

Will Your College Survive? - cwan
http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/18/will-your-college-survive/

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strlen
Rather than chime in on usefulness of college for learning programming (a
reductionist way to look at it), I'll take another approach.

A strong CS program in a university (e.g., one of the top-20 for CS, which is
actually very a different list from the usual "brand name" schools) is where
you learn that your aptitude and previous programming experience won't
suffice: you'll also need to apply yourself, handle stress, manage your time.
It's harder than many industry programming jobs (which is not only better job
preparation, it's also strong incentive to find a position that isn't seen as
boring, i.e., one that pushes you).

Draw your own conclusions, but I'd suggest speaking to a CS graduate from
Berkeley EECS, Stanford, Harvey-Mudd, CMU, University of Washington,
UWaterloo, et al about what their program was like.

[Disclosure: I didn't attend such a program myself and I turned out okay.
However, have I had a chance to do it over again, I'd have attended one of the
above mentioned programs -- not because I'd be in a different spot
professionally, but because that experience is intrinsically valuable.]

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ececconi
I have a hard time believing that the social experience of universities can be
matched with an online based education. I am as much of a product of the
people I decided to associate with as I was with the professors I met in the
classroom. Late nights talking about life, learning how to live, work, and
interact with other people -- are experiences that are going to be difficult
to recreate online.

~~~
kiba
But colleges aren't the only place where you get to associate with really
smart people. Beside, a lot of people spent their college time, well, partying
instead of doing something useful.

~~~
ececconi
I recently moved back into a suburban but still metro area setting after
living in a city with a lot of college friends for a year. I find it so much
more difficult to convene with a lot of people who share the same passion for
certain ideas as I do. College just made it so easy to meet up with people,
all I had to do was walk down the quad, dorm, student center -- and I could be
lost in conversation for the next hour.

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tatsuke95
Yes, they'll survive. Will they have to adapt? Of course they will, but no one
is better positioned in the education system than the...education system. Our
colleges won't look the same in 10 years, but I guarantee the names will be
familiar.

 _"Peter Thiel believes smart people don’t need college, and he’s right"_

I don't really understand this argument. Need? You go to college to learn
things. Smart people don't _need_ to learn things, nor do dumb people. The
system needs work, the price may be out of whack, but nobody can deny that
college (and the education system in general) is generally efficient at the
diffusion of knowledge.

Disclaimer: I love school. If I could spend the rest of my days as a full time
student, I would.

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mkn
"The Internet is the first technology since the printing press, which could
lower the cost of a great education and, in doing so, make that cost-benefit
analysis much easier for most students."

Perhaps it will bring the cost of an education down to the point where even a
TechCrunch writer can afford to learn basic grammar as it pertains to the uses
of subordinate clauses and commas.

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abiekatz
The problem with online education is the lack of available credentials that
are well recognized. The main reason people pay $50k a year to go to a top
school is to get the well recognized credential. The ability to learn has gone
online. Many top colleges such as MIT, Stanford, Yale and Harvard have put
some of their course material online but you can't get recognized for what you
have learned. Someone needs to create a prestigious, low-cost online
undergraduate degree for students that can't afford a conventional college or
who don't want to be tied down to one location for 4 years.

Right now I would say that the University of London International Program is
the most respected program available in the category:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_London_Internatio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_London_International_Programmes).

I look forward to more known universities creating online versions of their
educational programs but I think top universities that have no problem
attracting students will resist making the change. And for new programs,
getting the necessary prestige and recognition will be a very uphill battle
but I hope some social entrepreneur will find a way to crack the code. Also,
Salman Khan has a lot of interesting views on the topic of the college of the
future: [http://abiekatz.com/2011/06/salman-khan-presents-his-
vision-...](http://abiekatz.com/2011/06/salman-khan-presents-his-vision-of-
the-ideal-university/)

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edw519
Doctors should not operate on themselves, lawyers should not represent
themselves, and academics who are totally detached from reality certainly
should not diagnose themselves.

Notice the total detachment from reality in these remarks:

 _William Bowen, who later became President of Princeton, first put some math
to this in 1966. The problem is not the cost of football teams or palatial
dorms; it’s a lack of productivity growth. Putting a professor in a room with
25 students cannot become more efficient every year, while almost everything
else in society does._

The problem is _not_ one of scale or efficiency; it's a complete mismatch
between value needed and value supplied.

Academia continues to double its prices, knowing full well that they can only
be paid by taxpayers while supplying its end users with a product that will
never enable them to pay back those loans. And continues to churn out
"communications majors" without basic communications skills while industry
pines for engineers. What a scam.

My alma mater continually seeks my advice on how to improve their fundraising.
I tell them to forget about fundraising and provide better value. They could
start by getting up off their asses, getting out into the real world, digging
more than one superficial level deep, and finding out what is really needed.
Lowering prices and adding sciences couldn't hurt, either.

~~~
wdewind
I agree with you, and came in here to post that exact quote. It's a really
frightening misunderstanding of education and the problems it actually faces,
as well as "scaling."

But how is your alma mater supposed to maintain it's size if it does that? And
if it doesn't maintain it size, that means it's cutting jobs, at least
temporarily. And if it's perceived as shrinking, just that very fact will be
damning to it's application process, and so starts the slow rotation around
the drain.

While I agree most things should be based on providing value, to the extent
that most American entities are focused mostly on size, it's kind of too late
(or at the very least a lot more complicated than you are making it).

To me this is the anecdote of the larger problem in our economy: we've
completely overextended ourselves, and created a lot of unnecessary jobs. But
now that we've done so, cutting back is also bad. So what do we do? I mean
besides grin and bear it.

(This is a serious question - as an HN voice of wisdom, how about some
advice.)

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chimeracoder
> Peter Thiel believes smart people don’t need college, and he’s right

To be honest, most of the classes I've taken in my life (not just in college
but in grade school as well) taught me very little that I couldn't learn by
myself from a textbook. And in many cases, I did indeed end up teaching myself
the material from the book (usually beforehand). This means that class time
would essentially be a review session, or a time to highlight the topics that
the professor wanted to focus on (useful for the exams). So the classes were
definitely beneficial, but arguably unnecessary. This is partly a function of
my own study habits and workflow, but I imagine that many other motivated
students are in this category. And in the age of the Internet, the ability to
teach yourself will become even more valuable.

That said, I wouldn't say my time in school was wasted, even if I could teach
myself most (though not quite all!) of the things I learned in my classes. At
least in college, my favorite classes were the ones which challenged my
previous beliefs or forced me to consider things in another light (yes, this
can happen in CS, too!). When you're learning things on your own, following
your own interests, there's a natural tendency to avoid this kind of
dissonance, which provides a sort of selection bias in what you end up
learning.

Furthermore, college is a great time to meet other people and engage with them
on an academic level. This can be your professors, who are oftentimes domain
experts, or other students who share your interests. (Or even other students
who don't). Yes, you meet smart people in the workforce and other aspects of
life too, but it's rare to engage with them on the same type of academic level
as you do when you're in an academic setting. (And even if you could simulate
this through online classes... call me old-fashioned, but I still put a
premium on in-person, face-to-face interaction).

My formal education has been incredibly valuable - just not for the reasons
one typically considers a formal education to be valuable. If that's all
you're considering, then yes, online classes can simulate most of that. But
for me, they would have missed the most rewarding parts of my academic
experience.

~~~
tjr
I agree. The most benefit I got out of my computer science degree was _not_
learning the computer science topics I was already interested in, as I was
learning those on my own anyway. I got far more value out of being "forced" to
learn about other things that I would not have thought I would have enjoyed,
ranging from economics to Russian history to foreign languages.

Maybe I would have eventually studied those things on my own, but maybe not.
And either way, it helped me to realize that there are lots of interesting
things in the world well outside the realm of my favorite things.

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Hyena
It just needs to be pointed out: an education at Random State University can
be had for less than $10,000 a year. Taking that degree in a low-cost state
would enable low expenses overall.

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simonbrown
The Open University in the UK has offered relatively respectable degrees in
traditional subjects since 1969. It's popular (around 169k students according
to Wikipedia), but certainly hasn't replaced brick and mortar universities.

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georgieporgie
On the subject of tuition, my uncle has worked in government as an auditor for
years now. Now that he's in a state job, he's come across something
interesting.

One of the biggest state universities here has been dumping huge amounts of
money into research. What has come out of it? Absolutely nothing. It's
basically a few people getting obscene money, employing support staff, and not
producing anything.

A full audit hasn't been performed yet, but based on initial data, he thinks
that if this activity is ended, tuition could drop by 40% or more.

~~~
overgryphon
Research is incredibly important. It focuses on creating knowledge, even in
areas that aren't currently profitable.

Without research, a university is little more than a larger version of high
school. Research was by far the most challenging and rewarding portion of my
college education, and I cannot fathom why anyone would want to end research.

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hendrix
Not going to happen until _the college experience_ ceases to be ingrained in
the American Dream.

