

No Matter Where You Went, Your Education Wasn’t the Best - eas
http://www.avidior.org/blog/2008/02/08/no-matter-where-you-went-your-education-wasnt-the-best/

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aston
The math is wrong and ultimately not even related to the point. Why include
it? I would've preferred a post consisted of the 3rd and 2nd to last
paragraphs.

~~~
mechanical_fish
No kidding. Trying to compute the odds that a particular hour of your life was
spent in the "best" possible way is a recipe for misery, even when it's not an
actual symptom of mental illness.

Somebody needs to read _The Paradox of Choice_.

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DaniFong
A good education is a more personal and independent experience than the
article seems to imply. Rarely are the words or presentation of lectures the
most valuable thing a school produces; most importantly, education often
involves joining a learning community (or synthesizing one's own). This is not
trivial: examples on the internet so far produced remain unusual. The video
lecture is usually quite awkward: I hazard that it will always remain a
limited form, unable to really support much attention or community.

~~~
eas
I think you are totally right given the current state of video lectures--they
are like the first movies, just awkward translations of stage plays that don't
take advantage of the ways that a film can be different and better. I'd much
rather see a lecture in person today, all else equal. But I imagine as
innovators take advantage of the digital media, we'll see some pretty cool
stuff one day: higher production values, Second Life-style virtual worlds,
more interactivity, HD, and Discovery Channel-type content that can better
compete with live lectures. Right now, though, we are definitely on that
second Innovator's Dilemma line where digital lectures only compete with the
low end and non-consumption, the way maybe NAND memory used to.

Also, I agree that community is a big deal, and the number one thing we are
missing to really take advantage of all the cool content that is coming out.
(But I do think other video-based works, like Lost or Serenity or Star Trek,
have been able to support both attention and community.)

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mattmaroon
His logic is that because your college isn't the best for you at each
individual class, it isn't the best for you overall. That's stupid. One must
be. If there are 2,000 colleges and you chose one at random, you'd have a
1/2,000 chance of having chosen the best. Not (1/1000)^35 or whatever that
moron came up with.

Not to mention it's most likely that the top x are all so close to the best
for an individual, if such a thing could truly be quantified, that the
difference between them is negligible. Let's say that the top 5% are that way,
you now have a 5% chance, given random selection. Add in the fact that people
don't attend random colleges, and there's a pretty non-zero chance that you're
attending the college you should. Most people probably fail, but even then not
be enough that it would have been worth the massive effort required.

I'm guessing from his abominable logic that this guy went to the wrong
college.

~~~
eas
Thanks for pointing that out to me, I should have been clearer in my analysis.
I've added an update to the bottom, and hopefully that helps: "...also please
note that I am talking about the best _possible_ education relative to what
_could be_ if you were somehow able to take a series of the best classes
offered anywhere. I am sure your education was just great in some absolute
sense…just like the Red Sox are pretty good at baseball, even if the All-Star
team might be better."

Maybe a web analogy will work better. There is one blog (or group of blogs)
today that's the most informative for you. It's a great blog, it's updated
frequently, and you like it a lot. Which blogs you read is not random--you've
checked out a lot of them, and you know what you like. But what if we could
create some sort of blog aggregator that posted links to the best posts of the
best blogs? That could be a cool thing, right?

~~~
mattmaroon
Also it depends on how you look at it. By some metrics of "best" there are
clear leaders. For instance, if your goal in college is to land a job running
a hedge fund afterwards, it's pretty clear you should get a Harvard MBA. The
title and connections you get from there are far more important than any
classes.

~~~
eas
Agreed. For good or ill, much of the (monetary) value of education is from
what others think of it. You are totally right that if someone has a specific
job like that mind, where the education is more a filtering and networking
service than anything else, those odds (if you can really calculate them
anymore, it's almost just pure recruiting stats at that point) get cut way
down.

For those coveted private equity/VC/hedge fund jobs, if you can get in to the
Harvard MBA program, you are probably getting pretty close to certain that HBS
is the single best school for that (Stanford/Wharton may disagree), all else
equal. The individual professors, classes, your learning style, what you
actually learn, and any other individual preferences, almost wash away as non-
factors in light of the credential. Good point. We may have to distinguish
between an education and a degree though?

I probably should have been clearer on that as well--I was just narrowly
focusing on the actual knowledge-gaining/learning aspect of education. Worth
noting the other side though as we abstract away from pure learning.

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alaskamiller
unless it's harvard <http://rccse.whu.edu.cn/college/sjdxkyjzl.htm>. then you
win. or something.

