
Ask HN: Why hasn't college changed in the past 100 years? - lbr
Last night I read paper books. Today a professor talk about the books and used a blackboard. I took notes on paper with a pen.<p>Why has nothing changed since my dad went to school.<p>YOU: Take notes on your computer. Use Evernote, penultimate, etc. 
Me: I tried to take notes on my computer, but I&#x27;ve realized how inefficient this is. It&#x27;s impossible put diagrams and text in one place.I&#x27;ve tried dozens of iPad and computer programs.<p>YOU:You can read books on your computer or iPad or Kindle. You can highlight and make notes. 
Me: I can write in the margins or highlight in a paper book. Why don&#x27;t digital books incorporate video, audio, or interactive exercises. They are not customized to me or my learning style. Why are they so expensive.<p>YOU: Your parents used a type writer or pen and paper - you can use Microsoft word.
Me. Is Word a modern program? No - it was released before my birth (came out in NOV of 1990).<p>YOU: What about powerpoint? That has changed classrooms! 
Me: In a good way? NO. And once again, powerpoint is nearly 25 years old.<p>YOU: You have all information at your fingertips, Google and Wiki didn&#x27;t exist when your dad went to school. 
Me: Both are well over a dozen years old (Wiki founded 2001, and Google &#x27;96).<p>ME: I&#x27;ll change my point, things have changed since my dad was in college (word, powerpoint, google, wiki).<p>But nothing has changed in schools in the past dozen years.<p>Has it? What am I missing?
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OoTLink
Ah, this is a most amusing topic. Here goes my perspective:

In my university's electrical & computer engineering classes, the teachers no
longer use slides - they did for a while and for various reasons switched back
to chalkboards. I can see why - the ones that do tend to go through the slides
way too fast, because they have nothing to slow them down. It promotes
assuming the students know more than they actually do know too, and the danger
of skipping slides.

On note taking: I just got a surface pro and aside from the handwriting being
a little sloppy, I wish I started using a tablet PC years ago. As a friend
that has done so put it, he has his notes archived from every class he's ever
taken in folders on his computer. I only keep about a year of old
notes/materials because it takes a ton of space when you do it on paper!

On ebooks: I like them if they're cheap/free. Frankly I'd rather the teachers
just use public domain books or class wikis instead of assigning stuff out of
a $150 textbook that nobody ever needs to read otherwise.

On typing: I grew up typing, we didn't have a computer at home until I was 9
(and I'm in my 20s), but we always had a typewriter, and when I saw my mom
using it, I learned how to use it too! By the time I was around 10, I could
already touch type without looking at the keyboard, and that fact randomly
dawned on me one day lol. Right now I can type around 140wpm max.

On microsoft word: lol, my first computer was a 286 that was as old as I was.
It ran WordPerfect and Lotus123. Yes, I used it to write a report, and yes I
printed it on a giant dot matrix printer. It was awesome!

As for primary school: It has by a lot. The standardized testing and ACT/SAT
stuff, especially in high schools, has made the top end crazy advanced.
Students are under pressure to graduate having taken calculus, chemistry,
physics - all things that for the most part weren't even options in my high
school. If you so much as get a B, you won't have much luck getting into any
of the good state universities here.

That's pretty scary, because as a teenager there's this overwhelming tendency
to screw up.

~~~
lbr
Listen, I'm not saying your systems don't work. I'm just saying they are still
far from perfect. And still so close to their predecessors.

People writing textbooks these day understand the people will read them on
computers and iPads. But they don't change anything. We read ebooks, but they
are EXACTLY the same. Sure, they work. But why don't they work better.

Like I said, why don't they incorporate videos? Customized problem sets based
on what I don't understand?

~~~
Perdition
Because textbooks are an effective monopoly and the publishers put in the
minimal amount of work to keep students paying $150 for introductory
textbooks.

Also, functionally an eTextbook with a clickable link to a video is the same
as an eTextbook with a built in video.

------
gaius
Because it works, is why. Every one of the devices you cite was created by
people who were educated in this way.

What happened to if it ain't broke don't fix it? Why are pizzas still made in
wood fired ovens when you could just use a microwave?

~~~
lbr
>Because it works, is why.

"It works." Is a low bar. We should strive for higher. Especially at some of
the best schools in the country and the world.

Also, didn't the typewriter work? Didn't the flip phone "work"? Lots of
products and processes work. But people still strive to make them better,
easier and more delightful. But, for some reason, not in education.

~~~
notahacker
But what exactly is "better and more delightful" that's possible now,
_relevant to education_ and wasn't 12 years ago? You're moaning about the fact
that pen and paper has been around for a few millenia without actually
suggesting why it's bad, still less what would be better.

A decade ago I did a liberal arts degree and managed to get through first year
without entering the library because the online papers were more than enough,
and had a professor who once cancelled a lecture because the projector was
broken and she believed chalk was a health hazard. On the whole, I'd have
preferred it if she'd carried on with her examples using the technology of the
generation earlier. And you know what, sometimes dragging oneself away from a
backlit screen to read an actual book, complete with the previous owner's
annotations, was a good thing in later years too.

My parents went a generation earlier without the repository of information
that exceeded the size of the library _sitting on my desk in my study bedroom_
, which I also used to run statistical tests that would probably have been
beyond the capabilities of the university's then computer, had the econometric
tests being run been invented at that point. So things were actually pretty
different then.

We didn't watch much video for the same reason my parents didn't watch much
video: it's a way of glossing over the analytical concepts we were supposed to
be studying. We didn't play around on interactive apps even though we all had
laptop computers with Flash downloaded, for the same reason, no amount of
touch-screen tabletry changes that.

~~~
lbr
I am moaning about pen and paper. And perhaps the biggest problem with my post
is that I have no constructive suggestion.

But I am most certainly not saying that the current technology is better: far
from it. I agree that writing on black boards is better than powerpoint. I
agree that books are better than ebooks. I agree that video isn't necessarily
the answer, and that it won't necessarily help the younger generations learn
more efficiently.

I'm purely commenting on the fact that nothing is better than pen and paper
and a chalkboard (and Microsoft word for writing long peppers). I am saying
that I've tried tons of new technologies in education and they all suck. And
I'm asking why this is the case. Can we truly not do any better?

Writing on paper does have problems: writing by hand isn't fast. Paper is not
backed up. Paper is not easy to share or edit. Paper is not searchable.
Notebooks require physical space. Some cannot read others handwriting. These
aren't major problems. But they are problems.

------
jleyank
Most of the commenters focus on the technology of learning. Perhaps that's all
that was intended, but there's more:

1) The student audience is staggeringly different. Back then, it was well-to-
do Protestant white males. Now, it's far more representative of the population
statistics.

2) The subject matter has radically altered. 100 years ago, quantum physics
was nonexistent, cosmology was in its infancy, biology was "stamp collecting"
(quoting a physicist) and computers were nice young ladies the folks in (1)
tried to get close to. Whole departments, good or bad, have appeared (and
disappeared) over this time.

3) The range and number of "advanced degrees" have greatly increased.
Partially due to the huge increase in the number of colleges and universities
but also for the creation and/or expansion of whole industries: weapons,
pharma, electronics, ... What was the crown jewels of individual countries now
shape the economics of the world.

4) Computational capabilities is infinitely higher than 100 years ago. This
permits computational modeling, medical and/or biological processes (PCR,
gene/chip screening, etc) or even economic or hobby activity that would seem
diabolic to our predecessors.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Some things aren't worth changing
- some of the pedagogic methods are thousands of years old. As others have
said, why change what isn't broken, and why should we adopt "technology" that
merely distracts from the problems at hand? Small classes, driven by
discussion rather than lecture, are still amazingly effective in transmitting
knowledge and stimulating thought.

Edit: Oh, and regarding physics... There's been a staggering lot of it in the
last 100 years, both good and bad. Sorta altered the world, it has.

------
lutusp
> But nothing has changed in schools in the past dozen years.

Education is the most conservative of conservative institutions. It will only
change when it must, for example when people vote with their feet and educate
themselves on subjects not provided by, and using methods not recognized by,
present schools. Then you'll see change.

~~~
lbr
I agree with your point. Institutions have been slow. And will be slow. I'm
not complaining about this...

I'm more complaining about why nothing has been done outside of institutions.

Why haven't private companies created technology and services to serve
students? For example: Why does half my class take notes with a pen and paper,
and the other half use Microsoft word? Shouldn't a private company find a
better way?

~~~
EliRivers
Pen and paper is fantastic. Phenomenally simple to use and reliable. So
adaptive; you can make a mark literally anywhere on the paper, and make it any
shape you can imagine. You can mix text and images with a breathtaking
fluidity, with colour switching whenever you like. You can take the piece of
paper and fold it, roll it, punch holes in it, spill things on it, it just
keeps on going. The format hasn't changed for centuries, and won't change for
centuries to come, essentially because it's near perfect - people will be able
to view marking on paper, made today, for centuries to come.

You can mix and match your pens and paper without any fear of interface
problems - a pen bought a century ago in Germany will work with paper made
next year in Argentina. You can even pick up a piece of paper that a different
pen was using, and carry on adding to the content with whatever pen or pencil
you've got in your pocket. It's a complete, self-contained information display
system. I could hand a piece of paper I wrote on to someone from the other
side of the world and they'd be able to use it.

Anything looking to replace pen and paper is going to have to be seriously
amazing. I'm genuinely astounded that people choose to make notes with
Microsoft word instead. The only advantage I can see to that is that you can
change what you wrote later (if that is an advantage).

~~~
lbr
I hear you. I too love paper. I too am astounded by the versatility,
simplicity and beauty of it. It will not be replaced for my personal
notebooks. And yes, something to replace pen and paper would have to be
astounding.

But I still have problems with pen and paper.

I like the ability to add to notes and change them. Professors sometimes
meander about in lectures, and I sometimes want to reorganize the ideas they
present.

You cannot search efficiently with paper. I have terrible hand writing on
paper. Papers wrinkle and drive me crazy. I write slower than I type - and
it's assumed (by professors) that people are typing so they teach at that
speed (ppt doesn't help). Paper cannot be as easily shared as documents.

~~~
Casseres
With notes (this worked for me, and I imagine it would work for others):

Treat the notes you took in class as a rough draft. After class, revise your
notes into a final draft. This way you can reorganize the ideas, simplify
example problems, and fix any spacing issues or spelling mistakes. This helps
you learn the material since you are working with it while it is still fresh
in your mind, and makes studying much easier in the future.

------
bcohen5055
I'd say this depends a lot on what field you are studdying. I don't believe
many things have changed with libral arts and humanities because the fields
overall are mostly static.

On the otherhand fields like computer science, mathmatics and engineering have
chnaged immensly. These sorts of programs are preparing you for applied
problem solving using (hopefully) industry leading technology. In order to use
these tools you still must know the basics and be able to validate your
answers with simple hand calculations. So those courses are delivered in a
more traditional format. But once new tools are introduced to leverage that
foundational knowledge the learning is nowhere near similar to what it was
even 10 years ago!

~~~
lbr
You're right. I should also say that I go to a liberal arts college.

And you're right - Comp sci classes (and hard skill studies) are more modern.

But even so, in my CS 101 class, I read from two textbooks every night. And a
third of each class was spent on powerpoint. Slightly ironic.

~~~
bcohen5055
CS 101 is one of those foundational classes, learn the basics using nothing
fancy or flashy and you will come away with an understanding thats much deeper
and more helpfull when working on projects in 300 and 400 level classes with
the latest tools

------
esw
>Last night I read paper books. Today a professor talk about the books and
used a blackboard. I took notes on paper with a pen. Why has nothing changed
since my dad went to school.

Wait, what? My wife is a professor. In some of her classes, a significant
amount of student work is done online. Students have the option of buying an
electronic textbook. There are required online discussion sessions, online
exams, and interactive online supplemental materials (videos, self-guided
exercises, etc). I wasn't in college 12 years ago, so I guess I can't be sure
- but I would be surprised if these things were commonplace in 2002.

------
cweagans
I'm not sure I necessarily agree with the idea that these tools need to
change. They seem to work well, and there's a huge variety of tools to choose
from so everyone can choose the one that works best for them.

I would, however, argue that colleges need to shift from focusing on
broadcasting information to students to something else. Information is easily
accessible, and making somebody commit things to memory when it's a Google
search away seems silly. I have things committed to memory because I need them
and use them regularly, and not because somebody told me to learn it.

------
phantomb
Education is a business and college administrators want to spend as little as
possible. Radically changing things and incorporating new technologies costs
money.

There are plenty of students willing to fork over cash for the product as it
is now, and there is no competition to drive innovation. Prestige
requirements, accreditation requirements, etc. lock small schools and
newcomers out of the education market. It's also pretty obvious that the top
universities and their administrators are connected to each other and act
together to hold a monopoly on the business.

~~~
lbr
Colleges aren't the only ones at fault. They are part of the equation.

I'm also saying that the tools available to the student are weak or outdated.

------
mdonahoe
It depends on the school and the professor.

The most progressive schools put their lectures online, and use class time for
interactive q&a and group projects.

------
thackernews
Marlboro College in Vermont has an innovative approach to university studies

