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Comment by TrackerFF | Hacker News Reader

I see your point, but undergraduate degrees should provide a wide foundation, with little specialization. As you progress to a masters degree, you become more specialized. A doctorate is as specialized as it gets.

It is entirely possible for people to intensely focus on a very, very narrow thing - and ignore everything else. Even to such a degree that they can write a doctorate on it.

But I don't think that's a good excuse to make them forego other curriculum, especially if it is required for other students to take. Schools have a responsibility to educate people to a certain standard, and give them some general breadth.

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The woman is not being "made" to do anything. She's already world-class at math and wants to maximize the impact of her specialized talents, so she's going straight to PhD.

I don't think we need to nanny people who break the mold with extraordinary talents to conform to some generic correct educational sequence. They've proven they know how to make something of themselves and their own ideas should count for more.

Imagine if every AI researcher out there was allowed to skip even the most fundamental philosophy class(es).

I don’t know about you, but exposing these prodigies to some shared classes is not all that bad. Personally I think every student should be forced to take a class on ethics.

I'm not sure higher ed's educational philosophy is serving students all that well. The breadth of education is a shallow survey at best that is quickly forgotten exactly one semester later.

Thankfully the workforce has common sense and will happily snap her up into employment.

> The breadth of education is a shallow survey at best that is quickly forgotten exactly one semester later.

Your own experience isn't generally applicable. Although it was a couple decades ago, I still use various things I learned from my non-major classes pretty much daily.

Most of that you can get with diligence in high school and a smattering of College classes as HS junior/senior IMHO.

No, that was the purpose of high school. As not practiced in public schools, as not practiced in the US

No, it's both.

The purpose of high school is to give you a wide foundation on everything.

The purpose of an undergraduate degree (in math) is to give you a wide foundation (in math).

In a (math) PhD, you are generally hyper-specialized in a very, very narrow area (of math).

Although the end goal of a PhD is a specialized thesis, the first couple of years generally involves courses with a wide coverage of analysis and algebra at the graduate level.

Given her achievements, I'd be very surprised if Cairo hasn't already covered the material in an undergrad degree

This is the entire premise of a liberal arts education. Not everyone pursues one, but it's certainly well-represented at the tertiary education level.

I've not studied this, but my guess is that the liberal arts education as the foundation is necessary to allow young people a chance to figure out who they are. I certainly found this to be true for me and would guess for my closest college friends.

If a young person is exceptional, do we force them into a liberal arts box? Surely there is value in literature and history. But this one young woman had found her passion. I have to believe that is she found out about something else, she would take that on.

Maybe. What interested me at 17 certainly does not interest me now.

> especially if it is required for other students to take

How many of the other students disproved 2 conjectures in advanced calculus that were open for decades?

You say that like it’s a universal thing. It’s much more of a Liberal Arts thing, which is much more prevalent in the US then in Europe.

> It is entirely possible for people to intensely focus on a very, very narrow thing - and ignore everything else.

sounds like Phd

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