
Ask HN: Is online self-education useful or just delusion? - DrNuke
HN is the cream of the high-octane tech intellectual powerforce out there so I have no doubts many and many will contradict my point: online self-education is a delusion because passive enthusiasts and desperate folks do not just really need tools but a purpose or a market. A purpose is needed to apply that knowledge in a domain (but few have a domain knowledge), a market is needed to get money from the effort (but remote work is actually not so easy &amp; available). More in general, the very recent democratisation of knowledge opens the average joes and marys from marginal markets, minorities etc. etc. to a nice range of personal opportunities to climb the ladder but also to exploitation and depression, once they understand they are still where they started from. I want to say that the world still needs local hubs with real persons from different backgrounds with different needs to create and sustain a market, so possibly knowledge dissemination should come on top of other actions to make a real impact for a great number of persons.
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Someone1234
(1) Learn something.

(2) Develop a portfolio (e.g. Github) leveraging #1

(3) Apply for jobs leveraging #1 & #2

(4) Apply for your next job leveraging #1, #2, and #3.

(5) Repeat

Honestly the route of a traditional college education is exactly the same,
except replace #2 with "a magical piece of paper which asserts I know #1."
People sometimes struggle because they jump from #1 to #3, and have no way of
showing they can apply the knowledge obtained in #1.

But it really depends what you're learning. If you took a bunch of mechanical
engineering self-taught courses, it is unlikely anyone is going to let you
design a bridge. Whereas technology related fields are a little bit more
flexible.

Going this route will always exclude you from some jobs, since they have hard
requirements for a college degree. But there's plenty of small-medium
businesses that only want to see you can do the work they want doing and will
accept their low[er] initial salary.

~~~
whatyoucantsay
> _But it really depends what you 're learning. If you took a bunch of
> mechanical engineering self-taught courses, it is unlikely anyone is going
> to let you design a bridge._

And yet Elon Musk, who studied aerospace on his own, is building rockets. John
Carmack, who holds no degree at all, has done the same on a smaller scale.

Who let them?

~~~
znpy
Statistically, Elon Musk and John Carmack are "outliers".

Also... Would you let a self-though doctor put his hand on you? Yeah he/she
did not go to a "formal university" and he did not do practice in a "real
hospital" but hey, HE READ A BUNCH OF MEDICINE BOOKS!

~~~
whatyoucantsay
Capitalizing entire words doesn't strengthen your case.

To answer your question, yes I would in cases where they are more educated
than their schooled counterparts in the specific help I need. This is less
common in medicine than in art, business or science, but it is not unheard of.
In those cases, I would, and I have.

You should realize that with the exception of surgeons, most doctors _lose_
skill throughout their careers. After medical school, doctors tend to slowly
get worse in diagnostics and often ossify whatever was the best practice when
they graduated. This is _particularly_ clear in nutrition. Surgeons are an
exception, due to the rapid feedback their work offers.

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protonimitate
Personally I think the issue is that we have come to accept and perpetuate the
idea that college education is the main path to a high paying, well respected
career. Higher education has essentially become a gateway to salaried jobs.

IMHO post-high school education should refactor to become more like a trade
school system. 95% of the educational programs offered in university have
little or nothing to do with real world job duties. For the few excepts
(medicine, engineering, etc), the curriculum's are essentially split into
theoretical knowledge and practical experience already (med
school/residencies, lectures/internships, etc). I think that all colleges
should become job training programs. Model it after already existing trade
school programs where you spend two years split between real job experience
and class room learning. This would give employers access to lower-cost labor
in exchange for real-world experience.

Is online self-education delusion? Yes and no. A completely self taught
education will never be held up to the same esteem as a 4 year degree. It's a
bad filter, and I question any company who hires based on degree/no degree
alone, but it's the filter that we've been trained as a society to use.

The quality of online education can be the same if not better than standard
university. The difference rests on the education seekers ability to learn.

Online self-education is delusional in the fact that it is not a
quicker/easier track to employment. But that's a symptom of a broken
educational and workforce system, and not of online-education.

~~~
mixmastamyk
From experience, most of the coveted companies locally throw resumes without a
four year degree in the trash as the first step of the hiring funnel.

~~~
dsacco
Which companies are the coveted ones? Off the top of my head, Google, Apple,
Facebook and Amazon happily hire people without degrees. Bloomberg and Goldman
Sachs also do it. The lucrative private companies I can honestly think of that
_really_ won’t consider it are usually small and discreet, not well known and
widely pursued.

You still need to pass the interview hazing, and structurally you won’t be
“inducted” the same way new graduates are. But if you have prior experience
most of these companies will take a look. Even recruiters contact people
without degrees. In particular, back when Laszlo Bock was in charge of
recruiting at Google he’d routinely say they hired non-graduates because none
of their interviewing metrics appeared to have a strong correlation with
employee success.

~~~
mixmastamyk
The companies you mention may in theory, but when a hundred resumes (coveted
co/pos) show up guess who's go in the trash first? (With a friend on the
inside it is different.)

In LA, it's JPL, SpaceX, Hulu, etc. I've applied at all these for jobs with
twenty years experience and my resume doesn't last an hour in their system.
Even had a previous job in aerospace at Rockwell.

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znpy
It is a huge delusion.

Its promise was to bring education to all those who couln't previously reach
it, either geographically, financially or for for time reason (fulltime work
and no time to actually attend lessons).

Instead, it brought higher education to those who already had a formal
education (see Udacity's OMS-CS) or by offering non-degree, informal
"certificates" (edX's micro-masters and Coursera's certificates).

So if you want to get your bachelor's on-line, well you're out of luck. You
can still access many courses (which is nice), and end up with a patchwork of
knowledge that is certainly better than nothing, but is still a patchwork with
all the things that this implies.

So yeah, imho online education did not disrupt a thing. Universities are still
doing the same old thing, and very little changed.

"Online education" is a nice thing, but it is also definitely a failure in the
end (as did not achieve its original purpose).

~~~
whatyoucantsay
Doing certificates on edX and Coursera is the wrong path. Their certificates
and "micro-masters" or "nano degrees" are worthless.

The way you do it is you go through a full 4-year program on MIT's OCW. You do
the same assignments and write the same tests actual students did a decade
ago. Then you take a GRE subjects test.

Whether or not you use the score to enter a graduate school, it carries
weight. The same is true for those who self study through one or preferably
two or three levels of the CFA examinations.

~~~
znpy
> The way you do it is you go through a full 4-year program on MIT's OCW. You
> do the same assignments and write the same tests actual students did a
> decade ago. Then you take a GRE subjects test.

Well surely you can do everything in your free time, but MIT is still not
going to give you a degree of any kind for doing a full 4-year program on MIT
OCW.

~~~
whatyoucantsay
Yes. This is exactly why it's important to do a rigourous exam such as a GRE
subject test or a CFA.

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nickjj
I think it's useful.

Everything I've learned about web development over the last 20 years has came
from a combination of personal experience and self guided education (assorted
free content and paid courses).

Courses are fantastic because you get the benefit of having an entire
curriculum planned out for you as well as support from whoever is taking or
running the course.

Not only that but if it's a good course, it's usually filled with a bunch of
context, real world examples and thought processes from the instructor. These
things can't be learned without a ton of experience, so in a way you're
getting projected in the future with knowledge that may have taken years for
you to figure out on your own.

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DoreenMichele
Formal education has two purposes:

1\. Convey knowledge.

2\. Credentialing.

Self education can serve the first purpose, but not the second. Make sure you
are clear which one you are wanting here.

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jfaucett
I wanted to make that distinction as well. It is very important. The internet
and ed-tech have quite clearly been fantastic for the motivated learners who
want to teach themselves. It has made imho largely zero dent into doing away
with the credentialing problem. And the credentialing is the #1 reason people
go to school i.e. to get a degree, social bragging rights, and a job, its
essentially a showoff function with real monetary rewards. This is the main
factor of why people go to higher ed. If it were to learn the system would
look vastly different and have a much different design. This much, however, is
not obvious since very few people will actually admit this is the primary
reason - education policy legislatures included.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Well, credentialing is important because it allows people who don't really
understand what you do to judge if you are worth hiring. If you trust the
credentialing authority, the credentials have meaning.

If you aren't looking for a job per se, they aren't important. If you want to
make money online or start a business, they aren't important.

And that's something not everyone understands.

~~~
ccajas
What if someone doesn't have the time investment to go back to school to get
the adequate credentialing they need... eg. they need a full-time stable
income to live, and this also rules out risking stable work for an internship.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I'm not clear what you are asking. Short answer: sucks, I guess.

But you can also look for scholarships or for other avenues to do the sort of
thing you want to do. You list your needs, wants, etc and try to come up with
solutions.

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ccwu_on_hn
The question needs to be further defined, as usefulness can be evaluated in
broad ways. To refactor the question:

1) Intrinsic usefulness, for personal improvement, satisfaction, development
or solving one's own itch. Online self education is transformative. There was
a time when specialized knowledge and technical knowledge was difficult to
obtain. Unless you lived in a large city or a university town, your book
choices were limited. There was no Amazon, no stack overflow, no abundance of
technical content. For intrinsic benefit, online self-education is
unequivocally yes.

As far as whether online self education is useful for participation in the
employment market is less clear. At this time, it is not clear whether online
self education has the signaling value to the market. This is less clear. If
there is some form of certification that can be universally agreed upon then
it will have more value. However at this time, this doesn't exist.

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John_KZ
I agree with your main idea. Online self-education was implicitly promising
stable, well-paying jobs for the people without the means for formal studies.

But instead of governments standardizing, expanding and accrediting these
tools, they were abandoned. They are now only used to supplement normal
studies.

In my opinion, the reason for that is preserving the status quo. We're used to
the rhetoric of merit-based job distribution and knowledge/productivity based
salaries.

If a country created university programmes that were nationally accredited (ie
by taking tests with physical presence in addition to online classes) then
high-paying jobs would be available to everyone. Or would they? Because to a
large extent, university degrees are useless without connections. If everyone
had access to higher education, the lie that the poor are just lazy and stupid
would collapse, exposing the nepotism and corruption of corporate and
government jobs, and also empowering the people to take over these jobs
themselves.

You can see this difference in the contrast between countries like the US,
where higher education is unreachable for most people, and thus owning a
degree guarantees almost 10x higher salaries than the poor, and the many
countries in the EU where free or subsidized education results in much lower
wage inequality.

Making education so accessible that you can earn a degree by watching 2-3
hours of lectures per day would disrupt the current situation completely,
exposing many pathologies of both the educational and employment systems.

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6ak74rfy
There is another class of people who seek online education and actually
benefit from it: enthusiasts with the sole purpose of learning something new.
I know a guy at work who, while being a software developer, happily does
online biology courses on the side.

On another note, I think mentors and a strong network helps in extracting
purpose out of online learning. As software developers, a lot of us tend to
undermine the importance of networking, especially in finding new jobs or
growing within a company.

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Buldak
Even if most people aren't cut out to be "Good Will Hunting" auto-didacts,
it's hard not to see wider availability of learning materials as a positive
development. When it comes to risks of exploitation, I'm more worried that
universities will increasingly leverage online courses as a way to increase
their profits at the expense of their students' learning experience.

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Spellchamp
My experience with this is related to music, but since software engineering is
similarly flexible with regards to qualifications, I'm sure it could apply.

I'm totally self-taught in music, using mostly books and the internet to
begin, then just real world experience playing in jams and gigging for free
with strangers. Eventually, I was able to fund myself in university through my
post grad just by playing bass in a band. Auditions where you can show what
you can do(by literally playing for others) isn't too dissimilar to coding
exams in interviews, as well as having a "portfolio" of sorts.

So I would say that self-education is definitely useful. Although I've not
experienced it in the world of software, I have first hand experience in it's
usefulness elsewhere.

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ksk
Whether you learn things online or in a classroom, in some sense there is
always going to be a disconnect between academia and industry. Industry is
where the rubber meets the road and academia is about abstracting it to a
circle and line problem. I suppose trade schools could serve as a bridge in
that regard. This is indeed a massive generalization, but I've found that
people who are left brain dominant, and always in the habit of "citing" stuff,
execute poorly on real life projects which are messy, will always have a lot
of unknowns and deal with human factors.

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zapperdapper
> online self-education is a delusion because passive enthusiasts and
> desperate folks do not just really need tools but a purpose or a market.

I believe you are accusing online education of giving people ("passive
enthusiasts and desperate folks" in your words) false hope?

I would contend the world is a better place for having free online education.
Removing that would not address issues around 'purpose' or 'market'.

The job market is definitely there, although I am not quite sure why you
single out 'remote work'.

With regards 'purpose' that can be defined by, and depends on, the individual.
For example, learning about art history online might help with that novel you
are writing.

I think your bone of contention is more with 1) the job market 2) the process
of being credentialed.

Free online learning resources were never intended to address these issues and
in many ways they can never do so.

I think what is needed (and I believe there are some options already
available) is an open degree credentialing system. The way this would work is
there would be an open syllabus that could be downloaded freely, with various
learning outcomes and expectations provided. Examination requirements would be
clearly specified. The student would then study from any or all of the
available resources, and when fully prepared would attend an examination
centre to sit the exams.

In the UK you can do this already at GCSE and A level (there are some
restrictions to this). You can download syllabus from the relevant exam board,
example exam questions, recommended resources etc. You can study online
resources, recommended text books and so on. You can even hire a personal
tutor if you need to and there are some entities that will provide all the
materials you need. What really needs to be done is for this to be expanded up
to degree level and possibly beyond. So potentially the only thing you would
pay for is to sit the exams. Of course this cannot address issues around
market demand - that is more down to economic considerations, not the
availability of online education.

So, I agree with you in the sense that free online education does not solve
all problems, but then nor does a university education guarantee you a job or
a purpose either!

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anon1253
I have no expectation that my online learning will amount to anything other
than just plain fun. I learned, to some extend, astrophotography and
astronomy, day trading, machine learning, and many other minor skills on just
an undergraduate (BSc) degree in AI. I have absolutely no illusion that
anybody in their right mind will ever hire me on just the online learning.
It's just for fun. I didn't know how to do something, now I do. That's all
there is to it I think. The rest is mostly just luck and having a big mouth.

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rs86
It is a thing. I don't think any online course can beat a good teacher in a
small classroom, but online courses can take you a long way, and are wonderful
for the broad variety of courses available. YouTube recordings of university
lectures are also very useful - MIT has excellent courses available for
watching. Self-learning is not suitable for everyone, but if you have
discipline and the ability to understand how things fit together in a subject,
it can really work.

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resolaibohp
You have the choice to make online education useful, this would be the same in
a traditional education as well.

The only thing that matters between these two different approaches to learning
is if you can create value with the knowledge you gained. That is the only
thing people will pay for, value.

There is no clear path to demonstrate the value you can create from the
knowledge you gained and this is where I think a lot of people get lost.

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kleer001
Why the false dichotomy?

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lucas_membrane
'Useful' toward what end? Beware that thinking related to "personal
opportunities to climb the ladder" is going to be shaped, probably a little
too much, in this forum by the technologies and economic forces now producing
what passes for wealth and happiness. The current thinking is that the world
and the future belong to the young, that young thinkers, leaders and workers
have the greatest impact, and that any misstep causing a loss of speed coming
out of the chute will predictably lower the path of life's trajectory, which
inevitably peaks around age 35. Within that world view, one must learn as much
as one can as fast and as early as one can, and personalized full-time
education face-to-face with skilled teachers is a great advantage as long as
it does not last too long.

Another perspective to consider accepts that one has a time to be young, and
with some probability our paths traverse times to be mature, middle-aged, old,
older, and superannuated. With this in mind, the argument for optimizing the
entire path is strong. Find a way to do that, and you will be called wise.

Your question does not mention age and does not say that you are young. I
should not assume that. Lack of lifelong learning is an alleged driver of the
hideously extensive withdrawal from productive work now seen in persons who
have reached age 40 or more. Unfortunately, widely available and affordable
full-time education face-to-face with skilled teachers for persons of any age
is not a feature of the current educational landscape that I know, so lifelong
learning cannot proliferate unless it contains a considerable dose of self-
education.

Consider that much of education, regardless of context, is self-education.
Almost everyone learns almost everything best by doing it, and sadly, learns
it fastest from their own mistakes. The greatest value of skilled teachers may
be that they illuminate the learners' blind spots, but skilled peers can also
do the same. Of course, learning styles, psychology, background, culture and
personality determine who can learn what from whom, but a mixture of teacher-
led and self-driven education may be best.

If education is a process sustained by society so that its citizens know what
the good life is and are capable of making good lives possible with the goal
that the citizens will actually live good lives, the proper time to evaluate
our educations is when those lives reach completion. This means that now we
should be considering the lives of those educated back in the 1940's and
1950's and evaluating the benefits and deficiencies of those educations
accordingly. Similarly, a young person choosing a course of education today
should at least spend a little time trying to think ahead to 2080 and project
what they will then be glad they learned in 2018 and what they will wish they
had learned in 2018.

The practical wisdom used to be, "To play billiards competently is a sign of a
good education. To play billiards too well is a sign of a squandered
education." Good luck.

