Comment by vikp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vikp | Hacker News Reader

I barely made it through college, and worked in factories and warehouses during/after school. Because of my bad grades, I thought manual labor jobs were the only ones I could do.

I later worked overseas (in Guyana). I've seen many bright young people worldwide forced into doing work that crushes their spirits, because they either never had access to educational opportunities, or they struggled with rigid educational systems.

Education is one of the few ways to reduce systemic economic inequality, but it's getting harder to get a cheap, high quality education over time.

I'm building Dataquest, which to start is teaching data science online at low cost. Dataquest teaches skills in depth, so students really understand the concepts and can apply them with projects (vs most syntax focused online learning). We've had students get jobs at companies like SpaceX and Amazon.

I hope the positive impact I'm having is in some small way helping people achieve things they never believed they could.

> but it's getting harder to get a cheap, high quality education over time.

That sounds very surprising to me. To me at least it seems it's getting easier, at an accelerating rate. With resources such as libgen, scihub, mit ocw, a great number of moocs, the amount of content is only growing (most stuff gets archived). Most top universities have publicly accessible course data and resources.

Also, internet access is growing, internet devices are getting cheaper, high speed broadband is also becoming the default.

So I wonder, why would you say it's getting harder to get a cheap high quality education? I'd say you can do it for free, just look at the mit challenge.

Surely, the only obstacle is the constant stream of distractions.

To me, you are describing knowledge & understanding. An "education", as I understand it, is a validated completion of a curriculum from a known, accredited institution. Also, an " education" is no guarantee of access to, nor achievement of, success. Merely a minimal requirement for consideration.

Education != schooling. It's a mistake to assume that you can only be "educated" in an institution.

A person can educating themselves, simply by reading, and never have set foot in a classroom and still gain AMAZING skills.

That's my $.02 :)

Noted, and you may be correct. I always presumed an "education" involved a structured framework of learning. As an autodidact of sorts w/ merely an undergrad degree I have had many citations from prospective employers & clients as to my "sparse" education. I am often dismissed without ever having an opportunity to demonstrate my abilities b/c I lack expensive degrees & certs.

I think you're right, if you view "education" as content delivery. I think that for the most motivated people who are willing to learn on their own, education is often just an access problem (hence why so many smart people have focused on creating MOOCs and other content delivery platforms).

But for the people who aren't self-motivated (which I think is the vast majority), education is more of a motivation problem. Many people in this group (including myself) were trained by the traditional educational system to view learning as a chore or a slog.

I've talked to many people who have started MOOCs, but gave up halfway through due to boredom. We often see this as the student's problem/fault, but looking at it that way means that you'll only ever focus on the small percentage of students who are already motivated.

The motivation problem is one that just delivering more content won't fix. I think solving it is incredibly impactful, and can create far more opportunities than the content delivery platforms have. Unfortunately, most solutions to it are expensive (colleges/bootcamps), or lack depth.

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