

Antiquated Higher Level Education - d_mland
http://andrewmland.com/antiquated-higher-level-education/

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jbrichter
The traditional student is better educated. Presumably (s)he is motivated and
interested in certain classes too. The difference is the computer student
avoids doing anything (s)he doesn't feel like doing. Living according to your
whims is not taking it on yourself to be responsible.

Second of all, it's not like Thrun left a comfy life in the ivory tower to get
with the times. The WSJ article says he was an adjunct. It's not surprising he
left a dead-end job to join a startup.

I'd also say that if you're not learning outside of your immediate narrow
interests, you're not really learning. Is learning an 8th programming language
once you already know 7 a bigger learning experience than taking a course in
chemistry when you know none?

Boring (to you) required classes have two purposes: to be truly educated you
need breadth, and for a degree to be worth anything on the job market it
should demonstrate that you can suck it up and do unpleasant tasks. If you
don't care about either of those and just want to stick with what you know and
like, why the hell are you in school anyway?

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d_mland
You make a fair point. However, what I was more trying to get at was the fact
that a lot of students are learning for the test and forget 90% of what they
learned after the test. My solution to this was to try and eliminate the
topics unnecessary to their degree and interest (the ones they only learn for
the test) to allow more time to take wider breadth of courses that interest
them along with their major required course work. For instance, if I only need
certain topics in chemistry to graduate instead of a full semester class, this
would allow me, as an engineer for instance, take a class on Roman
architecture if that is something that interests me. In this way you are still
getting a breadth of knowledge but the knowledge your getting is determined by
you as the student and not by some outside curriculum. Institutes like Brown
University already offer programs that allow students more control over where
they want to take their education. The problem is institutions like this are
to far and few between.

