Comment by vimalg2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vimalg2 | Hacker News Reader

This speech shook me rudely awake , reminded me of my post-college long-term life goal(one that makes a contribution to human wealth). My goal is to build a excellent institution of learning, to train the dreamers and doers of tomorrow(not mutually exclusive). This place would rival the IITs in depth of knowledge imparted but would strive to create more well-rounded individuals who would be masters of their own destiny. I feel sad when the cream of India's IITs today prefer to chase that money-minting Investment Banking career or accumulate advanced degrees state-side for a career in academia. I'm not sure if this indicates a problem with their admissions filter. (IIT = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Institutes_of_Technology)

In India, Education is a capital-intensive , profit-maximizing beast of an industry. The admissions racket is huge. Parents often have to 'donate' (fork out) insane amounts of cash (by Indian income standards) to 'reserve' a seat in an Engineering/medical school. (except the IITs and govt-colleges, BTW)

Breaking into the market requires a large windfall and the ability to invest it wisely in order to build the foundation of such an institution. I'm thinking tech startup route naturally, since that is the only thing that comes to mind w.r.t immediate skill scope.

I suffered no end of anguish when trapped in the rote-learning institutions i'd been shuffled through. At the very least, I dream of hacking it slightly for the better, for my unborn children's generation's sake.

Does anyone in America have the same thought, or are your institutions of higher-learning pretty much satisfactory? This article refers to High-school and onwards, while my focus is slightly narrower : the undergraduate 'professional' education in developing countries; It changes whole families' economic statuses due to the current nature of the global market. We need more startups in India just like the US does.

>Does anyone in America have the same thought, or are your institutions of higher-learning pretty much satisfactory?

Frankly, I think our colleges are pretty much great. We have enough supply that pretty much everyone can go, and the public universities are cheap enough that most can afford it with financial aid and a night job if necessary.

The education varies, but you don't often hear people say when they leave college that they were prevented from learning. Even mediocre schools often have an honors program that gets much better results.

The fact that a majority of students enter college having absolutely no idea why they are there beyond the fact that that's what they're supposed to do, is a fairly clear sign that things are very broken. The other day a father got tears in his eyes when I asked him about his daughter who just went off to college. She was clueless. Unrelated to his tears, he was spending 40k/year on her mindlessly and passively attending random classes. How insane is that? I don't care if you can get financial aid, I don't understand how one could claim that's a good investment.

I was in the group feeling 'dumber' (in a way) after college. I wouldn't say I was prevented from learning [random stuff], but I definitely wouldn't attribute my schooling for assisting me in becoming a better and more capable person.

>She was clueless. Unrelated to his tears, he was spending 40k/year on her mindlessly and passively attending random classes. How insane is that?

Very insane and totally unnecessary. She could have gone to her state university for 8-9k if she wasn't confident what she was going to get out of it.

Exactly. And why stop at 8-9k at a state university? She would be equally clueless and most likely surrounded by even greater confusion.

This is the state of most people entering college in the United States. A person should not consider college unless they have some focus or understanding of why they are there. With focus, so much more will be achieved with what's given to them.

How do you gain focus? First and foremost life experience. Secondly, applied knowledge in areas that interests you or attracts your attention. This knowledge can be learned at school, though it's a terribly ineffective way of doing so.

In theory I agree with you, but in practice I don't.

For most of the people I've seen delay college, they only life experience they gain in the meantime is in waiting tables. (Which they usually already had from jobs in highschool anyways.) The only positive effect I've seen is that people realize they don't want to work a shit job for the rest of their lives, and get some motivation for education. On the margin this is definitely a win when it happens, but I've never seen the sort of identity discovery you're describing actually occur.

Delaying college by going into the military for 2-4 years seems to work out pretty well. Some of the best students I've met have been on the GI Bill.

An approximation for non-military-inclined people would be spend a year or so traveling, and then learn some relatively straightforward but non-trivial skill (say, photography, or field service engineering for a certain kind of hardware), and then traveling around to do that job (even if you end up net losing money). It's cheaper than college, and generally better preparation for life. It then makes college itself much more valuable.

Yeah military is definitely an option as well. Easily the most motivated and focused person I met in college was a Navy veteran who had recently gotten back from Iraq.

I completely agree. This is exactly the area I'm interested in.

There needs to exist something in between high school and college. In other countries especially, a lot of people take a "gap-year" and travel and work elsewhere in the world. That's one option.

Some other possibilities are (I'm curious to hear what others think of these):

- Find a business/company that would hire you as an intern. Low pay is OK - the experience is what counts. It's OK if you don't know what industry to start in, doing any decently attractive job to you brings you one step closer to figuring it out. (We need to encourage adults/businesses to take in young adults and provide them with experience in different areas, basic mentoring and training).

- Attend some sort of career/passion finding school where the entire focus is on you and your development into a thinking being (this wouldn't be needed if public schools did a better job). I'm curious if places like this exist and how effective they are.

- Take a gap year or two and travel and work remotely in various places. Learn about the world and what exists in it. This will almost surely develop character faster than waiting tables in your hometown.

- Go to a community college or take random classes at any university that interest you until you develop some interest somewhere.

As you pointed out, a key factor in motivating someone to follow any logical path is for a person to understand that the paths exist and are as possible as any other, and perhaps even more lucrative. It should all be part of the initial education.

Unrelated to your suggestions, Quebec has a school (CEGEP) between high school and university. I think it's a good idea to give kids some time to think about their choice, and since they have to choose their general orientation (science, etc.) it's a good test of their choice. Many people change program at this point.

Can you please elaborate why you want to focus on the professional under-graduate courses? I share the same anguish and thinking on it led me to believe that the process should start much early (High School and Higher-Secondary). This provides an opportunity to help the kids to work their ways independently (against the social pressure) and figure out what they want to do when it comes to picking an under-graduate course. Given that the current generation has seen much more financial independence than the previous ones (and possibly sharing the same anguish), I think this is the right time to drive the schooling system in the right direction.

Interesting. We share a passion. I exited a university with a computer science degree and finally then realized how many years I had wasted. In that moment I began to understand the many ways my mind had been brainwashed and muted. Public schools in the United States are in a sad place.

Luckily there are a lot of angry people and hence a lot of movements with good intents. Good luck to them all.

My primary passion is to improve all this as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com