
A new crop of hands-on universities - tdaltonc
http://www.economist.com/news/international/21701081-latest-push-disrupt-higher-education-new-crop-hands-universities
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vonnik
you want hands on, try Deep Springs:
[http://www.deepsprings.edu/](http://www.deepsprings.edu/)

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0xCMP
Curious how these school end up doing. When I was deciding what to do for
college I really liked a place in Florida called New College. Horrible area
(lots of old people) and apparently the place is weird (never visited), BUT
the idea they have of creating contracts per semester and graduation based on
completion of the required number of contracts is pretty cool version of this.
It sounded like a whole college exp of basically self-researching/learning.

Didn't think it'd be good for CS so I didn't, but I imagine that's what the
most successful of these schools will do to keep people creative and avoid the
whole "one person does all the work"-group-projects.

~~~
deskglass
I faced the same decision you did, had the same concern, and chose New
College. I was fortunate in that CS at NCF has blossomed recently. A couple
more professors were hired recently and there's increased student interest in
the field. I've graduated, but I imagine there's also cross-pollination with
the Data Science masters program that NCF founded this year.

As for what it's like to attend - the experience is less radical than you may
think. People generally stick to taking listed courses. Creating your own
course (tutorial) and finding a professor to sponsor it takes work. You can do
it, I took several, but it's rare and the ease probably varies with your
major.

With that said, even if you stick to taking courses, you'll still have to do
an independent project each January and a thesis project before you graduate.
Also, the experience of taking courses at NCF is different from the experience
elsewhere. The size enables more discussion-based classes and the pass-
fail/narrative evaluation grading changes student incentives and culture.

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thefastlane
“Companies often sponsor the projects and provide instructors”

welcome to costco, i love you...

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adamnemecek
I kind of don't understand how this is not the standard. It it 1786?

~~~
eru
What's special about that date?

If you want to understand where modern university come from a look at the
Prussian education reforms after their defeat by Napoleon is instructive.

See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_reforms#Education](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_reforms#Education)

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Kephael
I cringe when I see articles such as this, leading research universities will
always be superior to "teaching" schools. Not only is conducting quantitative
research far more difficult than teaching, the research garners prestige and
leads to higher rankings which attracts a more intelligent and ambitious
student body. Ultimately the real value of a degree comes from the networking
and signaling ability granted by it, I can always learn on my own by working
through textbooks or reading journal articles. What I'd really like out of a
university experience is to befriend people who will be starting innovative
companies or researchers publishing in top journals.

~~~
avs733
There are a series of logical fallacies in this post...to the point that it is
nonsense.

For starters, what is a "teaching" school? is it the same as a teaching
focused university? If so, not only do the faculty at teaching focused produce
research of their own, much of which is extremely high quality, but the
research often includes undergraduates in far more structured and
educationally meaningful ways than occurs in similar programs at R1 type
universities.

Another...and I'm going to stop after this...why the narrowing to quantitative
research? Your incorrect assertion that research is more difficult than
education goes against not only what we know about education, but against
basic logic itself. Education is immensely more complicated than most
research, its just a complication that people chose to ignore (because hey,
your education worked sufficiently for you).

I have worked with several of the schools mentioned in this article (and if
you want to know anything about me check out my prior comments and
profile)...you say research universities are superior. On what metric? a lot
of Olin students chose Olin over MIT. A lot of Deep Springs students
(mentioned lower in the thread) choose it over places like Harvard and Yale. I
feel like you might be better off reading some of the responses to your last
effort to 'solve' education on HN.

~~~
laughinghan
Your post is nonsense. The grandparent post had no logical fallacies, it was
structurally incapable of having logical fallacies, by virtue of not making a
deductive argument, just describing a factual belief.

The grandparent post stated a belief that research universities are superior
to "teaching" schools, and then described ways in which they are superior,
with an addendum about what the author really wants out of a university
experience. It was an informative post (that I disagree with), but it had no
premise, no conclusion, no deduction that could be fallacious.

> For starters, what is a "teaching" school? is it the same as a teaching
> focused university?

As you seem well aware, there are many conventional ways including R1 to
classify research-focused vs teaching-focused schools, which all broadly
agree, especially on the leaders in each category.

> why the narrowing to quantitative research?

This is an excellent point, and one of the reasons I disagree with
grandparent.

> Your incorrect assertion that research is more difficult than education goes
> against [...] basic logic itself. Education is immensely more complicated
> than most research

Seriously, this is not how logic works. "You're wrong" is not a logical
fallacy.

Regarding the actual point: while there's a case to be made that education is
more complicated than research (perhaps even "immensely"), due to the same
reasons that social sciences are more complicated than "hard" sciences, it
doesn't seem any stronger to me than the case for the reverse. In particular,
objectively there's more pay, status, and recognition for quantitative
research than education (how many more people have heard of the Nobel Prize
than...whatever awards they give out for teaching?), due at least in part to
supply and demand, which says something about relative difficulty.

> ...you say research universities are superior. On what metric? a lot of Olin
> students chose Olin over MIT. A lot of Deep Springs students (mentioned
> lower in the thread) choose it over places like Harvard and Yale.

Now you're making an actual point. Good for you.

~~~
dang
> _Your post is nonsense_

> _Now you 're making an actual point. Good for you._

Please edit the uncivil bits out of your comments here. If you like, you can
do as I do and set 'delay' in your profile to up to 10 minutes to give you
some editing time before your comment appears to others.

~~~
laughinghan
Oof, being chided by dang, I definitely fucked up. I do think my window for
editing it had long lapsed by the time you commented?

Not that I'm entitled to your time, but I'd be grateful for clarification on
the uncivil bits? "Good for you" was kinda condescending, I see; "Your post is
nonsense" was in direct response to the first sentence of my parent, which
said that grandparent "is nonsense", and is also factual and I made a good-
faith case for it, is that really not okay?

I guess "nonsense" is a charged word, perhaps it should have been something
like "That post was not nonsense, it is your post that makes no sense."?

~~~
dang
Well, you get points back for using the word 'chide'. And you didn't break the
rules that badly, which is why my comment was mild. But here's a detailed
explanation.

Beginning a comment with "your post is nonsense" is leading with a left hook
regardless of what was said upthread. Nothing good can come of it and it
frames everything else that you say as hostile (even if it isn't). Perhaps
there's a semi-technical meaning to "nonsense", but in the context of an
internet forum it can only count as name-calling, which the guidelines
prohibit
([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)).
(By the way, rough-and-tumble discourse can function well in smaller, more
cohesive contexts, e.g. research communities or literary salons. But it
emphatically does not port to large internet communities. That's something it
took me years to figure out.)

Replacing it with "it is your post that makes no sense" doesn't help much,
does it? (It reminds me of "I'm sorry the honorable member is a liar.") You'd
be better off not rewording that bit but dropping it altogether. Sticking to
the substance is a better way to show (not tell) the weaknesses of another
comment.

"Now you're making an actual point. Good for you." is just two condescending
swipes in a row. That's like finishing with a couple of right hooks. And
"Seriously, this is not how logic works" sounds condescending to me as well.
If I read your comment without those bits it becomes much more substantive and
respectful.

The editing time I was talking about isn't the two-hour window for which
comments are open to be edited, but an up-to-10-minute window you can have
before your comments appear to others. (That's the 'delay' setting in the
profile.) That lets you see your comment in the wild before it appears to
other users, which sometimes helps clarify where it crosses into
incivility—which can be difficult to see beforehand.

