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Comment by Naac | Hacker News Reader

>> The truth is that universities sell all of these things, bundled together. And that’s a big reason they’ve been able to raise prices to astronomical levels over the past several decades — it’s really hard to disrupt all of those things at once.

No, it's because no matter what the cost of school is, universities know their "customers" will just take out a loan to match whatever the price is. And one way to "disrupt" this is to make public universities free for in state students, similar to what California used to do with the UC system.

It was difficult to read the rest of the article given that it started on this false premise.

More specifically, this article should really define what MasterClass is right at the beginning. Because given the picture at the top, I thought it was referring to the generic masterclass [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_class

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> No, it's because no matter what the cost of school is, universities know their "customers" will just take out a loan to match whatever the price is. And one way to "disrupt" this is to make public universities free for in state students

It's not just the ability to borrow that's driving this, but the perception that you must absolutely have the product (college degree) - so you don't feel like you have a choice not to borrow to pay the exorbitant fee.

University is hard to "disrupt" but the fact that the cost comes out of your pocket, student debt and all, is one motivating factor for others to try.

If you entrench the university as something that's "free" (meaning, you still pay the exorbitant fee, just in the form of taxes) then you've basically established a monopoly because nothing can compete with something that's "free"

My take on the university is simple - the university originally existed because you needed a single physical location for books and smart people. Access to people and information was finite and location really mattered.

This is the opposite of the world we live in now - ability to access people and knowledge today is only hurt by the physical colocation aspect. So the university, which is still operating under the "books and smart people are scarce so you need to pay us to be near them" principle just no longer makes sense as the default way to educate the masses.

>> My take on the university is simple - the university originally existed because you needed a single physical location for books and smart people. Access to people and information was finite and location really mattered. This is the opposite of the world we live in now - ability to access people and knowledge today is only hurt by the physical colocation aspect. So the university, which is still operating under the "books and smart people are scarce so you need to pay us to be near them" principle just no longer makes sense as the default way to educate the masses.

That doesn't make sense. Maybe for some fields, but certainly all the fields that actually require a lab to work in still benefit from the physical space a university provides.

I'm also not convinced that remote work/meetings == in person collaboration between colleagues.

> Maybe for some fields, but certainly all the fields that actually require a lab to work in still benefit from the physical space a university provides.

Sure. But it doesn't have to be black and white. A degree costs the.same currently regardless of whether you are in a. Lab-heaby major or one where you mainly sit in a 200+ lecture hall passively listening. Either way you rack up tens lt hundreds of thousands of debt. Wouldn't it be at least nice to have am option to learn the same material in an acredited way while taking advantage of modern technology to drive costs majorly down.

Then for majors with labs etc maybe you do show up somewhere to work on it. You maybe even pay more for lab access since the cost of providing one is higher. I bet you still come out way ahead compared to today.

Bottom line if someone wants the classic education experience, sure. But that financial commitment shouldn't be everyone's default

If you know of a place where there are a lot of books and you can hang out with smart people, please tell me where it is, it sounds wonderful.

University degrees, in practice, aren't about learning or education. Depending on the person and the university, they are about accreditation (you have more doors open with a bachelor's than you would otherwise, depending on the degree) or they are about connections. Either one can be worth a loan.

But I'm not so sure that making them free accomplishes either one. It's possible that doing so would only push the problem to the master's programs as organizations and candidates look for differentiation.

They are about learning and education though. How could they possibly not be. The other things like connections, socialising, getting drunk are just extra bonuses. This idea that universities don't provide any value to society and that they should be replaced by poorly structured YT videos with tons of mistakes in them has to go. Has no basis whatsoever.

This comment is very caricatural. I got multiple university degrees from my country where it's almost free and I learned a lot during the bachelor ones. Master not so much by that nice to have too.

> More specifically, this article should really define what MasterClass is right at the beginning. Because given the picture at the top, I thought it was referring to the generic masterclass

It does, MasterClass is capitalised in the title showing that its a proper noun and the by-line is

> And other lessons from a 9-figure edtech startup

Not sure how the author could define MasterClass more “at the beginning” than in the title and by-line.

> Not sure how the author could define MasterClass more “at the beginning” than in the title and by-line.

They do define properly, just after an unrelated blurb about public universities: "MasterClass is an online education portal"

> It does, MasterClass is capitalised in the title showing that its a proper noun and the by-line is

That's fair, although it wasn't capitalized on hackernews

How does making the school free solve that specific problem? Wouldn’t the taxpayers foot the bill for whatever the price is? At least with loans there is some consumer price sensitivity, even if it’s lowered via use of loans.

Taxpayers footing the bills for things are more rational and calculating than either 17 year olds or the parents of same who “just want the best” for their kids. (That’s not to say that taxpayers are particularly great at making trade offs; I just think the 17 year olds and their parents are especially terrible at it.)

> Wouldn’t the taxpayers foot the bill for whatever the price is?

No, that's not how state budgets work. It's the other way around. Universities will get whatever the state appropriates to them and then have an obligation to take all comers.

> Universities will get whatever the state appropriates to them and then have an obligation to take all comers.

Would that be like current pre-university public schools then? Shudder!

>> Universities will get whatever the state appropriates to them and then have an obligation to take all comers.

> Would that be like current pre-university public schools then? Shudder!

Why would that be the case? IE, what are the root causes of problems in public K12 education and why would changing the funding mechanism of universities cause those problems to propagate?

Many states have already done this with Community College systems and AFAICT the results have been mostly positive.

So, I imagine it would be exactly like current public universities (in CA quite good). It's not like changing the funding mechanism completely wipes out the faculty or curricula.

In practice, the major change would be that getting into certain programs at public universities (traditional 4 year bachelors programs) becomes more difficult. The university system takes all comers in the sense that there's no charge the point of use, not in the sense that they literally admit everyone who applies. And making college admissions more selective might be a good thing anyways.

Yes it absolutely would. A better approach would be to test the creditworthiness of the educational program against the earning power of its graduates. That would go a long way towards solving literally every issue relating to student debt and tuition costs.

Presumably, the state has more leverage to negotiate/cap prices than the individual student.

> Wouldn’t the taxpayers foot the bill for whatever the price is?

Certainly doesn’t work that way in germany where college is free. But then again, the US have an odd relationship with tax funding, to say the least.

You want the person who is better able to negotiate to negotiate price and product. For what groceries or car you buy you yourself is better than the state. However for education and healthcare the state has proven to be a better negotiator than the people.

Presumably any proposal for completely or largely government-funded schools would contain some price controls.

Wow, you really don't understand this at all, do you? You even tell us you thought it was about something else.

I didn't know about MasterClass myself, but I have to admire the marketing genius they've shown here. Of course you can't make much money teaching people a real skill, because that's hard and most people don't want to put in the time.

However, aspiration and status-seeking are things that are much more universal, and they've figured out how to milk those. Good for them.

> However, aspiration and status-seeking are things that are much more universal, and they've figured out how to milk those. Good for them.

Sorry, I find this idea distasteful as it is very disrespectful to the "student".

The Masterclass courses are neither cheap nor short. Most of them don't seem to be very good, either. An actual teacher can provide some tailoring and motivation, as well.

Spending the same amount of time and money with a local voice coach instead of with Christina Aguilera's Masterclass (which isn't very good) is going to be far more productive for a singer.

I suspect the rest of the Masterclasses are the same.

Of course, none of this is new. The "Hot Licks" series of guitar videos did this like ... 30 years ago? And similarly, most of the videos are garbage, but a few are amazing (Jimmy Bruno and Emily Remler spring to mind--Emily Remler talking about all the stuff she did while spending an entire year to fix her "broken rhythm" (that any of us mortals would kill to have) was enlightening).

That was "admire" as in "admire Frank Abagnale for his cons."

I didn't say they were any good. Christina Aguilera "teaches" a class?

"I'm not a singer, but I play one on MasterClass."

> No, it's because no matter what the cost of school is, universities know their "customers" will just take out a loan to match whatever the price is.

This is key, and price inflation happens when the entity receiving a service is not the entity paying for the service. It makes the customer price-insensitive. Witness healthcare in America.

Witness housing.

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