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Comment by dave333 | Hacker News Reader

Education should be recast as a sort of MMORPG instead of a physical campus. Would be 100th or 1000th the cost and achieve 80% of the results. Kahn Academy and the like are a start.

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One of the most valuable parts of the in-person college experience is learning to live independently, exposing yourself to a much wider variety of people, and taking personal risks in a semi-controlled environment. You spend only around 20% of your waking hours in the classroom anyway, if that, but the rest of the time in the college environment is still very educational.

the canonical brand name university experience in the US these days can hardly be called independent living

a growing portion of the bloat discussed in this thread goes toward increasingly luxurious lodging, amenities and services

generally agree with your broader point, with caveats (e.g., how the credentialism encouraged by the university system might be considered an obstacle to personal and civic development)

Lectures could be, but tutorials are nowhere near as good online.

Rather the issue is that there is a lot of garbage tutorials out there. It takes a lot of effort the find out the correct tutorials

Rating and continuous improvement can obviously fix this.

I meant talking face to face is way better than Zoom. If you can find a group willing to talk in person about whatever it is you want to study, it should work.

Tutorials don't really need paid tutors if peer to peer Q+A like a discussion forum is available. Another concept that could improve things is team education - you get marked on your own achievements but also partially on how your whole team does - so you have incentive to help others along.

Yeah I don't think tutors do all that much if everyone is motivated. What I meant was that conversations in person are often more productive, especially when you're trying to get motivated.

In a game world motivation can be generated by access to the next room, level, whatever. Or, if you finish your fractions drill problems, you can play XYZ for an hour.

I'm talking about being motivated enough to be willing to ask questions that may make you look stupid etc.

I don't think the system you're proposing would work for open-ended subjects.

AI professors will soon be as good at teaching as the real thing and nobody need feel stupid talking to a program.

They will be. The distinction between lectures and tutorials will blur once every student has what amounts to their own personal professor/TA.

"Hey Siri, could you go back over step 3 for me? Where did you get the X-squared term in the denominator?"

I'd be interested to see if you have any feedback for me on Boot.dev. we are really trying to make it fun

One crystal clear lesson of COVID confinement was that online university education sucks.

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