go along
the lines predicted by Silicon Valley 'product thinkers.' There's a reason why
Universities have lasted longer than civilizations.

~~~
enumjorge
You bring up an interesting point. How do people feel about boot camps? I
looked into them a while ago when a friend asked me for a recommendation since
he was interested in switching careers. The reviews and experiences I came
across were mixed. Some positive and a lot of mediocre ones. Boot camps didn’t
seem like they were the disruption to 4 year degrees they were once billed as.

If online bootcamps and schools were killing it right now then I could see the
argument that they’re the ones to watch. But as it stands I don’t know that
there’s an obvious winner. Like you said, universities might be the ones who
end up driving the change.

~~~
sylens
I feel like I have seen mostly negative reviews and impressions come out of
them. I'm sure there are some good ones, but I remember specific claims
against some of them being that they inflate their own job placement numbers
by just employing previous graduates as TAs and instructors to keep the
machine going.

I think a much more practical option in the long-term will be something like
what Shopify is doing with their Dev Degree program -
[https://devdegree.ca](https://devdegree.ca).

------
helen___keller
This is a strange choice of title because Harvard is easily among the
institutions that will be least affected by the pandemic.

While it may be true that for the world's elite that the value prop of Harvard
is rubbing elbows with other elites, it's also true that for the rest of us
the value prop of Harvard is merely having it on your resume. There's no
shortage of talented students who'd love Harvard on their resume even if they
have to spend a year remote.

Some of the opinions expressed in this article seem rather naive, such as:

> Use your time to start an online business. Live at home, spend as little
> money as possible, and find a side job if you need to.

For students in a pandemic, "live at home, spend as little money as possible"
is basically implied outside of education expenses. So at this point we return
to the standard debate: is a diploma worth the cost of tuition and opportunity
cost on time spent? This argument has been played out a million times and is
otherwise unchanged by the pandemic.

~~~
d883kd8
Rubbing elbows with the elites is worth even more if you're not already part
of the club

~~~
helen___keller
Perhaps but an average middle class high schooler who's spent hundreds of
hours working on a college app worthy of an ivy isn't worrying about that, I
guarantee you. That's not the kind of concern you have time for when you're in
a college prep pressure cooker.

------
kanobo
PSA: The 80k price tag is the sticker price. The actual average cost of
Harvard is < 15k when you account for aid and parents bargaining down the
price. So please try to negotiate the price if you are actually considering
paying 80k.

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
It appears that most families making under 65k USD/year pay nothing to send a
child to Harvard. Families making up to 150k USD/year are expected to pay a
maximum of 10% of their income.

The sticker price is what Harvard charges rich people. Harvard has a massive
endowment, and probably doesn't really rely too heavily on tuition anyways.

~~~
djcollier
Large endowments are not always a straight forward metric to use for
determining how well off financially an institution is. Lots of contributions
to endowments come with strings attached on how the money can be spent.
Wouldn't be surprised to hear about a large number of new costs associated
with COVID that wouldn't be covered by a lot of an endowment.

[1] [https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/05/22/colleges-
face...](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/05/22/colleges-faced-
whether-increase-endowment-spending-finances-grow-more-dire)

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
Sure, not all of the endowment is fungible, but it's $40 billion. Harvard is
insanely rich by any measure.

------
lordnacho
I'm looking forward to a time when you can simply pass a highly creditable
exam without having to attend class. This will probably require the reputation
of an existing high-rep university, but once it's happenend, things are going
to be very different.

Imagine if you could be anywhere in the world but claim to have passed the
math course of some famous university. I think that would change a lot of
things about how we view education and qualification.

~~~
logicchains
It's somewhat ironic that this is how many universities worked a hundred years
ago.

------
imranq
There's a lot of confirmation bias on this thread. If people want to believe
that an elite institution is worthless, they will try to focus on the facts
that yield that conclusion. But consider,

\- Most of the educational material that this article describes as the
downfall of universities, has been posted by universities. Don't you think
that shows how little it matters?

\- Anyone who gets into Harvard will have no trouble attending financially.
The aid covers the cost. The crazy tuition are for the richest people, who
have no trouble paying.

\- Textbooks and papers have been available at your library for the past few
decades. The freedom of information was enough s.t. someone in the 1970s could
replicate the experience of studying in college.

e.g. “You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late
fees at the public library.” -Good Will Hunting

\--

I think what we really want to solve isn't to reduce the value of elite
institutions, but rather scale what's already there. The issue is that what's
there is much more intangible to identify.

------
SiempreViernes
Is this just a big organic advertising operation? Or is this shallow,
"buzzfeed-top list" style writing really something that can be called
Reporting?

I guess it's only appropriate that someone that wrote their thesis on the
telephone game/chinese wispers ends up making a newsletter summarising twitter
rumours.

~~~
whymauri
A personal newsletter/blog is not reporting and I don't think the intention is
to pretend it's reporting.

------
tmaly
Freshman year is the real deal. Its where you meet new friends and bond. I
cannot really see the value of an online only first year.

I see this also as an opportunity to improve the online aspect of education. I
remember one of my electrical engineering classes had all the lectures
recorded and available at the library. This was before YouTube. But it was
great that you could re-watch them for points you missed. Better online
material could be a boon for primary education. Imagine a public school with a
low budget. What happens to the very talented students?

~~~
naiveprogrammer
In other words, you pay what you pay to attend Harvard, to a large extent,
because of its network effects. And that is really the reason at the end of
the day. This is especially true in areas where network is expected to be a
big factor --think Economics, Law, Business.

And that's why you pay that much to go to Harvard, to gain access to their
network.

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
That's writing off a lot of the educational benefits of a university. YouTube
lectures don't recreate the college educational experience. You don't get the
group sections with the TA, office hours, personal feedback on your
assignments, a group of students studying the same thing who you can work
with, undergrad research experience, personal tutoring from graduate students
(which undergrads at some elite universities like Harvard and Oxbridge get
through their dorms), etc.

Most people don't pay much to attend Harvard anyways. Only the rich pay
anything near full tuition. It's probably cheaper for the average family than
most state colleges.

------
hn_throwaway_99
This blog post is self-contradictory. On one hand it says "people aren't going
to pay full price for just online college", and then in the other "people will
be able to learn from 'influencers' just as well as they do from colleges."

The reason people don't want to pay full price for online learning is because
they know it has much lower value than in-person instruction.

------
xyst
~$80K per semester at Harvard. I now understand why almost every graduate of
Harvard tends to bring up the fact they graduated from Harvard on nearly every
conversation.

I went to a public school and my 4 year tuition cost is equivalent to half the
cost of single a semester at Harvard. I only graduated a couple of years ago
so inflation is negligible.

Guess who I work with the most and still earn the same wage (if not more)? It
makes you wonder if Ivy League is nothing more than a brand name at this
point.

It’s like buying anything “Supreme” or Gucci related, except for the
“intellectuals”.

As for the article, I didn’t really care too much for it. Sort of just skimmed
through it and it seemed like an ad for something he was part of. The only
thing that caught my eye was the tuition bill at Harvard.

~~~
typest
> I only graduated a couple of years ago so inflation is negligible.

If only inflation were the only thing driving the price up! The whole problem
with college cost is that cost is increasing faster than inflation.

I went to a similar university to Harvard. I enrolled in 2013, and the total
cost per year was under 60k. It's now 80k. Cost of attendance is increasing at
~ 4% per year, which is entirely unsustainable. Crazy how a couple years means
a difference of 20k per year = 80k over 4 years.

------
sradman
This type of analysis is built on the assumption that the main function of
education is student transformation. I think ranking is implicit in the
existing system and online education platforms ignore the ranking aspects.

------
cvhashim
I couldn’t get through his ramblings. But I got the gist of it, and of course
it’s typical Gary Vee-type of hustle porn advice about skipping college and
starting a business. Sigh

------
qwerty456127
The first time I've read "Harvard announced that it would continue 100% online
learning in the Fall but keep tuition prices the same" I thought this means
you can watch all the lectures for free and only have to pay if you care to
visit them offline, get the assignments and the diploma. Apparently this is
not the case although many Harvard courses actually are available online for
free.

------
Ericson2314
But widespread remote work will probably make résumé bling even more
important.... :/

