
Surprising Things About School - shubhamjain
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/972346041189019648.html
======
artimaeis
> "Nearly everyone recognizes that MOOCs are by and large a failure with ~2%
> completion rates, but they make us feel good because now it’s the students’
> fault not they’re not learning, not the school’s"

I understand the context the author is approaching this from - but it
discounts the idea that MOOCs can be used the same way we use books.

I've utilized about a dozen different MOOCs and I've _never_ completed a
single one of them. Instead I learned the concepts I needed to, maybe
completed some test material if it was freely available, and moved on.

Some of those MOOCs were gateways into my career as a developer - so they were
absolutely vital to me. This again seems to be an issue with
measurement/metrics - I don't believe completion rates are worth that much in
MOOCs, just like they aren't worth that much in technical books.

~~~
tsumnia
Not knocking your own choices, but its more the backlash to the 2013 "MOOCs
are the greatest thing ever! KhanAcademy/EdX/Coursera! Wooo!" Personally, I
love them and would love to work with those companies. In fact, when I started
teaching, I used many of the aspects I saw MOOCs using in my traditional
classrooms.

However, there is a truth to the statement. Almost no one finishes a MOOC
(some never even log in to take MOOCs they register for), and predictive
models can determine whether someone will complete the MOOC as early as the
2nd week (if not sooner). Some people do grab what they want and leave, but
that is not the case for everyone. If we then look to justify why bother, its
a little hard to warrant hosting costs, etc. if you aren't seeing anything
come from it. If I ran a MOOC with a 95% fail rate, how can I label it
successful.

We are unable to do meaningful research on MOOC strategy effectiveness because
we are too busy trying to understand why people never log in in the first
place.

~~~
Chathamization
> some never even log in to take MOOCs they register for

I've done this many times. Why? On some platforms (like Coursera) you retain
access to the content of a course you have registered for, but that content
isn't available for people who didn't register once the class is over. If I
think I might ever want to view that content, my best bet is to register
(there's no cost) and then have that content available when I want it.

I've also done this on platforms like Udacity where that's not the issue,
because by registering I can create a curated list of courses I'm interested
in possibly looking at in the future.

In my experience, the big failings of MOOCs is that they try to copy
university classes, and university classes just aren't that good a lot of the
time. Many people don't find lectures to be useful at all, but the vast
majority of MOOCs focus on them. After the fifth time I'm stuck waiting for
the teacher to finish their long personal anecdote or humorous story I usually
give up on the MOOC and go looking for a good textbook.

I don't think I've ever seen a MOOC that had written content anywhere close to
the quality of Dive Into Python or Learn C the Hard Way.

Also, MOOC efforts for community building are (at least were) focused on a
particular class rather than a particular subject. This doesn't lend itself
well to long-term community building, especially when people are going through
these courses and very different paces.

There seems to be lots of discussion about how MOOCs can be improved, but not
much effort into actually trying different approaches.

~~~
tsumnia
> the big failings of MOOCs is that they try to copy university classes, and
> university classes just aren't that good a lot of the time

We are still trying to understand what makes for better "learning". If I
practice the piano everyday, I will no doubt have a better ability to play,
but I may not understand music theory. As a shameless plug, I am trying to add
practice to be a core part of learning Computer Science and a link to my
research platform is in my profile.

This is the same separate of vocational schools and coding bootcamps to
graduate schools. The traditional 4-year school sits in the middle ground
between application and theory and is probably why we have such difficulty
deciding "success".

> to finish their long personal anecdote or humorous story I usually give up
> on the MOOC and go looking for a good textbook

This is ultimately student preference. Some students like a more affable
teacher, some don't want a social-able instructor (so long as its not
interfering). I will say that your post is confusing as you say you don't want
instructor anecdotes but then MOOCs should be doing more for larger-scope
community building.

I will argue larger-scope community building is difficult and MOOCs struggle
with it; I would say because of its availability. It is harder to build
community when the individuals come from such diverse backgrounds. Many
factors can make it difficult to build bounds (social, cultural, temporal,
etc.). Furthermore, you cannot control why the student wants to take a MOOC.
They may not want to give that additional effort to community building for a
subject they do not perceive as having higher priority to other life
decisions.

I would disagree with "actually trying different approaches". This is being
done and academic journals are trying to study them (the deadline for the
Journal for Education Data Mining just passed). There are also non-academic
approaches like Duolingo and Khan Academy, and they are trying different
techniques as well.

Ultimately, there is no panacea for learning. We know engagement can lead to
learning and therefore if we can maintain engagement, we might be able to
teach. Community-building can be that engagement. Self motivation can be. At
that point we need to research these things more to know for sure.

~~~
Chathamization
> This is ultimately student preference.

Sure. But the last time I checked, almost all MOOCs were lecture focused. Like
I said, I've yet to find any with a text component as good as Dive Into Python
or Learn C the Hard Way or other free online textbooks. Perhaps there's are a
few out there, but every time I've browsed MOOCs I've found just about
everyone to be lecture focused. Out of the dozens I've looked at (on multiple
platforms) I can only think of one that wasn't, and that was eventually
removed.

Plenty of people use the internet to learn plenty of things. I think it's time
to consider how much of the "failure" of MOOCs is due to the failure of online
learning, and how much of it is due to the fact that university classes aren't
a great way to teach people things (at least for a large chunk of the
population).

> I will say that your post is confusing as you say you don't want instructor
> anecdotes but then MOOCs should be doing more for larger-scope community
> building.

Instructor anecdotes were an example of why I don't like lectures. With a book
you can scan over content that is superfluous and get to the information you
need. You can re-read or take slowly the parts you have trouble with, and
quickly skip over the parts you already know. All of this is much, much harder
to do with lectures.

I'm confused as to why you think professor anecdotes are related to large-
scope community building? They're quite different things, and if people view
them as serving the same purpose then there's even more of a misunderstanding
when it comes to education than I had previously believed.

As for the difficulty of community building, I think you should broaden your
horizons a bit. For instance, if you're a bit late on a Coursera course the
forums are pretty much dead, and you're better off discussing things or asking
questions on another site. Likewise with Udacity - the course might still be
active, but everyone that has completed the course has moved on and won't see
your message. This isn't because of a difficulty in community building, but
because of a conscious decision that most MOOCs take to segregate their forums
by class.

~~~
tsumnia
(I will ask if you could define "community building" a little more. You did
not in your original post, and it seems my assumption was incorrect. Before
trying to address better, I'd like to have a more concrete definition)

While I cannot speak for all MOOCS, I have not had the same experience. MIT's
CS 6.00x course on EdX was work heavy, Udacity's Web Development course was
work heavy, and even Coursera's Design of Everyday Things had participation
components. In the only (barely a) MOOC that was video only, it was
predominantly a "follow along with me" coding process.

For instructor lectures, I give more positive responses than negative about my
anecdotes. At the end of the day, I'm human and I'm trying to enjoy my job
(which students can tell if you don't). Development of tutoring systems is
still in research phases as we identify knowledge components for different
subjects. A history course operates different than a computer science course.

I will say EdX has produced research on instructor lecture videos. Users
prefer 3-5 videos and so instructors should design courses like that.
Instructors that simply upload a classroom lecture are not appropriately
transitioning their material for online use. This satisfies your being able to
flip from topic to topic.

I will end the Dunning-Kruger effect suggests that students are not the best
at assessing what they know and that a professional instructor has a better
idea of what "knowing" something means. This again gets back to my discussion
on vocational vs. graduate school and again, humans are flawed, imperfect
beings. While an intelligent tutoring system can alleviate this issue, humans
are still building them for the foreseeable future.

~~~
gymshoes
I searched for The Design of Everyday Things but I could only find a course
with this name on Udacity, not Coursera.

Can you check and confirm?

~~~
tsumnia
Ah, it was Udacity, not Coursera; my apologies

------
Normal_gaussian
"17\. People rely mainly on their parents for advice on what to do about
education, and that has to be among the worst places to go for educational
advice"

This one certainly hits me hard. With a mother who dropped out of university
and a father who didn't go myself and my sister both have good degrees (she's
a newly qualified Vet and I'm a startup's birth and death out of uni), and
nowhere to get decent advice.

I know a lot of advice I _did_ get was wrong, my professors basically said
they don't have good advice for me, and I _know_ I'm not making the most of
the experience I have behind me.

Searching for relevant mentorship is a _very very hard_ problem.

~~~
jackgolding
I started writing a comment to share my similar story of a blue-collar
upbringing, but realised that other than a few chance encounters most of the
relevant mentorship I have gotten was as a professional or read in
articles/books. The best things I've learned in life through tough lessons -
the trick is don't fail too hard.

The important stuff I learned before graduating my bachelors was things like:

1) It's better to be a small fish in the big pond (my career councillor told
me this when I was 16, I think I disagreed with it in my first 3 years of uni
but now I can totally agree.)

2) You don't owe anyone anything and you aren't tied to anyplace on earth (Mum
- grew up moving a lot so when I had an opportunity to attend a more
prestigious university my mum gave me a lot of support)

3) Always swap jobs every few years (my uncle worked for the same company for
18 years before being laid off - he has done well but nearly everyone he
started working with are execs now)

Most related to your comment is something I was told a few years after
university where I was pushing work to fast track my professional development
as much as possible. A senior manager told me there is only so much other
people can teach you, in the end you need to do the time and build the
experience.

~~~
bartedinburgh
Small fish in a big pond? I've heard a completely opposite advice stating that
"in a big pond" there's much competition, and dominating a small niche yields
better results. What is the rationale behind being a small fish in a big pond?

~~~
akvadrako
I can't see how either choice could be always correct. A small pond can have
great rewards, but also great risk. Like if it dries up totally.

~~~
andrewprock
I've been in both ponds, and I can honestly say that the small pond was more
interesting and personally satisfying. That was, until the pond did in fact
dry up.

The big pond on the other hand, pays a bit more but is much less interesting.
The big pond is almost certainly never going to dry up though.

------
VLM
The failure of MOOCs #10 is a failure of metric measurement.

In the old days if you wanted to learn something, often you'd pay $20 to $50
for a book. For example, Amazon order search claims that somewhere I have a
copy of "Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming" by Norvig, which is
supposed to be a decent book in the field, cool. Ironically maybe that IS the
textbook for the famous AI MOOC class, I don't know, maybe it should be if it
isn't. However I never finished the class, only glossed thru the book, and
barely remember either.

I was curious about the topic, not trying to meet someone elses arbitrary
goalpost, and the "graduates" metric isn't a useful number.

Kinda the difference between running because its a beautiful day out and I
need exercise, and running a competitive marathon against live athletes in
person solely for the goal of getting a number when I run thru a gate. I would
guess in the general public the former outnumbers the latter 50 to 1, so the
MOOC stats aren't unusual at all.

Another interesting analogy is "The Mona Lisa" painting is a failure if you
measure its worth solely based on number of PHD students graduating who give
it credit for them selecting "Art History" as a major. That doesn't mean it
needs to be burned as a failure.

~~~
austenallred
OP here (shocked to see this on HN):

The context is missing but is important. When I say MOOCs have failed I mean
something very specific: asynchronous online learning has proven to be so
dramatically less effective than synchronous, guided learning. Better than
nothing existing, but we’re learning that only a small subset of people are
able to effectively learn from them.

In other words, take a random sample of 100 people with the same level of
motivation. 90% will complete a live, guided course. 5% will complete a MOOC
of the same quality. Which is unfortunate because the live/synchronous part is
what is expensive.

There was a time when we thought all education was is just a bunch of video
lectures, and that if we got a bunch of professors to record their lectures
college would be free.

We now know that doesn’t work, at least for the vast, vast majority of people,
both because we’re unable to discipline ourselves and because most true
learning happens in a multi-way environment with accountability measures.

~~~
kbutler
How are you measuring the same level of motivation?

From my anecdotal experience, the people taking the "live, guided course" have
committed to:

    
    
      - synchronous attendance at a particular time, probably at a particular place
      - probably a dollar investment
      - face-to-face contact with instructor
      - near-traditional learning environment
    

People taking a MOOC have committed to:

    
    
      - browsing on an electronic device
    

There's generally a really high barrier to entry to the synchronous, guided
learning, so it seems like comparing students who have paid tuition and
enrolled in a class vs prospective students expressing interest on a
university recruitment page.

~~~
austenallred
There have been quite a few studies that have done this in a scientific
manner.

Internally we have taken sets of students that apply to our free “mini code
bootcamp” and sent half to an archived version published each night and send
the other half a live link that becomes an archive each night. So we didn’t
control scientifically, jsut an AB test, but the shift has been breathtaking.

We can also take students that are struggling learning from our MOOCs and they
finish the live course almost every time. I know the latter is unscientific,
but it becomes obvious over time.

~~~
randomdata
'Mini code bootcamp' suggests that your target audience is people looking for
careers? What are the end employment results like for all the participants?

For instance, are MOOC students more likely to not complete the course because
they have already found work in the meantime? Perhaps because they have more
freedom to look for work during business hours, for example, rather than
sitting in on a live class during the optimal employment search time?

If the goal is to find work, there is no incentive to keep going in the course
after you have met your goal.

~~~
austenallred
The "mini code bootcamp" doesn't prepare people for jobs, it is a "miniature"
version of code bootcamps. It actually only prepares you to _begin_ our full
computer science academy, which is six months long.

If you want the stats for our full computer science academy I can give you
those; they're good. 50% hired within one month, median $90k salary.

~~~
randomdata
Thanks for the clarification. I'm still most interested in the results of the
'failures'. What did the people who failed to compete the MOOCs end up doing?
How about those who succeeded with the mini live classes, but did not continue
into your full program?

~~~
austenallred
I don’t have a good sense for what the “failures” went on to do, they fall off
our radar.

~~~
randomdata
That is unfortunate, although I understand the practical reasons for why that
is the case. However, how do we resolve the bias of only looking at the
success stories? What if all of the 'failures' also went on to $90k average
development jobs within the first month of quitting the MOOC? $90k developer
jobs are not exactly difficult to come by in the current market to anyone who
has expressed an interest in programming. The fact that they were willing to
try a code bootcamp MOOC puts them miles ahead of the general population.

~~~
austenallred
As I stated above, we've A/B tested it with random samples, but it's hard to
get any data on "failure to complete" populations because of obvious sampling
bias

------
randomdata
_> Nearly everyone recognizes that MOOCs are by and large a failure with ~2%
completion rates_

I don't see how that is a failure? MOOCs are a platform for "just in time"
learning. If you run into a problem at work you're not going to sign up for a
four year university degree program to figure it out, but there is a good
chance you will sign up for a MOOC and drill down into the specific parts that
you need to close the gap to solve the specific problem you have. And when the
next problem arises, you may continue further into the course. There is no
reason to cover everything at once. This flawed opinion about failure may be
directly related to #3.

 _> Economically we vastly undervalue education._

Because it hasn't shown economic value. The percentage of the working age
population who have attained a postsecondary education has skyrocketed over
the past 50 years, but incomes have remained stagnant. If the more and more
people attaining a postsecondary education really were adding $10k to their
yearly income like the article suggests, incomes would be rising
substantially.

Those who have a degree, on average, make $10k more than those who don't. But
since this simply measures high-achieving people against low-achieving people,
income conclusions cannot be meaningfully drawn from it. It is important to
remember that universities and colleges reject the lowest-achieving people at
enrolment time, preventing them from signing up for class entirely. Medium-
achievers who make it past the initial filter are put through academic rigour
that sees them drop or fail out. That leaves only the highest achieving people
able to graduate.

Nobody should be surprised that high-achieving people are able to make more
money than low-achiving people. This would remain true even if colleges and
universities never existed. Finding something that correlates with high-
achievers does not tell us anything other than this group of people is more
likely to be high achieving.

Allowing more and more medium-achievers to graduate from university still
leaves them as medium-achievers in life and they will still end up in the
medium-achiever work that they always would have (after all, someone has to do
it). All while incomes remain stagnant.

~~~
watwut
MOOCs were propagated as alternative to traditional higher education. Not just
something educated people use to add to their education, but something an
uneducated person with high school diploma can use to get equivalent of
college. I remember reading those optimistic articles.

At that it failed. It is not cheaper education for non traditional non full
time student with lack of money. They drop out faster or equally fast then non
traditional students on colleges (who drop out a a lot too).

It is great free easy to use option for educated professional through. But,
that was not original sell.

~~~
randomdata
_> Not just something educated people use to add to their education, but
something an uneducated person with high school diploma can use to get
equivalent of college._

It seems premature to say that it isn't provided that. You have your _entire
life_ to gain a college-level education. The primary reason that brick and
mortar schooling is provided up front, in a relatively short span of time, is
because it is impractical to visit that brick and mortar school on a regular
basis throughout your entire life. Like the article points out, a major hurdle
for a large segment of the population in accessing brick and mortar schooling
is proximity to those brick and mortar schools.

Online learning has no such constraints. You can be out in the middle of
nowhere and still pop into class whenever you feel like it. If it takes you 80
years to complete your college-level studies, great. To say that is a failure,
only a few years after becoming available, seems to miss the point of what
alternative means. If a MOOC had to be exactly like brick and mortar
schooling, it wouldn't be an alternative, it would be the same thing.

Although I concede that a fatal flaw of MOOCs is that there are an infinite
number of options online. While it may be impractical to visit 100 different
brick and mortar schools to see who teaches a specific topic the best, online
it is easy to do so and can be done in an instant. With that, there is no
incentive to go through your studies only in one spot that can be tracked by a
single entity. This makes it challenging from a business perspective, but not
an education perspective.

~~~
zaarn
>The primary reason that brick and mortar schooling is provided up front, in a
relatively short span of time, is because it is impractical to visit that
brick and mortar school on a regular basis throughout your entire life.

I would rather say it's because neuroplasticity is high until you're still
relatively young. In later years it takes more effort to learn and retain.

~~~
randomdata
17% of college students are already over the age of 35 and that number is
growing[1]. This does not seem to be any kind of real impediment.

[1] [https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/back-
school-o...](https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/back-school-older-
students-rise-college-classrooms-n191246)

------
cardamomo
As a museum educator turned classroom teacher, this resonates with me.

Readings that may be relevant to those who find this Twitter thread
intriguing:

\- "On the Wildness of Children," on what kind of educational experiences we
might imagine for our children if we consider what children are like first:
[http://carolblack.org/on-the-wildness-of-children/](http://carolblack.org/on-
the-wildness-of-children/)

\- "Deschooling Society" (on my reading list):
[https://archive.org/embed/DeschoolingSociety](https://archive.org/embed/DeschoolingSociety)

~~~
baursak
You should also check out "Free to Learn" and "Free at Last" books, and
Sudbury school model. As a parent, it's something I've been contemplating a
lot, but haven't quite committed to yet.

------
peterwwillis
Some other surprising things about school:

\- parents care more about extracurricular and athletic pursuits than
academic. They'll help their kids play a sport, but rather than try to help
their children learn, they'll complain that the teachers are not doing their
jobs

\- children react to changes in environment the same way adults do, but this
isn't considered by schools because they know the students have no choice but
to comply

\- many children still go hungry at school, making learning difficult to
impossible

\- one in ten children are diagnosed with ADHD; somewhere between 1 in 20 and
1 in 10 may be on stimulants, antipsychotics, antidepressants, etc

\- private schools may pay half the salaries of public school teachers, and
their curriculums are not as strict (virtuslly no required curriculum)

\- children are still told today (by teachers) that they will be destitute and
homeless if they do not go to college, but they do not provide any extra
assistance either, making them either extra stressed or give up

\- teachers pay, pensions, etc and overall school budgets are still cut short
by politicians whenever they need to trim their budgets, while other areas of
budgets are increased

\- children in 8th grade often have a 3rd grade reading level in many parts of
the country, but especially major cities with a history of segregation and a
lack of access to jobs

\- some kids are still booted from one school to the next and used as scape
goats if anything negative is on their transcript

~~~
watwut
I can help my children to learn sport and I can help them learn math. I can
not help them learn subjects I have long forgotten or was never good at in the
first place.

I dont expect teachers to teach my kids sport, I do expect them to teach math
and history. Not sure what is wrong with that.

~~~
peterwwillis
I think what's wrong with that is assuming teachers even _can_ teach your
child things that even you weren't good at or can't even remember. Parents
seem to think teachers can do things they can't do. But they're not magicians.
They're normal adults with textbooks. Many times they're not even experienced
in the subjects they're teaching.

Teachers have to teach 30 kids at a time, who all have different backgrounds
and lives. They can't possibly give them all enough individual attention and
time. And somehow they're supposed to get them all to surpass all the factors
holding back each specific kid in a myriad of ways, to succeed at the same
material, at the same time, at the same pace.

They have to be babysitters, disciplinarians, counselors, role models, and
educators. And then they get yelled at by parents or lectured by
administrators for not keeping up to this standard. It's crazy. It's one of
the reasons so many teachers quit within five years. It's one of the reasons
it's so hard to find good teachers. And of course, they never pay them
accordingly.

If it weren't for the fact that teachers are idealistic and want to help
children learn, we'd have a nation of morons, because only desperate people
would subject themselves to this career.

~~~
watwut
> I think what's wrong with that is you assume that teachers even can teach
> your child things that even you weren't good at or can't even remember.

Teachers taught me things my parents were not goot at and did not remembered.
Right now, teachers are teaching my kids things I was never good at. A math
teacher I know (friend) it teaching kids math they parents down know - right
now. And I met kids, they do know that stuff.

So yes, teachers can teach kids what kids parents don't know.

In your attempt to defend teachers, you made them sound to be completely
useless. Some are, but plenty of them are not.

~~~
peterwwillis
They're not useless, they just have a job which is far more difficult than
people give them credit for. When some kids get bad grades, people point at
the teacher, even though other kids are getting good grades. Or the same
teacher teaching the same curriculum for 20 years will suddenly find their
whole class failing - and they point at the teacher. But the teacher never
changed.

------
triplesec
Pullout: "We had one student on the edge of homelessness, was $400 short on
bills and almost had to quit because of that. I personally loaned him the
money, and his income moved from $10/hr to $70k+/yr. It only took $400, but he
didn’t have anywhere to get that from. Insane."

~~~
icebraining
It's self-contradictory - he did have _somewhere_ to get it from :)

I'm only half-joking; I think the problem here is lack of information. That
the student was likely to move from $10/h to $70k/y is something that the
teachers might know, but random lenders probably don't.

On the other hand, I don't know if I want to see financial companies
partnering with schools to provide loans - seems ripe for abuse.

~~~
kthejoker2
The school should partner with one of those "we invest in you in return for 1%
of your life earnings" hedge funds.

That way it'd have easy access to short-term capital needs like this.

~~~
austenallred
OP here. We _are_ a school that is completely free and takes a percentage of
income (though for two years, not for life). Even still the $400 to make it
through the last month was a barrier.

We’re working on having a fund available for living expenses, but “I’m going
to pay you cash so you can go to school” is a different risk profile than
“This School is free until you’re hired.”

~~~
kthejoker2
That's awesome. The only reason the school should take the burden is to
distribute the risk pool and also theyre the most capable of providing some
value framework on whether this $400 or that $400 is a better investment.

I personally would loan money for this sort of thing if there was a reasonable
ROI and someone vetting the students.

------
romaniv
_> Nearly everyone recognizes that MOOCs are by and large a failure with ~2%
completion rates, but they make us feel good because now it’s the students’
fault not they’re not learning, not the school’s_

Before: simply getting familiar with a subject required me to jump through
bureaucratic admission hoops, go through arbitrary prerequisites, pay tons of
money, bend my life around some class schedule and then get mediocre lecturing
from some random guy who happened to teach the subject at the nearby
university at that time.

After: I can watch lectures from world-class professors and universities at
any time, starting with any difficulty level, on a wide variety of subjects. I
can also get free help from other people if I need to.

How is this a failure? MOOCs are one of the greatest thing that ever happened
to the Internet and education.

~~~
emodendroket
I think they are great if the alternative is nothing. I don't think they are
so wonderful if, as many have proposed, they start replacing regular classes
in universities people are paying to attend.

~~~
romaniv
I would be _ecstatic_ if I had an option to replace some of my university
classes with MOOCs. The leap in quality of lecturing would be gigantic. MOOCs
made me realize that most of the subjects in college I found "complicated"
really weren't. I just had horrendous professors and bad books.

I'm currently in the process of "fixing" my college education by watching
lectures on fundamental subjects like biology (which I never had in college
for some reason), chemistry (which was taught really badly) and linear algebra
(taught awfully). It's astounding how many new things I'm picking up.

Plus, there are classes like AI, Cryptography, Model Thinking and so on.
Nothing of this sort was available to me in college at all.

------
watwut
I think that 3 is consequence of 10 - prototype of working online school was
not created yet.

On 1: The "is this required" question is direct result of students being goal
oriented with their education and time. They do it because they want job or
because of social pressure. It sounds depressing, until you realize the
alternative is not caring about job when choosing what are you going to learn,
which is criticized in other points.

We can't have this one both ways. Either it is for purpose of job and they
will ask that question, or it is hobby and they will care less about utility
(e.g. job).

------
mattmanser
In the UK at least, 2 isn't true, loads of universities do follow ups to find
out where you are and what you earn and then advertise their post-degree
employment rates.

I, perhaps cynically, think some universities have even started "hacking" that
process. In Nottingham you can hire graduates from either of our 2 big
universities where the University pays part of their salary! [1]

[1] [https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/careers/employers/vacancy-
adver...](https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/careers/employers/vacancy-
advertising/nottinghaminternship.aspx)

~~~
rahimnathwani
My hunch is that these surveys would suffer from

1\. selection bias (unemployed or low-income graduates would feel embarrassed
to respond)

2\. the mean of the (biased) sample being much higher than the median (die to
outliers)

------
noelwelsh
Very interesting thread. I want to know how to measure effectiveness, beyond
"got a job". I think there is more to it than that, and getting a job doesn't
work as a yardstick in many contexts (e.g. most commercial training where
everyone already has a job.)

"99% of people, when left long blocks of time alone to work on something
without anyone to be accountable to, will watch Netflix." I have to agree with
this, and yet the appeal remains a deep mystery to me.

It's also worth noting that a number of those points are specific to the US
system. Basically anything involving money. The maximum tuition LambdaSchool
(OP's school) charges for six months is almost enough for three years of
tuition here in the UK, or about 50 years in Germany.

~~~
purple-again
Effectiveness is measured by intent. Those who go to University with the
intent of getting 'a job' measure their success by getting 'a job'. Those who
go to get a deep education on a specific topic...likely measure their success
based off their understanding of the topic when they leave.

In this day and age I would hazard a guess that over 90% over University
students...are there for a job and thats it.

------
austenallred
OP here, also happen to be a YC founder (S17 -
[https://lambdaschool.com](https://lambdaschool.com)). Shocked to see this on
HN.

A lot of people are asking me about number 7:

> 7\. We had one student on the edge of homelessness, was $400 short on bills
> and almost had to quit because of that. I personally loaned him the money,
> and his income moved from $10/hr to $70k+/yr. It only took $400, but he
> didn’t have anywhere to get that from. Insane.

We train people to be software engineers for free in exchange for a portion of
their future income for two years (we only get paid if they make above a
certain salary threshold doing what we train them to, otherwise we don't get
paid). So as a school we focus on eliminating the risk and upfront cost to the
student, which lets many brilliant people access a world-class education who
otherwise might not afford to. We're also incentivized to make the perfect
school that will cause you to be successful in your career, and those
incentives make an enormous difference.

The average stats from our first classes are remarkable: our average student
increased his or her annual income by over $40,000/yr, 50% were hired within
weeks, and the median salary was $90,000, including a lot of low-cost-of-
living areas.

Since we're paying for all the other costs of running a world-class school
without upfront revenue (we're spending over $300,000/month all-in right now),
we're not in the place to pay for living expenses as well, and currently
students need to cover their own living expenses for six months. Usually they
can live with family, some have part-time jobs, we do have a part-time
program, etc. but it's never easy.

This kind of small discrepancy forcing people to quit is something we see all.
the. time. I probably see a similar situation with different small dollar
amounts _weekly_. There are times when I am fairly confident I can swing
someone's future earning power by several million dollars, but I don't have
the thousand dollars it takes to do that. It's incredibly frustrating.

We can partner with lending companies, but if they're paying for students'
living expenses they also require students to pay their tuition upfront and be
saddled with debt, which goes against our mission, and we think there has to
be a better way.

I'm looking into raising some sort of non-profit, living-expenses-only
fund/endowment to lend during these sorts of shortfalls, but I'm new to
raising nonprofit dollars. If anyone has any suggestions I'm happy to hear
them. I don't have a good sense of what the interest rates would need to be
for this to work in a for-profit world, so we'll see.

~~~
tsumnia
With respect to #15 and 16, how is LambdaSchool not the same AND what happens
if your numbers do not go as projected? How will you avoid becoming these
points in the future if LambdaSchool does not gain traction?

~~~
austenallred
We don't get paid unless our students get a job (we're $0 until you're making
$50k), so we would go out of business if that didn't happen.

We have 3x as much coursework as code bootcamps, spend a lot of time in lower-
level fundamentals, spend time in CS theory, write JavaScript, Python, and C.
It's a pretty big difference from "build your first javascript app!"

------
andreykurenkov
" 99% of people, when left long blocks of time alone to work on something
without anyone to be accountable to, will watch Netflix."

Do people on here agree with this? I think that is far too cynical...
education (even this guy's education) tends to be misaligned from a person's
actual interests, and so most would rather not do it in their free time. But I
do think people want to do work/productive things and not just watch Netflix.

~~~
ebiester
It depends. Most people are exhausted at the end of the workday. It isn't the
time that is the key component; it's the energy.

Give me a few days to a week of pure relaxation, and my creative juices start
to flow.

------
sp332
_We’ve been reworked purely for extrinsic reward and forgotten how to learn
entirely. The most frequently asked questions we get are “is this required?”
and “donwe get a certificate for this?” It’s sad_

If the students had their own projects that they were working on, would you
know about it? Offhand I'd guess they have things they'd rather be working on
than your assigned coursework, so if there's no benefit, why do it?

~~~
mcguire
See note 9.

~~~
bsenftner
Note 9 is why I gave up trying to mentor developers.

Relevant background: I've held a career that is a dream of high profile
projects: game studio owner at age 17, beta developer for original Mac in '83;
on Mandelbrot & DeVanney's original Fractal research team, 3D graphics
research community during the 80's; engineer on the 3DO and then original
PlayStation OS teams; 15 years as a lead game developer of major release
titles; 5 years VFX developer and artist and financial analysis for 9 major
release VFX heavy feature films; and now 10 years in machine learning and
facial recognition.

I love to mentor developers. I ran a free coworking space for 3 years where I
tried mentoring many, many starting-their-career developers. I also have both
undergrad and graduate school teaching experience.

Out of perhaps 3 dozen mentoring situations, only 2 people actually took the
opportunity seriously. Both of them went from nearly minimum wage shit coding
jobs to real development companies making in excess of $70K. The other 34
people I tried to mentor never even finished the first "let's see if this
person is serious" task I gave them.

~~~
austenallred
You should chat with us. Filtering for interest is important, but is very
possible. We have 300+ very motivated students enrolled right now from
thousands of interested applicants.

~~~
bsenftner
Lambda School - I'll contact your organization... which contact should I use?
I can only find prospective student contacts.

~~~
austenallred
careers@lambdaschool.com

~~~
bsenftner
got it.

------
carlmr
I disagree with #6. I always felt like getting a degree is such a huge waste
of time, but I need to jump through this hoop to get a job for which I didn't
require much more knowledge than the programming knowledge I had after high
school (self-taught).

But then again I went to school in Europe with cheap tuition, so time is the
biggest investment here.

~~~
fwdpropaganda
"I always felt like getting a degree is such a huge waste of time" is a
humblebrag.

There, I said it.

~~~
hodl
I don't think its a humblebrag. I take it as someone who wants to get on and
code but the system requires a hoop to be jumped through.

~~~
dpark
It really is. It's kind of "I'm so awesome that I learned nothing of value in
4 years at a university". Which is a sad waste of time if true.

~~~
carlmr
That's not what I said though. I learned many interesting things, but most of
them aren't directly of value to work. I don't regret having studied, I saw a
lot of cool stuff. But it's a very long time investment which doesn't lead to
an equal ROI in terms of work output if you ask me. It leads to a good ROI
mostly in terms of employment offers and salaries, because it has signaling
value.

~~~
fwdpropaganda
> I learned many interesting things, but most of them aren't directly of value
> to work.

What did you study, and what do you do for work?

~~~
carlmr
Electrical and computer engineering, and I'm working on embedded systems
software in engine control units.

------
red_admiral
About that 2% completion rate.

Organisation A runs a traditional class that takes in 100 students. 50
complete it.

Organisation B runs a MOOC that, with a bit of advertising, gets 2500 people
to sign up for free. 50 complete it.

Maybe my made-up numbers are off by orders of magnitude. But "2% completion
rate" on its own doesn't sound so terrible if it reaches a much wider audience
to start with - which both "free" and "online" could contribute to.

I have signed up to many MOOCs and completed a couple. I consider that a net
benefit. MOOCs are not going to replace university education any time soon in
my opinion, but for people who don't have the university option in the first
place or want to take a single course every now and then they're a great
thing.

~~~
throwawaymsft
It sounds fine in theory -- people are being helped -- but in practice, I
don't think it's so simple.

People _register_ for a course, presumably, with the goal of finishing it.
(Otherwise, why not do a google/wiki search for topic X? Find that specific
topic on youtube/MIT OCW?)

When the vast majority of people fail to complete the goal, you decrease their
confidence in the process. Unless someone starts with strong academic
confidence, they may be demoralized by giving up/failing a course. We
shouldn't be happy that 5% of people enjoy high school math class if 95% of
people graduate hating it, and never touch the subject again.

We can move goalposts and now pretend that MOOCs primarily exist as a random
buffet of knowledge and not replacements for actual courses, but that's not
how they were positioned.

"That pill I sold you, turns out it's no better than placebo... but placebos
are 30% effective, so it all worked out, right?"

~~~
dragonwriter
> People _register_ for a course, presumably, with the goal of finishing it.

Most of the free MOOCs I've registered for I've not really had a particularly
strong intent to finish. (Paid MOOCs are a different story.)

> (Otherwise, why not do a google/wiki search for topic X? Find that specific
> topic on youtube/MIT OCW?)

Because of a preference for interactive vs. static content, for one thing.

> We can move goalposts and now pretend that MOOCs primarily exist as a random
> buffet of knowledge and not replacements for actual courses, but that's not
> how they were positioned.

Actually, being low-barrier-to-entry so as to support more experimental, low-
commitment exploration—which logically implies a lower completion rate—is a
big part of how free MOOCs were positioned.

------
twblalock
> 1\. Students’ brains are broken by our existing system. We’ve been reworked
> purely for extrinsic reward and forgotten how to learn entirely. The most
> frequently asked questions we get are “is this required?” and “donwe get a
> certificate for this?” It’s sad

I suppose this is sad for academics, who teach as though they expect all of
their students to become academics. But the students are just being realistic
-- for almost all of them, an education is preparation for a career. I was in
academia for a little while and it was amazing how many professors just didn't
understand that.

------
edanm
A new book just came out by economist Bryan Caplan, called "The Case Against
Education".

The basic thesis is that school isn't mostly about teaching/learning - it's
mostly about signaling to future employers that you are smart enough (and
conformist enough) to get through school. He guesses it's about 80/20 between
signaling and actual education.

It's interesting to read most discussions of education with that idea in mind
- his assumptions solve a _lot_ of puzzles of how/why education works the way
that it works.

------
dandersh
"1\. Students’ brains are broken by our existing system. We’ve been reworked
purely for extrinsic reward and forgotten how to learn entirely. The most
frequently asked questions we get are “is this required?” and “donwe get a
certificate for this?” It’s sad"

That's because they are responding to the incentives that have been placed
before them. Learning, when it happens, is done so in the pursuit of some form
of achievement/validation (grades, test scores, etc.) Yes, properly evaluating
learning capacity and knowledge accumulation is difficult, evidenced by the
popularity of algorithm/fizzbuzz whiteboard problems. However the major issue
is that culturally there is a lack of passion towards accepting ignorance and
trying to learn ("We'll fix the problem with common sense"!), as well an open
hostility by some towards those that are educated.

"9\. 99% of people, when left long blocks of time alone to work on something
without anyone to be accountable to, will watch Netflix."

This is caused partly (if not mostly) from issue number 1: Self direction and
self control is absent from schooling. When no one is around to tell you what
to do and yell at you when you don't do it, it's no surprise then that people
lack the interest and discipline to pursue self-education when it is available
to them.

------
AnimalMuppet
> Everyone knows too many people attending universities don’t consider the
> financial burden, but NO ONE thinks about the time. Four years is a LONG
> time, but it doesn’t enter into peoples’ thinking generally when deciding if
> they should get a degree

You're right, I _hadn 't_ thought about the time. From 18 to 65 is 47 years;
four years is a significant chunk of that. It's still a reasonable chunk if
you come out of it with a degree that helps you get a good job (or, to worry
less about credentials, with training that makes you more productive, or a
mental framework that improves your life). But if you spend the four years,
don't get a degree (or don't get one that gets you anywhere), and don't learn
anything life-changing, four years is a _lot_ of time.

------
georgeecollins
> "Most universities, surprisingly, have no way to measure their
> effectiveness, and most don’t try. If you can’t measure effectiveness you
> can’t fail."

I don't know the facts-- and none are presented in the tweet-- but I do have a
friend whose very job is to run studies on the effectiveness of programs at a
University. I am sure this person is not alone.

Even if "most" (asserted) universities don't have a way to measure their
effectiveness, the fact is that many of the best do and they all tend to
benchmark each other. I would be really curious what the author is basing his
assertion on because I think it is likely schools research a lot of things
(like their effectiveness) but don't release that information publicly for
many reasons.

~~~
UncleEntity
I see billboards and the busses that shuttle people between the different ASU
campuses going on about their effectiveness all the time.

#1 school for this metric.

In the Top 10 for some other metric.

Even the small California state school I went to goes on and on about the
things they're good at...Environmental stuff and getting grads into the Peace
Corp.

~~~
georgeecollins
Right, and they know a lot about things they may have reasons not to share.
Like, what majors are people likely to drop out of, which groups they accept
are least likely to finish.

------
nmca
Anecdotally, I think I signed up for a MOOC back when that's what you had to
do to hear Hinton's explanation of RMSProp. Of course I didn't complete it; I
just fished out the bit I needed. I'm deeply dubious of these completion
metrics...

------
nazgulnarsil
If MOOCs are an even better measure of conscientiousness than live courses
then the market should eventually price that in.

------
RandComment
> Lack of access to a computer almost kept some of our best students from
> being able to attend. Those aren’t expensive.

This is a bias from the lower middle to upper class. A computer without some
knowledge or support to maintain it (more costs) make that price rise.

