A List of Colleges’ Plans for Reopening in the Fall
chronicle.com
chronicle.com
1. The "self-taught" style. This one is being done by my linear algebra class: the prof tells us which chapters to read, sends out notes, and some recommended problems. Periodically, he sends out a take-home test; we work it and send him the answers. This style is helped by the fact that our book is short and concise enough to teach but still be readable. No one wants to read if a chapter takes hours. This approach works great for me, but it requires a more self-directed student to function.
2. The "micro-manager" style. This one is being done by my physics class: the prof uses online, checked homework, multiple zoom calls, requires us to record videos of ourselves solving problems in a "tutorial style", gives on-line quizzes, and attempts to give the same tests on-line as were given in-person. This results in horrible, invasive solutions that give a "proctor" remote access to one's computer, require one to use a webcam to be monitored, and require one to show the space around him using a mirror. This style is awful, wastes colossal amounts of time, but is the option on which teachers fall back when they lack confidence in their students to be self-directed.
Most teachers are going for option 2, which is worse than in-person learning. This may sound cynical, but mot of the tools for "active learning" or "on-line engagement" make students' lives harder, waste their time, and offer no benefit beyond an administrator feeling as though he's "done something".
Edit: can any current student tell me if y'all are getting refunded for room and board, at least partially? Y'all paid for something and are being prohibited from using it, so that seems reasonable.
To my knowledge, all colleges/universities are refunding room and board for the times campus is closed. Legally I don't think there's an option.
Online teaching is difficult. It's not a good substitute for all parts of the in-person experience.
Yellow highlighters' coloring is called 'Solvent Green 7' and has a peak at about 494nm.
You can buy filters for lenses that will knock out certain bandwidths of light and keep the rest coming into the camera. These are called notch filters, as they take a notch out of the light.
There just so happens to be a notch filter that should know out the yellow highlighter color. Meaning that the light reflected from a yellow highlighter will not enter into the camera.
https://www.thorlabs.com/thorproduct.cfm?partnumber=NF488-15
They are not cheap though, and as such, I've not tried this at home to see how well it works.
Other solutions may exist at to the ideas that these people may have about how your webcam is working. I'd experiment with other lenses, polarized filters, exposure times, etc.
That said, studying is a lot easier than trying to jerry-rig your webcams.
Alternatively, one could run a VM with the monitoring software, and have a separate window with notes. As long as the mirror is angled so to hide a small portion of the screen that should be good enough.
To build on your physical solution using polarization: that's easier. You can apply a polarized filter to the webcam (you can get one from an old pair of 3d glasses) and then have the notes on a secondary screen that will then look completely dark on webcam. Maybe lay the device on a black background so it's not obvious that there's a "turned off" device and you're done.
This is all a fun thought experiment. I don't have invasive professors, thankfully. They simply made all tests open book and raised the difficulty of the questions accordingly. That being said, I enjoy trying to work arounf hypothetical limitations...
I'm hard-pressed to think of many subjects where an "open book" test isn't a better option, even for in-person classes. If a cheat sheet can help during a test, then it's asking predictable questions and measuring regurgitation.
My wife pointed out language tests to see if students can use the skills on the fly, but I can't think of another good case. This should be a time for schools to find which teachers are just going for easy-to-write instead of useful tests.
The caveat to all of these is that they take more work for teachers, so many prefer not to use them.
Those going to college just for the paper are well advised to keep going. The next couple of years will be easy mode, for sure. You get an A, and you get an A--everyone gets an A!
"...Educational austerity is the simplest path back to an economy in which serious on-the-job learning starts during high school — not after college."
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-caplan-education...
He's basically saying there's no need to buy food because you can eat free samples at the grocery store. He also just happens to be the author of a "contrarian" book arguing that college is worthless. It's purely a coincidence that he's posting misinformation on the same topic - making claims about a university where he doesn't work - in one of the most widely read news outlets.
Also I think a more obvious example of it being popular is the courses and lectures that are made freely available online.
Or a sign that some people don't understand the value of networking and the value of what earning admission to Princeton signals.
If you are genuinely capable of learning everything alone, just from lectures, there's no need to move to NJ. It's all online anyways.
I'm a prof at a SLAC. Many of the students I have are doing fine. But a good number of them are struggling. Some are working, sometimes many hours because their parents are out of work or anticipate being out of work. Some of them have illness in their family (I don't know of any who are themselves ill).
And for some of them it is that they are not good at this environment-- they didn't sign up for this. Online education is hard. Personally I perceive that especially for people on the left side of the curve, less learning takes place because they are often just not skilled at self-learning.
In the present environment, when working with students I often feel that this is a person who could well have learned, say, Elementary Statistics except that the circumstances hit them where they are weak. Some leeway is called for, it seems to me. I'm not talking about certifying them at something where they are not prepared for the following class (that is, no "Everybody gets an A"). But my school, and many others, is allowing people to choose "No grade" in some cases and that seems reasonable to me.
Rather, just noting that for some students and some courses (especially the non-useful ones), this might be a real opportunity.
My friends who are currently in college tell me that they’re currently dying under a massive workload as teachers fail to realize that “remote learning” does not mean you can assign hundreds of pages of reading “to fill up free time”. Those that are from other countries really dislike waking up at 3 AM to take synchronized online quizzes…it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.
This turned out to be more useful than 80% of what I learned in college.
Even for my friends that went for CS, they also said they would have loved to have had more time to apply and actually create things vs just learning theoretical/ engineering side of things in school.
Or for instance my brother if he took off from school he would have had the chance to go pro in the MLS, but it was too big of a risk to put off school at the time. Not that sports are happening now, but just gives a more diverse view.
A more HN example would be to create a business or side hustle.
If my experience of college professors is anything to go by, it'll be more like "You couldn't complete the work because I forgot to include a crucial part of the instructions. Well tough, you fail anyway."
Classes won't all be like, be the ones that are will take up so much of students time that they might as well be.
Usually most people who want gap years are allowed to do so, but usually there aren't many people who want to do gap years (at least in the US).
How are they going to get out of abiding by their own regulations? Universities I'm familiar with all provide for deferred years.
They're desperate, and they're about to be a lot more so. If your money's green, they'll let you.
Essentially, while I get why colleges and politicians would want students to go about business as usual, it seems it benefits them rather than me. I'm going to college for two things: research and connections. Both of these are greatly impeded by virtual-only learning. Research is possible in CS but much harder, especially if one doesn't already know the professor. And it seems impossible to form relationships over videochat only.
Sadly this isn't true for a lot of math/computer science courses, speaking from very recent experience. While having an open book and even online access is an advantage, many profs implement measures ranging from webcam proctoring services to extremely difficult time-limited exams to compensate.
They're also far easier to manage, less noisy, you aren't on your feet for hours.
We don’t actually live in a world governed only by the hard sciences. There are people here too, and I’d argue that understanding people is just as difficult as understanding the laws of physics.
Some of the biggest challenges in society today are not questions of hard science, but rather about people and groups and institutions. I think our current situation exemplifies this.
Gutting humanities in favor of “practical” degrees is short-sighted in the extreme. The problem with humanities is not that it doesn’t provide value to the community, the problem is that it is difficult to monetize skills in the humanities.
There is a pathology that larger organizations often develop where they start investing only in ideas that where they can measure the impact on the time scale of a performance review cycle. For example, any project where the results can’t be measured in one or two quarters might be dead on arrival, depending on what company you work for.
The same kind of short-term, narrow-minded thinking is what makes people dismiss humanities.
We would be just as well served if we went back to learning classics, for example. I was disappointed to go through college having touched nothing older than Shakespeare officially.
But I got plenty of feminist and minority-focused literature that was irrelevant to my particular (non-white) echnicity. Why should these modern authors take such a heavy precedence? Isn't it hubris to presume that your ideas are superior simply because they are new? Students are a captive audience when the entire institution is leaning in the same direction.
It's only because of the harsh economic reality of America's university system that such a prospect is even thinkable.
Value judgements merely reflect the person that created them.
People don't have to spend thousands of dollars and four years of their life to paint or sculpt or whatever - it may not be proficient and lifelike but it'll still be art.
Your world wouldn't be all that much more drab if we stopped forcing engineers to learn "culture".
I don't think it's important to the overall argument of your comment, but this is incredibly reductive. If one has little appreciation for a particular form of art maybe this is true, but if, for example, all orchestras or other classical music ensembles were comprised of less proficient musicians I'd sooner stop listening to classical music altogether.
> Your world wouldn't be all that much more drab if we stopped forcing engineers to learn "culture".
I'm not sure if it was your intention, but quoting the word culture comes off as disparaging, but given the tone of your comment it certainly seems so.
I think I would've agreed with you if you'd simply said "engineers shouldn't be forced to take humanities in higher education; doing so is largely ineffective, at least in terms of imparting cultural appreciation and other related soft skills." Instead, I can't help but read it and think that it's single-minded and tone-deaf.
This is doubly so in a rural university town where the seasonally renting(2/3rds of the year) population is anywhere from 10 to 30 times the size of the permanent residents in the surrounding area.
Also more generally, the lack of university students in these rural university towns could potentially cripple the local economy for a long time. Many of the local businesses are only able to sustain themselves with the income they receive during the Fall and Spring semesters.
By their nature, PMCs are after profit, and improvements are an expense to minimize. The nature of college towns mean that there is a constant supply of “fresh meat” in the market, often moving to or from other cities, further disincentivizing improvement or good behavior on the part of the PMC. Why bother to replace moldy carpet, if the tenants don’t stick around to take you to court for it?
Having rented from PMCs in the past, having worked in college housing, the idea that you would feel sympathy towards a PMC in a college town is pathological.
I grew up in a tourism economy and absolutely hated it for this reason.
Not having to do repeat business allows businesses to do all sorts of sleazy thigns that would have gotten around and had them out of business in short order anywhere else. Because their bad behavior never comes back to get them the scumbags can out compete the honest businesses for all the things businesses need so the cost of commercial rent, a plumber's services, tires for a skid steer, etc, etc, all reflect an income level that a business needs to behave badly to obtain. Eventually the entire local economy runs in a mode where prices are massively variable because everyone rips everyone else off as much as they think they can and you can never trust anyone you do business with to give you a fair price and a massive amount of time and effort is wasted on price discovery because nobody can trust that they're not paying some integer multiple of what someone else got charged for an equivalent.
Deriving income from a large transient population is just an all around recipe for a crappy low trust society.
Good landlords are hard to find. There is so much information asymmetry when choosing a rental property. They can get large troves of data on you, but the reverse is not so easy if possible at all.
In practice, PMCs in college towns are bad actors. At least, on average. They are basically sitting on an investment (land) and providing the minimum level of work necessary to keep money flowing. It’s a legitimate business in the sense that it is “legal”. However, the profits do not correspond to the value that they provide to the economy.
Is that how you measure the value of the business?
Landlords contribute a small amount of value relative to how much they are paid, compared to other businesses. Most of the value is provided by the land itself, and the landlords merely have a monopoly on it. So I am less inclined to be sympathetic to PMCs which are suddenly being paid less, since they are generally overpaid.
We have to be careful to distinguish rent from actual productive economic activity, because rent provides no value and requires no work. Speaking here of “rent” in the Adam Smith sense of the word.
Landlords/PMCs are overpaid because tenants pay rent not only for the services provided by the landlords/PMCs, but also for access to the land which they own. This happens because the property owners have a monopoly on that piece of land. The rent will increase in accordance with the contributions of the people using the land, and yet the money will be paid instead to the people owning the land.
The Wealth of Nations is on Gutenberg. Skip to Chapter XI in Book 1. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-0.txt
> The rent of land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land, is naturally a monopoly price. It is not at all proportioned to what the landlord may have laid out upon the improvement of the land, or to what he can afford to take, but to what the farmer can afford to give.
For an obvious example, if I tried to rent my house out to Bill Gates for $50 billion, which he can afford, how far do you think I'd get with that?
For an obvious example, the rent in Manhattan is higher than the rent in Tulsa because the salaries in Manhattan are higher.
Comparing rent on farm land is not the same as rent on housing.
I own a rental house. What does the rent go to? Well, I pay a mortgage, taxes, utilities, and upkeep. That is, I'm saving up now for a roof and a retaining wall (to give better access on one side of the driveway).
What value do the renters receive?
1. No risk. They can walk away, but I still have a 30-year mortgage. The plumbing can fail. The roof can leak. The electric can degrade. The building can crumble. I, the owner, have to fix it IF it happens. The renter does not assume any of that risk.
2. No commitment. Aside from a short lease (which they agree to the terms), the renter has no long-term obligation to that property. I, as the owner, have committed to maintaining the property for decades.
3. Access to the property and all of its features. If you don't think that that is value, then try being homeless.
4. Furthermore, I, as the owner, DO NOT have access to the use of the property. Perhaps for decades.
5. Monopoly? I cannot think of a single example of a monopoly in land ownership other than the government itself and the threat of eminent domain. If you don't like my terms for lease, then go next door. Different owner, different terms. Or buy your own.
6. Initial Investment. I, as an owner, had to save for years to consolidate the capital for the down payment of that property. That means that, for years, I did not party, buy the latest technology, eat at moderately-priced restaurants, go on vacation, buy a shiny new vehicle, purchase concert tickets, etc. I deprived myself of entertainment and luxery to, instead, work multiple jobs, with the intent of having a rental property.
7. Improvement. I improve the property. If I do not pay someone to do it, then it is me doing it myself. I refinished the hardwood floors. I fixed drywall and painted. I removed old ductwork. I provide appliances. I provide furnishing (I rent to students, after all). I put the labor into the property, further depriving myself of other more enjoyable activity.
I'm sorry, but I completely disagree with your restrictive definition of what of "rent" represents. Rent is compensation for my years of preparation and self-denial of the reward for my own personal labor. Rent is the fee that the renter pays for not having done the same. Rent is never pure profit. Rent is a continual financial planning for the upkeep and sustaining of the investment.
Do I benefit from my investment? Yes.
Do I feel guilty about it? No.
Should I feel guilty about it? Never.
If you are mad at a landlord for having to pay rent, then dig yourself out of that situation. What if it takes years? Welcome to the club. Do it anyway. So what if you have to move? Again, welcome to the club. Do it anyway. So what if the landlord is wealthy? Wealth has to come from somewhere, and if your current financial strategy isn't making you wealthy, then change it. It will probably take a lifetime to do, but then again, that's probably what your landlord did (or is in the process of doing).
1. Assuming risk is valid. However, it only accounts for a small portion of rent.
2. You do not actually have that kind of commitment. You can sell the property. The only risk here is that you cannot make a profit when you sell it, so this is nothing more than a repeat of point #1.
3/4. Access to use of the property would exist whether or not it had a landlord. The landlord is not providing value here, merely using the power of a government-granted monopoly on the land.
5. Land is not fungible and there is a limited supply. You are granted a monopoly on the land that you own.
6. The reason the initial investment is so high is because local laws are generally put in place to protect the interests of homeowners, over the interests of renters.
7. The improvement only accounts for a small portion of rent.
> I'm sorry, but I completely disagree with your restrictive definition of what of "rent" represents. Rent is compensation for my years of preparation and self-denial of the reward for my own personal labor.
You obviously don’t feel sorry, but you are benefiting from a system which is rigged in your favor, and building capital on the backs of people who actually provide value to the economy. That’s not to say that you are not providing value to the economy—it’s just that the value you provide is much smaller than the amount you are paid for it.
Consider, for a moment, the reason why rent may go up in a particular area. The main reason it goes up is because of the economy in a particular area. The economy makes the rent go up because the people living there are more productive—not because the landlords are more productive! So the landlords are being compensated for other people’s work, when the rent goes up.
> If you are mad at a landlord for having to pay rent, then dig yourself out of that situation.
I wouldn’t get mad at leeches, mosquitos, or other parasites. They are merely making the best out of the ecological niche that they arrived in. But I’m also not going to feel sympathy for parasites, nor am I going to care whether they feel guilty.
1/2. Risk is a big part of owning property. Liquidity of the property is also very important. You are vastly underestimating this.
3/4. As long as the right to own property exists, the right to exclude access to land that someone owns exists. If the landlord did not rent the property, then only the landlord would have the right to access it. Unless you deny the right to personal property?
5. In the sense you're using it, I have a "monopoly" on my laptop. It's one of those old Thinkpad X230s, and there's a limited supply. You're welcome to buy it from me...but there's also more on ebay. To call my laptop ownership a 'monopoly' is ridiculous, because you can go buy a different one, even though there's a limited supply. In the same way, you can go rent land somewhere else, even though there's a limited supply.
6. That's actually a big factor in deciding where to purchase properties that you want to rent out: do the local laws favor the tenant or the landlord? It can be so expensive as to be not worth the effort, when the laws favor the tenant. If you can't kick someone out until they've gone six months without paying the rent, but still have to pay for the upkeep of the property, then you want to be very, very careful that you find good tenants.
7. In what world to you live in? All that stuff costs thousands of dollars - even just repainting. And it's not just improvement, but upkeep. Plumbers are expensive. Random stuff breaking is expensive. Not everyone has the time or ability to do those things themselves.
> you are benefiting from a system which is rigged in your favor
See 6) above. It's not rigged; housing is a hard problem to solve, and it's expensive on both sides.
> building capital on the backs of people who actually provide value to the economy
Ever stayed in a hotel? Those provide exactly the same benefit as a rental, on a shorter time scale. Or do you not consider hotels valuable?
> The main reason [rent] goes up is because of the economy in a particular area.
The landlord picked a good location to purchase the property. Seems strange you expect the landlord to keep their prices down while everything else gets more expensive. The landlord is still providing value. If you don't like the prices, you're welcome to move somewhere with cheaper apartments...but a cheaper apartment will come with some downsides, too.
> not going to feel sympathy for parasites
I'd say a tenant who failed to pay rent matches the definition of parasite pretty well too.
Providing housing, whether a hotel room or an apartment, is a valuable part of the economy. You've given several reading recommendations in this thread, let me pass you something in return:
Look into what it would actually involve to rent a property in your area - cost to purchase, the building codes that have to be followed, the upgrades that have to be made (a lot of old houses have lead in the paint - that has to be stripped or covered); check out the effort it takes to coordinate with a rental agency to find a decent tenant, and look up the probabilities of the costs associated with bad tenants. It's also worth checking out how long the average tenant rents for, and the cleanup time and effort involved with prepping for the next tenant. Don't forget to check the competition - does the bathroom need to be upgraded? Maybe the houses in your area all have walk-in closets, and the rental agency says you need one too, to stay attractive. How much does the contractor say that'll cost, and how long will it take? Also check out the correlation between rental property destruction and income level - if you rent cheap properties for cheap, what's the cost of repair come to each month?
Final question. Did you decide to skip the above exercise, because it looked too time-consuming and/or difficult?
For example, in New York, if you break a lease the landlord is obligated to make a “reasonable effort” to re-rent the apartment. You are still on the hook in the interim. In the current environment, the apartment probably won’t be re-rented.
But the jurisdiction is also important, not just the terms of the lease.
Universities will now have to cull "overhead". Grad students and professors will have a golden opportunity about 1-2 years from now to capture a less tiny fraction of the wealth they create. Don't let it go to waste.
[0]https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
I noticed also (former professor) that my institution is now heavily incentivizing early retirement for those getting close to qualifying, and are not shy about linking it to coronavirus.
Finally, I think a lot of social distancing guidelines apply technically in many situations with lectures, etc.
It will be an interesting semester.
I am a product of University of California system and many of my lower level classes had hundreds or students. I barely got to see the professor up close so maybe this remote video teaching may even been a better option. :)
- Start Fall semester with onsite classes.
- For those who wish to participate remotely for medical reasons or personal preference, they should be allowed to teach/learn remotely.
- But everyone (administration, profs, students, support staff, local town/city) should be prepared to have the teaching go virtual with the campus shutting down on a short notice.
- If Covid-19 reappears locally or surges again nationally, campus should close down.
I say at least start the upcoming semester in Fall 2020 with onsite classes, for the sake of human bonds to form between the students/professors. It may sound too unpredictable but I think having even one or two months of in person interaction would be beneficial for the incoming freshman class.
Also, dorm/parking/housing cost probably should be charged in monthly increments, not per semester, to prepare for possible shutdown of campus in the middle of a semester.
I suspect we'll also see our first couple of disease clusters and super spreaders with associated deaths clearly attributable to a child in school. (I hope to god we'll have some compassion and keep the kids' names out of this, but I doubt it.)
Once that hits the news, I suspect lots of parents will refuse to put their kids in school.
In CA, for example, this may have devastating effects on the school district: they get money on an asses-in-seats basis [1]. I suspect that home schooling is about to have an enormous boom.
[1] https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/education/how-do-you-...
But high-risk students and households will need to be accommodated too, so a remote component could be necessary even if most kids are back in physical classrooms.
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