Comment by soerxpso
10 months ago
> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think
I'm there for the degree. If I wanted to learn and engage with material, I could save $60,000 and do that online for free, probably more efficiently. The purpose of a class writing exercise is to get the university to give me the degree, which I cannot do by actually learning the material (and which, for classes I care about, I may have already done without those exercises), but can only do by going through the hoops that professors set up and paying the massive tuition cost. If there were a different system where I could just actually learn something (which probably wouldn't be through the inefficient and antiquated university system) and then get a valid certificate of employability for having actually learned it, that would be great. Unfortunately, however, as long as university professors are gatekeepers of the coveted certificate of employability, they're going to keep dealing with this incentive issue.
> I could save $60,000 and do that online for free, probably more efficiently.
Not to burst yours or anyone else's bubble, but no, probably not.
The hard part of learning isn't access to content, it's discipline and dedication. School provides structure, goals, timelines, and deliverables. The value of this cannot be understated.
I've heard from many people how they're going to learn programming online and then get a job as a developer. Almost all of them fail.
I'm teaching faculty at a university and, at least where it comes to lecture courses, I don't find this a bubble. There are definitely plenty of students who would do just fine, if not even better, without the external discipline and structure. And even more those who could do it with something like a MOOC or just a posted curriculum. And to be able to work without an external discipline is IMHO one of the main learning goals of university, and a decent rationale for why a university degree is taken as a signal for recruitment.
I learned programming online and got jobs as a developer (I did later study CS at a university though). In my experience the best developers are those who taught themselves. Admittedly this may have been more the case for my older generation where formal education for programming wasn't that great nor widely available.
Those students do exist, but there are an exceedingly small minority. Of course, they won't tell you this, because everyone likes to believe they're self-motivated. Most people just aren't.
The simple question to ask is, when you go home, what do you do? If the answer is learn how to sew or work on your project car you've had for 10 months, you can probably learn on your own. If your answer is watch TV, play video games, go on a walk - then you can't, and you should go to university. Some people have told me this question is unfair. I mean, they're so tired from work, of course they want to relax. Well, guess what - your life doesn't stop if you're learning how to code on your own or whatever. If that's all it takes for you to not do it, then you don't have what it takes.
How often are people picking up new and complex skills that takes years to get the hang of? Almost never. So there you go, most people require a formal, structured education to pull that off.
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> There are definitely plenty of students who would do just fine, if not even better, without the external discipline and structure.
How do you know? It's easy enough to assert, but what kind of proof can there be for this assertion? Obviously the students are enrolled in university, and their accomplishments without it are only hypothetical.
> I'm teaching faculty at a university and, at least where it comes to lecture courses, I don't find this a bubble. There are definitely plenty of students who would do just fine, if not even better, without the external discipline and structure.
I don't understand how you can make this claim based on observing students who are in an environment with discipline and structure.
I thoroughly believed this to be true when I was younger. I thought the explosion of the internet and availability of free course materials, videos, MOOCs, and any information you want was going to change the education game forever.
What finally changed my mind was when I became a hiring manager. I decided I'd give an interview to almost every self-taught developer who applied. If someone didn't have a college degree listed on their resume, I'd schedule a call to hear their story. I thought I was going to be uncovering diamonds in the rough that other companies overlooked.
With a few notable exceptions, it did not work out that way. Don't get me wrong: A couple of the self-taught developers were absolutely brilliant. However, I found that most were, to be blunt, not even progressing their intra-career knowledge as fast as peers with traditional backgrounds. We hired a few, but a common theme was that they needed more guidance for dealing with the structure and expectations of an office job.
I also had a few very above-average friends in high school who went the self-education route. "College is a waste of money" mindset. Voracious readers in their youth. Last I checked, both of them were bouncing from entry-level job to job.
Of course, there are students who go to paper-mill colleges who also learn very little.
I think the value of a demanding, structured college education is partially the education, but largely about learning how to learn. Learning how to deliver, learning how to operate on a schedule, and having some structure to check your understanding relative to peers. Almost everyone I know (including me!) who does self-studying reading thinks their understanding is better than it is right up until they have to apply it, at which point they realize they didn't understand it as deeply as they thought. It's easy to read course materials and think "That makes sense" because it's logically consistent, but integrating the knowledge in a way that you can apply it and reason about it is harder. Structured learning forces people to do the latter, whereas self-guided learning leaves it as an exercise for the reader. An exercise that many don't follow up on.
In my experience people who have learned to code by themselves write the most incomprehensible balls of spaghetti. Then when everyone else struggles with their garbage code they convince themselves it's because they're so good because they didn't need to go to uni and learned it all on their own.
Universities have all sorts of pathologies, from academic fraud to parasitic admins, but they also have people with deep knowledge of their field and who occasionally are even good teachers, and undergrad courses at least leave you enough time to explore and direct your own learning.
They also put you in an environment where you can measure yourself against others, which you sure don't get sitting in your bedroom hacking your games. As a consequence, your head doesn't get inflated so much (unless you're top of the class, which kind of naturally resolves itself when you get your first job where everyone thinks you're a useless moron with no life experience).
Also: university libraries.
Edit: oh shit. I just realised. I did learn to code on my own O.o
>School provides structure, goals, timelines, and deliverables. The value of this cannot be understated.
That _may_ be true for the vast majority, but it's criminal to waste the time of bright young people by putting them though hoops. I would even speculate that that they phoney goals, timelines, and deliverables in school actually damage kids.
It's presumably possible, but I feel like people might underestimate what's required. Mind you, I went to university so maybe I'm biased and don't fully understand, but I feel like the structure given by the university is very important.
If I wanted to learn JavaScript or .NET or CSS or whatever I could easily do so online. But that's different from becoming a software developer. The important thing is that university doesn't focus on one topic, it teaches a variety of topics that they think will be useful for your career. You can do this without uni, but you need to be good at figuring out what to learn, not just how. And of course the discipline to complete your goals by yourself, like you mention.
Although maybe something you could do would be to look at a university's course structure and copy it.
It's really concerning how many thing they can curate their own course curriculum and master it to the equivalent and rigor of a 4 year degree. You don't know what you don' know so that's exactly waht a teacher is for. o help you close gaps and push you a bit further. An athlete wouldn't think they can train as efficiently without a coach, I'm not sure why acedemis is seen any differently. Because people had a bad teacher here and there? Yeah, that's life. Don't typecast an entier population over one bad experience.
Also, do I really need to remind people here of the "resources" used when you struggle and need help while self-guided?
- I probably don't need to rant about StackOverflow. Discord can be incredibly hit or miss, many forum pleas goes uncalled. It can be really hard to get unsuck compared to asking a teacher about their own assignment
- worse than asking quesions, forget getting high quality feedback on your project: getting people to do more than a quick skim takes effort in and of itself. You'd truly find an angelic soul if anyone decided to disect and correc your source code.
- there's also so, so, so many domains to explore. How will you specialize without knowing they exist? And if you've dug deep into any domain, you know that this is where the publicly free knowledge truly dries up. You won't find a nifty course on low level optimization hacks, nor network architecture (beej gets close, but only touches the surface), nor modern rendering techniques. You'll find some 300 level material, but 400 level stuff will likely require a mix of cobbling project ideas together that's within your reach but also pushing you. Scoping is always hard to do, and nearly impossible while still a student.
And Software is one of the easier domains to self learn. Good luck with the lab based STEM, getting proper feedback in art while learning theory, taste testing as a cook, using power tools in any given blue collar work, etc.
> I'm there for the degree. If I wanted to learn and engage with material, I could save $60,000
I would argue that if it costs $60,000, both your education system and the recruitment in those companies that require this degree are broken. It's not the case in all countries though.
Not that it is your fault, just stating the obvious.
It is broken. For every coveted job there are thousands of applicants. Employers will accept any signal that reliably predicts a modicum of intelligence, conscientiousness, and agreeability. University degrees cover all three.
But that's just the job market. The other elephants in the room are inflation and the housing market. People who don't have top-notch jobs (that require degrees) can't afford to buy a house. They can hardly afford rent. Cities don't want to build more housing because that will undermine the equity growth of homeowners.
We are a society of ladder-pullers.
I don't disagree, but often we complain about people pulling up ladders and when faced with the same decision we follow suit. Ultimately we can't change this behavior if no one is willing to defect from "conventional wisdom"
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>The other elephants in the room are inflation and the housing market.
I'm not even sure if people are aware of inflation/housing as a completely solvable issue by the govt. I guess it's because people most people are clueless on how it is to be solved.
>We are a society of ladder-pullers.
It's by design, to serve the rulers. It's an assembly line of slaves who are given some freedoms and are put through various stages of school, university, work and retirement. When most people retire they are left with little to nothing.
My tuition was $35k a year 25 years ago. Just checked, and now it is $60k a year. Before room and board.
Broken? Saddling individuals with a quarter million in debt when they are just starting life is absolutely broken. That they must indenture to be a modern professional (and buy hope for at least a middle class landing) is broken.
The notion that everything must return a (generally, near-term) accounting profit is on its face stupid.
$35k/yr for tuition in 2000 was still an extremely expensive college. The school I went to in that decade was ~$10k/yr in tuition+fees and was the most expensive state school in my state at the time.
Even today, that university is considered expensive for the state at ~$8,200/semester.
$35k in 2000 is $65k now so that's actually decreased in real terms.
Sure, the system is broken but what's the alternative? Employers have a surplus of applicants for entry-level technical positions. They need to filter the applicant pool down to those with some level of competence and discipline. Possession of a college degree is a reasonably accurate proxy for those attributes: lots of false negatives but good enough from the employer's perspective.
Ideally maybe employers ought to rely on more targeted selection mechanisms. But this would be extremely expensive (and potentially legally risky due to equal opportunity laws) so most don't bother.
> Sure, the system is broken but what's the alternative?
As I said, the only country I know where it is like that is the US.
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>Sure, the system is broken but what's the alternative?
For a true solution, the entire taxation and monetary system will have to overhauled. It's of course not going to happen.
Transactions outside of the govt monetary system is effectively illegal or taxed so people are forced to participate by applying for jobs for their livelihood.
> I would argue that if it costs $60,000, both your education system and the recruitment in those companies that require this degree are broken.
Meh, academic degrees don't come for free, someone has to pay for universities, staff and other expenses. In the US it's everyone for themselves by student loans that can't be discharged in bankruptcies, in Europe it's the tax payers.
The problem is, the ones profiting from the gatekeeping (aka employers) aren't the ones paying for it in either system. If employers had to pay, say, 10.000$ for each job listing that requires an academic degree without an actual valid reason, guess how fast that incentive would lead to employers not requiring academic degrees for paper-pusher bullshit jobs.
In a sense, it still comes down to supply and demand — if applicants, upon graduating, all requested to be reimbursed for, say, 25% of their tuition up front and to the university they graduated from, we'd end up with reduced salaries compared to just distributing those 25% to the new employee over a number a years.
But how do you get all students to agree with this in principle when someone is in more rush to start earning an income than others?
However, employers would then look to only hire from universities that do good teaching, so maybe it's a win-win?
So like a payroll tax specific to jobs that require higher education?
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There is also nobody cares about low prices but you can brag about how exclusive you are with high prices. One univertity near me automatically gives everyone a 40% scholarship - which is to say they have inflated their sticker price.
The work this degree will credential you for is so is so disconnected from the areas of study in your degree program - presumably in the same field as the job - that the majority of the things you might learn would not be valuable?
I can’t imagine this in my own life. I use concrete things and ways of thinking and working I learned in my CS degree _all the time_.
Heck my degree was in biochemistry, and now I’m a programmer, but I still feel like I am constantly using skills I developed in school. The scientific method and good test design transcend all sciences.
Same deal, went back for an Anthro degree but jumped back into programming when Ted Cruz killed research. I use that degree every day of my life.
I honestly don’t know anybody who does what they went to undergrad for, unless that undergrad was preparation for a higher credential (premed/prelaw).
Would you hire someone without a degree?
When you're in a position to hire or influence hiring, will you consider those without degrees?
I ask because I hear this sentiment a lot but we still have a system becoming more reliant on degrees. The universities may be the gatekeepers of those degrees but they're not the ones gatekeeping the jobs. They have no influence there. They were not the ones who decided degree = credentials. I ask because many people eventually grow in their jobs to a point where they have significant influence over hiring. So when that time comes will you perpetuate the system you criticize or push against it? Truthfully, this is a thing that can be done with little to no risk to your own employment.
>Would you hire someone without a degree?
Yes.
A person is a idiot if he/she takes someone's competence at face value because of a degree. ( jobs aside - don't assume your doctor is competent because he has MD, it will cost you your life)
I am generally education blind. Mostly I would say graduate school experience has been a net negative on my teams overall, if anything.
The second half seems to contradict the first. But I do condone the actions, as that's the only way things can change.
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Speaking personally, yes, very much so.
I see your point, but the issue is that it's quite futile to shame students for playing the game that people in the industry has set up. It doesn't help that in the past, college degrees were in fact more relevant than today, especially before the era of the internet and wikipedia, so if older people who are currently in charge of hiring aren't aware of these changes, they might just apply their outdated personal experience and just assume college degrees hold the same weight as they did in the past.
I'm pretty certain when kids these days eventually become responsible for hiring decisions, they probably will handle things differently since their experiences are different.
I do appreciate that you do that! People making change is the only way change can happen.
But I think the second part is amiss. I do agree that educators (being one) need to recognize the reality of the environment. But I think you also can't ignore that the reason the degrees are used to signal qualification is because the degree is intended to signal that some knowledge is held by a specific person. Yes, things have changed. It did used to be that interviews were much shorter, with a degree being a strong signal (at minimum, it is a signal that someone can sufficiently follow directions and manage their time). Should that mean those tasked with ensuring a student gets their education does not get their education? I get your point, but I think it is barking up the wrong tree. Asking academia to change only furthers the problem as it lets employers shift blame. It is like getting upset at a minimum wage worker for increased prices due to tariffs.
The really weird thing is we're now in this bizarroland setting where employers will filter for degree and then spend months and a lot of time and money putting candidates through testing rounds. Making them do tons of leetcode and other things to evaluate their performance. Where the candidates spend months studying to pass the interviews. And the complaints here are probably more apt, about how the material they need to study is not significantly relevant to the skills needed for a job[0]. Worse, it doesn't seem to be achieving the results it is setting out to seek.
As they say about the stock market "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent". My point is that some academics are making classes easier. Grade inflation is a measurable phenomena and it sure got worse with Covid. My point is that employers are acting irrationally.
[0] I'll give an example. I had an interview a few weeks ago and we had run a bit longer than expected prior to getting to the coding portion of the interview and where their coding software crashed a few times, giving us 10 minutes to do what was expected to be 30. Finally coding, the program crashed and I said "I don't use a lot of Juypter Notebooks, does the kernel crash when OOM?" I'm explaining my thought process aloud and frankly, I'd never hit this on the job. No answer. I quickly scroll through logs, say "I'm going to guess that's the issue, I'd normally guess and if wrong google it". Yes, it was the right answer. But there was no reason to do this, especially with me guessing right. This wasn't some dinky startup, it was a multi-trillion dollar company...
If this attitude prevails I would think the value of degrees will quickly diminish.
This seems to be the general feeling of students right now.
Academia put itself as a gateway and barrier to the middle class. Why would we be surprised when people with no interest in anything but the goal are not enthralled by the process?
> Academia put itself as a gateway
How did academia do that? It doesn’t seem like universities would have the power to do that. More likely, either employers put academia as a gateway. Or even: the culture at large misunderstood what pathways existed to middle class life. Or even: pathways to middle class life became scarcer and more insecure, and the real gatekeepers (hiring managers) had no good ways to select which of the many people at the door to let through.
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Academia clearly lost their monopoly on information. Since their last moat is a monopoly on credentials, I expect them to defend it intensely.
We could make it less meaningful if employers weren’t so keen on using credentials as their own gateway. That may have more of a chance of happening if the OPs perspective becomes more prevalent and the credential becomes an increasingly worse signal for meaningful skills.
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That’s a disingenuous argument. You don’t know what you don’t know. Literally. A completely self guided high school graduate following random online materials will not learn nearly as much on their own. Or they will go down rabbit holes and waste countless hours, and not having an expert unblock you or guide you down the right path would waste a lot of time.
Further, some high school graduates (like myself at the time) literally don’t know HOW to learn on their own. I thought I did but college humbled me, made me realize that suddenly i’m in the drivers seat and my teachers won’t be spoon feeding me knowledge step by step. it’s a really big shift.
If you were the perfect high school graduate, then congrats, you’re like the 0.01%! And you should be proud (no sarcasm). This doesn’t describe society at large though.
For the very few that are extremely motivated and know exactly what job they want, i do think we need something in between self guided and college? No BS - strictly focusing on job training. Like a boot camp, but one that’s not a scam haha.
The other aspect of college you ignore is, it is a way to build a network prior to entering the workforce. It’s also one of the best times to date, but that’s another story.
Completely agree that the cost of college in the US is ridiculous though.
>The other aspect of college you ignore is, it is a way to build a network prior to entering the workforce.
I don’t know how generalizable this is. I remember reading a few studies trying to assess if Ivy League education was really more valuable that a state school. The result (IIRC) was that it only matters for students who came from the lowest economic strata; the authors presumed it was due to the network effect. But that also means the network effect was negligible for the majority of students.
I used to work for a guy who had his engineering degree from Harvard. I was out of the Navy, got a job but also had a GI bill and was looking to go to school for engineering while working full time. I asked him his advise. Pretty much he said is to go to a state school. The only real benefit, at least for engineering from Ivy League, is the network, which can make getting the first job easier. Otherwise the course work is the pretty much the same.
"A completely self guided high school graduate following random online materials will not learn nearly as much on their own."
I think you underestimate how bad some high schools really are.
>That’s a disingenuous argument. You don’t know what you don’t know. Literally. A completely self guided high school graduate following random online materials will not learn nearly as much on their own. Or they will go down rabbit holes and waste countless hours, and not having an expert unblock you or guide you down the right path would waste a lot of time.
Citation needed. There's great books out there that provide a lot of guidance down a particular path. I'd say a lot of them do, and I can't imagine online learning sources would be worse. There's online communities for learners for specific subjects that are full of people offering good advice.
I don’t have the time to provide a citation, my apologies.
I’ll leave you with this thought though. Of all the professions, tech is probably the one where this is the easiest to do. There are many companies that don’t require a bachelors. For most of the last 15-20 years tech was in a “boom” cycle, and yet the vast majority of software engineers I met DID have a bachelors degree.
Why? If it’s as easy as “pick up a book”, then why didn’t more people take that path? I think very few people have the drive and discipline to accomplish a full career prep on their own.
If your hypothesis was true, wouldn’t tech be mostly filled with self-taught engineers?
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The purpose of the writing exercise is to produce a positive correlation between the possession of a degree and the skills that high-paying white collar jobs value. I don't blame students for not knowing that, or for not having the outside perspective to care. But positive signals of job competence are hard to come by, employers don't just blindly accept them despite what people like to say, and it's going to suck for new graduates if this one is eliminated.
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