What you're really pointing out is that people are different. Some need more structure than others. For whatever reason, I'm a pretty motivated person. Remote work is great for me because any time I can save is more time I have to do the list of things I want to get done that day.
My wife OTOH, requires structure. She's smart and works hard, but if she was left to work at home she would procrastinate until the 11th hour. She needed a brick and mortar college, and in that structure managed to get her 4 year degree is 2.5 years.
One thing not discussed is that quality online degree programs can significantly lower the cost bar for students. I was lucky enough to have a decent school near my parents, so I lived at home for my entire undergrad degree. We simply did not have the money to do anything different, and I refused to take out loans unless absolutely necessary (I worked instead). It would have been amazing if there had been self paced online degrees offered by big name colleges at the time I was in undergrad.
Yeah, the parent comment basically just described the optimal learning environment for their personality type, and then intentionally or unintentionally ignored the fact that another person's optimal environment may be different from theirs. I've always been naturally inclined to teach things to myself, at my own pace, so online education enabled me to thrive while I would have struggled with conventional schooling structure.
...and I'm not sure what evidence lead them to believe that "most companies" in silicon valley have discovered that remote doesn't work, but I'm willing to bet it's anecdotal.
Optimal for the majority of people is what I believe the parent was arguing. The vast majority of people are not self motivated and forward thinking enough to learn calculus all by themselves.
Fundamentals like Calculus are difficult because they're almost never presented in the context of a problem a person wants to solve. I had a difficult time feeling motivated until I picked up something I wanted to achieve, saw course material as tools to get there, then all of a sudden it was a very different matter. Math isn't fun by itself IMO, but using it to solve problems I actually want to solve is a lot of fun (even the fundamentals).
We really need to start asking ourselves why this dichotomy exists where some people can succeed without structure and some require it. Near as I can tell a lot of the reason many people require structure is because most primary education is geared towards making students subservient and dependent upon structure. We need to rethink primary education so more people grow up not requiring structure to learn. Near as I can tell, systems such as Montessori do a decent job achieving this educational goal, but I'm sure it's not the only approach out there that can achieve this.
Remote doesn't work very well when team effort is required compounded by processes that do not work well when there isn't a shared work space.
For PSOs for example remote works perfectly well since in many cases it's mainly individual work and even when a project requires a team the workstreams are individual and often independent.
My wife OTOH, requires structure. She's smart and works hard, but if she was left to work at home she would procrastinate until the 11th hour. She needed a brick and mortar college, and in that structure managed to get her 4 year degree is 2.5 years.
One thing not discussed is that quality online degree programs can significantly lower the cost bar for students. I was lucky enough to have a decent school near my parents, so I lived at home for my entire undergrad degree. We simply did not have the money to do anything different, and I refused to take out loans unless absolutely necessary (I worked instead). It would have been amazing if there had been self paced online degrees offered by big name colleges at the time I was in undergrad.