Comment by skh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by skh | Hacker News Reader

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When I first started teaching in higher education the implied client was society at large. It was my duty to ensure that those who passed knew the material sufficiently well. This was when a student's tuition paid for 1/3 of the cost and the government funded the other 2/3.

Now it's the other way around. Now the student is the client. Now I no longer think it's my duty to ensure that those who pass know the material. It's my duty to keep enrollment up because we need the tuition dollars. I'm constantly hounded to increase my passing rate. No one who matters to our funding cares about people knowing the material they are supposed to be learning.

In the last assignment for the algebra course I'm teaching a student changed all fractions in a weird inconsistent way. For instance they changed 3/4 to 34 but then changed 5/7 to 75. No apparent rhyme or reason. This is the type of person we recruit and the type of person I'm supposed to pass.

The for profits are bad but we aren't much further behind.

At my current institution a new lecturer got a chewing-out from the departmental chair because the pass rate in an introductory class was too low. The institution managed to keep enrollment constant but had to drop admission standards markedly this year to be able to do so. Other faculty members noticed the poor performance of the incoming freshman class compared to previous years as well.

New kid came fresh from a PhD program at a credible university and thought the purpose of a university lecturer was to teach to a minimum standard. The naivete!

This is at a large state school in the Southern US.

I'm doing a CS degree currently and I'm somewhat amazed at how easy it is but also at how much the other students struggle. I do a bunch of extracurricular activities such as mathematics problem-solving seminars with two professors (there are only 4 students that attend and I'm not even a math major!), cyber CTF events, hobby projects, etc. These extra activities are making my learning far outpace my education and I really wish I was at a "harder" university. I've sort of reached a stage where the units themselves are formalities and just provide a framework where I build other knowledge.

The majority of my class struggled with mathematical induction, which literally has two steps and is not designed to present a challenge. The C programming assignment that required a simple use of fork()? A major problem for a lot of people. I could go on and on about it.

The only upside is that every single professor I've had seems to enjoy passing on knowledge when you're actually interested. I've had 500+ word replies to questions I've asked on the forums. I've had professors help me weeks after a unit has finished with problems that are only slightly related to what they taught. If you treat your university experience as an opportunity to learn and have exposure to brilliant people then it is really productive.

Ha. I've told new hires that one thing they must keep in mind is that this job is not about teaching.

As Robin Hanson has said, school is not about learning [1]. Increasingly it feels that higher education is becoming a cargo cult, a coming-of-age ritual where you jump through certain hoops in order to be awarded a piece of paper which then gives you access to jobs.

[1] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/08/school-isnt-about-lear...

IMO there is a difference between K-12 and higher ed.

K-12 is actually more about enforcing cultural norms of dilligence, punctuality and ideally some civic norms.

Higher ed (paraphrasing Peter Thiel) is a mix between insurance and a tournament. It is _supposed_ to ensure a basic living standard. But it's also a competitive tournament where the high prestige colleges grant access to higher pay/prestige careers.

Agreed that Hanson focuses on primary education in that article. I could've sworn he has written similarly about higher education but couldn't find anything relevant by quick googling.

Yeah, Hanson has similar thoughts on higher education:

https://www.businessinsider.com/is-college-a-waste-of-time-a...

> Higher ed (paraphrasing Peter Thiel) is a mix between insurance and a tournament. It is _supposed_ to ensure a basic living standard.

No, it's not.

Whether it's supposed to or not, that's how it's viewed. Also viewed as an economic ladder by lots of people including low-income and minority.

I was fortunate (?) enough to have a Ph.D. advisor who told me flat-out: "Don't express an interest in teaching. It's career suicide. Undergraduates are stupid and you'll waste your time." It still bums me out, first of all that this is how a tenured professor thinks about undergraduates, and second that this is probably a clear-eyed and honest appraisal of the system as it stands. What exactly are we doing at big land-grant universities, if not trying to educate the young citizens of our state?

Change the system for professional program admissions, internships, masters, etc.

If they depend on marks and references so much, resourceful students will focus on acquiring those.

Is it a "top 10 public school" by chance?

I would be interested to see how the school has changed over that time period. Specifically, the administrator to student ratio, the number of new deans or other fundraisers, and the number of new buildings erected.

It seems like every school has a brand new student union and student workout facility.

This. A major reason that college is so expensive is that they aren't really schools, but mini cities within a city. Don't see why they can't just offer classes and let the students live the rest of their lives like everybody else. Works fine in Europe.

Well, the federal government decided to extend a $70K line of credit to 18 year olds, and university administrators aren’t going to miss a chance to exploit the naïveté of these vulnerable young people. So it’s not a matter of whether or not we should fleece our students, but how long will we allow university administrators to get away with it (Note that none of this is particular to private universities, public universities are every bit as bad).

nailed it

At my college not much. We are a public institution and cater to urban students who mostly are working adults.

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