This is a pretty old argument--see Kevin Carey’s The End of College for probably the best argument. But I’m skeptical--see https://shermandorn.com/wordpress/?p=6404 for my thoughts as this discussion was evolving about a decade ago
This was good "But for those who have the initiative and spare time today, enough of college is unbundled already as long as you don’t care about the credential. On the other hand, for those who need the credential and for those who need support in college, unbundling is a dream without concrete plans for such mundane details as financial aid, student services, or student privacy."
And the extra returns to such precocity have increased since you wrote it, which is a pretty big driver.
An issue is that it’s quite hard to create the first example of the alternate model, no?
In a world where the traditional mode still is the norm, how do you attract enough students and good teachers to trial out an alternative?
I think it could quite easily be widely agreed upon that some of the ideas you describe would be a better, more useful, and more streamlined way to do education.
But since the accepted signals currently come only from the traditional model, getting people to organize around an alternative is the first major hurdle, and maybe the biggest.
Yeah, there's a starting problem. However this seems more feasible than, say, reforming the overall education system. The reason is that you can start at the margins, and arguably through a combo of OnDeck, Thiel Fellowships etc we're starting to see it happen bottom up. They're combining practicality with prestige, though arguably the learning part has not been solved. That's why we see a lot more armchair philosophers in a small way I feel because clearly there's interest but can't be solved except by taking a whole degree...
Was talking about the idea of a 80:20 projects-to-exam grading ratio recently, and Pradyumna pointed out that most people would hate such a "trial by fire" as it were. And exams as the low-variance, "know-what-to-expect" option, should stay the preferred way to measure competence.
I disagreed. Because I've only ever really cared about projects. (Even if they were ungraded ones lol). And so I agree with most of the ideas here. Especially the pick-your-own-adventure and shorter specializations. (Yeah, I'm mad about the way Indian education works rn.)
If stuff is going to change, I really hope it does ASAP, just because it usually takes so long for the world to catch up. HR departments take even longer :P
However, I can't help but be reminded of how much of the education discourse is centered around American colleges. Understandably so, since as citizens of the net, we're all Americans now and that's where the the student debt crisis is. But I believe that the biggest wins can be found in the places that most need improvements. Third world countries have an almost completely different set of systems and issues and I'd like to see some discussion/resarch/proposed solutions there too.
Most people might dislike it for sure, but that's true of almost any change. And this won't need be mandated, but even if enough alternatives exist at the margins it'll be better I feel. Right now there are almost no real choices.
The MOOCs are a decent idea, but barring accreditation it just relies on those who are the most conscientious or excited about a topic to selc select to learning. But those aren't the people usually who need the help! College policy is for the median, not the top deciles.
Re the global viewpoint it's true that's it's us centric. The problem is this viewpoint gets culturally dominant elsewhere pretty fast. It's either this, or if the country in question isn't well developed then an even more stringent ratrace to dominate (eg India). Here the job requirement point is even more important. Everyone in India "studies" engineering, though a) they suck, b) they mostly work in IT anyway, c) what they study has 0.01 correlation with the job. This is a market failure because existing accreditation systems suck. If IIT had a CS accreditation, this will change, and fast!
This is a pretty old argument--see Kevin Carey’s The End of College for probably the best argument. But I’m skeptical--see https://shermandorn.com/wordpress/?p=6404 for my thoughts as this discussion was evolving about a decade ago
This was good "But for those who have the initiative and spare time today, enough of college is unbundled already as long as you don’t care about the credential. On the other hand, for those who need the credential and for those who need support in college, unbundling is a dream without concrete plans for such mundane details as financial aid, student services, or student privacy."
And the extra returns to such precocity have increased since you wrote it, which is a pretty big driver.
An issue is that it’s quite hard to create the first example of the alternate model, no?
In a world where the traditional mode still is the norm, how do you attract enough students and good teachers to trial out an alternative?
I think it could quite easily be widely agreed upon that some of the ideas you describe would be a better, more useful, and more streamlined way to do education.
But since the accepted signals currently come only from the traditional model, getting people to organize around an alternative is the first major hurdle, and maybe the biggest.
Yeah, there's a starting problem. However this seems more feasible than, say, reforming the overall education system. The reason is that you can start at the margins, and arguably through a combo of OnDeck, Thiel Fellowships etc we're starting to see it happen bottom up. They're combining practicality with prestige, though arguably the learning part has not been solved. That's why we see a lot more armchair philosophers in a small way I feel because clearly there's interest but can't be solved except by taking a whole degree...
Was talking about the idea of a 80:20 projects-to-exam grading ratio recently, and Pradyumna pointed out that most people would hate such a "trial by fire" as it were. And exams as the low-variance, "know-what-to-expect" option, should stay the preferred way to measure competence.
I disagreed. Because I've only ever really cared about projects. (Even if they were ungraded ones lol). And so I agree with most of the ideas here. Especially the pick-your-own-adventure and shorter specializations. (Yeah, I'm mad about the way Indian education works rn.)
Although Gwern's write-up is a bit sceptical w.r.t MOOCs et al: https://www.gwern.net/Conscientiousness-and-online-education
If stuff is going to change, I really hope it does ASAP, just because it usually takes so long for the world to catch up. HR departments take even longer :P
However, I can't help but be reminded of how much of the education discourse is centered around American colleges. Understandably so, since as citizens of the net, we're all Americans now and that's where the the student debt crisis is. But I believe that the biggest wins can be found in the places that most need improvements. Third world countries have an almost completely different set of systems and issues and I'd like to see some discussion/resarch/proposed solutions there too.
Most people might dislike it for sure, but that's true of almost any change. And this won't need be mandated, but even if enough alternatives exist at the margins it'll be better I feel. Right now there are almost no real choices.
The MOOCs are a decent idea, but barring accreditation it just relies on those who are the most conscientious or excited about a topic to selc select to learning. But those aren't the people usually who need the help! College policy is for the median, not the top deciles.
Re the global viewpoint it's true that's it's us centric. The problem is this viewpoint gets culturally dominant elsewhere pretty fast. It's either this, or if the country in question isn't well developed then an even more stringent ratrace to dominate (eg India). Here the job requirement point is even more important. Everyone in India "studies" engineering, though a) they suck, b) they mostly work in IT anyway, c) what they study has 0.01 correlation with the job. This is a market failure because existing accreditation systems suck. If IIT had a CS accreditation, this will change, and fast!